Quarantine(r) March (quintet)

Premiered February 2022 by the Charm Brass Quintet

Program note

Quarantine(r) March is a march I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. The title gives a nod to the popular march “Florentiner March” by Julius Fucik. Originally written for a full wind band, this work explores the different moods that most people experienced surrounding the beginning of the pandemic. It conveys the early joy when things were first canceled, the boredom experienced after a few weeks in isolation, the frustration felt after realizing it was nowhere near over, and the inner-turmoil of trying to balance all of these emotions. When I adapted the work for brass quintet, I placed the final piccolo solo in the tuba part to allude to my community band’s longstanding tradition of having the tuba section play the piccolo solo in John Philip Sousa’s the Stars and Stripes Forever.