I was quite the musical entrepreneur, even in my college days. While an undergrad, I decided that I needed to compose something for a large ensemble, so I simply went to the conductor of the URI wind ensemble, Gene Pollart, and asked if he’d program something if I wrote it. He said Yes. Little did I realize what an unusual opportunity this was. (Thank you, Dr. Pollart!) The result was “Crying Bone,” a tone poem loosely based on the story some friends told me about their young daughter, who kept inexplicably bursting into tears. At their wits ends, they enlisted their other daughter in trying to find out what was going on. Eventually, she confided to her sister that “she had a crying bone (pointing to her ribs), and she couldn’t turn it off.”
It starts very quietly, so stick with it and don’t turn up the volume too high, because it will get a lot louder!
