Big Shoulders, Sharp Elbows (2020)

Composer note
This work is written for the DePaul University Wind Ensemble and SFMK. The "big shoulders" reference is to the city of Chicago, as envisioned by the American poet Carl Sandburg in 1914:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling
City of the Big Shoulders

The reference to "sharp elbows" might reference any large American urban area, in which people risk brawling in the desperation to win space in what appears to be an utterly stochastic cultural movement.

Musically, the piece deploys a sonic strategy of depiction, a common characteristic of American music from Amy Beach's "Gaelic" Symphony to Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, and John Zorn. The fanfare-like opening of the work may be heard as a depiction of this line from the poem, so celebratory of my home town:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

— George Lewis