PROGRAM NOTE

Lumana'I was composed for the Hawaii Youth Symphony for performance during the Aloha Concert of the 2005 graduating high school seniors. This milestone would represent the last, including my own at the time, concert with the organization. The HYS organization has been nothing less then a founding entity in my development.  It was the impetus for my musical career and situated itself as a critical and vital resource that has fostered my composer pursuits, with the commission of 9 symphonic works to date. To commemorate the occasion, the work is titled after the Samoan word for the future; a fitting word that I felt captured the occasions bittersweet landmark and departure of the senior class into their respective endeavors and destinations. In doing so, I wanted to create a work that embodied the youthful energy, popular culture and optimistic ambition that one finds in a graduating individual and certainly the environment that I found myself. In retrospect, the work is nostalgic and very much in a language and form that is of my youthful years; A time capsule of my own journey which I find remarkable when comparing it to my later works, the scope of my own evolution is both near and far.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

May 22, 2007: Hawaii Youth Symphony, conducted by Henry Miyamura, Honolulu, HI