Caged was written for the wonderful fellows of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Iris Orchestra as a collaborative effort to further a commitment of providing the gift of music to the community while in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Caged is an energetic, rhapsodic journey geared toward carrying the listener through a range of emotions. As with much of my work, I sought to pair the barbarous with the deeply introspective, throwing in a couple of grooves along the way. I feel it as a work to "let loose" so to speak and release much of the restrictive tension quarantine and the pandemic as a whole has brought upon us. 

It is written in an ABA' form with the last section mirroring the first in terms of emotional drive. The middle section serves as the heart of the work and is an inward reconciling of the grief many of us feel from this difficult time.  Although we feel caged at the moment, what a gift it is to have something so powerful as music continue to lift our spirits and eventually pull us through to the other side.