Instrumentation: picc.;fl 1,2;ob. 1,2;cl. 1,2,3;b.cl;bsn.(3)-c.bsn.;s.sax.;a.sax.;t.sax.;b.sax.-tpt. 1,2,3;hn. 1,2,3,4;tbn. 1,2;b.tbn.;tba-soli tpt 1,2;hn;tbn;b.tbn;tba-perc. 1,2,3,4,5-c.bass.

• approx. duration: 18’ 00"

• When my dear friend Cort Roberts approached me to commission this work with The Brass Project and the University of Colorado Boulder, I immediately knew that I wanted to compose a work that dealt with a set of painful personal experiences that, given the current sociopolitical climate of the US, have been alarmingly on the rise. It is impossible to ignore this nation’s past in relationship to its present. A revisionist history would only push under the rug how minority (whatever that might mean) communities like mine are forced to navigate this nation in ways we don’t feel comfortable doing so, and even to navigate it in life-threatening ways. As a believer in equality, the current ideological rationales, and unscrupulously shameless legal efforts to continue to undermine the personhood and the being of particular groups of people are colossally disturbing to me. As a gay and Latino man in this supposedly egalitarian nation, the recent decisions and the coming cases that the Supreme Court will hear keep me awake at night. The plausible opening for “legal discrimination” that cases such as the challenge to Affirmative Action, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the coming 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis present are terrifying to me. If we live in a society where people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and many, many more) were murdered in plain sight; in a society where a person can buy a weapon of war and go to a supermarket or a night club and murder people just because of how they look or who they are; a society where people can be brutalized and murdered because of their gender identity; a society where those that are supposed to protect us burn our houses with us inside for the purpose of urban development such as the 23 major fires on Symphony Road in 1974, marking the beginning of a pattern of terror and fear in the neighborhood; a neighborhood of Puerto Ricans and other minorities. If we live in a society where all that and more can happen without deeply questioning our morals, I can’t imagine a nation where legal loopholes allow discrimination are restored, loopholes that will embolden bigots to continue the violence and terror, a violence and terror that, if we look carefully, hasn’t disappeared, not in 1865, not in 1964, not in 2006, not in 2015, and definitely not today.

  It is for these reasons that this symphony, for brass sextet and symphonic band, is entitled “The Moral Question.” In six continuous movements the symphony goes through moments of internal searching (Ricercare), persecution (Crusade), moments of confronting the idea of fate (Fatum) and where it seems to take us (Funeral March and Sepultura), until arriving at a great moment of calamity, but ... what kind of calamity? The work takes as an anchor the powerful presence of the brass sextet as characters of honor, bravery, and perseverance while the symphonic band tries to wrap, attack and silence them multiple times. Throughout this piece I present not only moments of uncertainty, but also moments of action and courage. Although these moments of apparent fortune attempt to affirm an augury of hope, it was impossible for me to complete the work with the ratification of said hope. That is why the work culminates in the same note in which it began, the note B, note that in Spanish (Si) can be used as a symbol of affirmation, and in English, it can be taken as a symbol of being or existing. With the dread that this nation’s new era produces, I believe that the “moral question” is not the one that many have tried to present to us shrouded in unconvincing platitudes. I believe that, in the end, the “moral question” is: who in the United States of America has the right to Be and exist? The “history and traditions” of this nation has tried to answer that question on multiple occasions, and when we thought we had answered it morally and fairly, here the question is forced to appear before us again.

• premiere: Sinfonía No.3 will be premiered by University of Colorado, Boulder Symphonic Wind Band in the fall of 2023.