JEREMY HOWARD BECK
YOU ARE ALIVE for jazz trumpet, 2 trombones, tuba, and percussion
(Score) [09.15.13]
Why You Call Me Boo Music
Instrumentation Jazz Trumpet* Trombone 1* Trombone 2* Tuba Percussion (crotales, vibraphone, suspended cymbal, kick drum, chimes) *Mutes required: plunger, harmon and straight mutes (all brass except Tuba) Duration: approximately 6 minutes Program Note I first met dancer and choreographer Haylee Nichele in Juilliard's Composers & Choreographers workshop. We had been paired with each other mostly against our will (and somehow without our knowledge—we had barely met), and when it came time to produce a new piece of music and dance for the workshop's annual performance, we were acutely aware of how not-your-first-choice we both were. Haylee's only knowledge of my music was of e Wound at the Heart—the piece I wrote for Composers & Choreographers the previous year—and we agreed right away that, whatever we ended up doing together, we both wanted to do something that was very, very much Not at. at piece was a product of the most traumatic year of my life, and composing it was a kind of self-administered purging, vomiting, exorcism. Haylee, too, had just made it through a very difficult time, and early in the process we set out to make a piece about the simple joy of being in your body. As much as e Wound at the Heart was about emotional and spiritual death, this would be a piece about life. But, as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans," and a childhood friend's tragic loss made writing a simply exuberant piece impossible. e phrase "you are alive" was something I saw in a photograph, after September 11, of graffiti at Ground Zero, and at that time I found those words to be a great comfort. is time, the words—and the piece that resulted from them—are meant for my friend, to remind him: even after everything that's happened, you are alive. I am so deeply grateful to Haylee for her artistic brilliance, for allowing me to take the big risks, and, most importantly, for her friendship.