(2026) UMBRA
UMBRA — Program Note
Dedicated to Vicente Bögeholz and the ARUNDOS Quintet / commissioned by speGTRa – Aachen Guitar Festival, 2026
Duration: 12 Minutos
My work as a composer is, more often than not, highly collaborative. This composition was conceived from a quote that Vicente Bögeholz kindly shared with me, which opened a great array of possibilities. He wrote: “One possible source of inspiration for the work could be the quote by Mark Twain that the band Pink Floyd drew upon when creating the album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.'” The quote is: “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
As the past couple of years have been personally turbulent, I embraced the quote and used musical ideas as an outlet to externalize emotions that stay hidden sometimes, even from ourselves. The result is “UMBRA,” a work that explores the shadows, where each utterance of darkness within has its own flavor and relationship to what stays hidden versus what is exposed. The first movement, called Obsession, circles back on itself, recedes, returns, occasionally loosens its grip just long enough to feel like relief before tightening again. The second movement, titled” Everyone is a Moon”, quotes Twain directly and appears as a waltz: slow, melancholy, and turning on its own axis, the way a body in orbit shows the same face outward while the other side stays dark. It is about introspective concealment.
The Crossing, the final movement, purges all emotions at once, as if fragmented motifs were thrown into a huge fan. It sheds light on the mystery, as the mystery evolves. It is life happening in its relentless motion; events unfolding indifferent to whether we are ready or not. There is no avoiding reality, there is only surrender. Musically, this movement connects slightly with the first, as the obsessiveness level, though in a different register. Now less about the self and more about what the self can no longer contain.
MOVEMENT TITLES:
1. Obsession | 2. Everyone is a Moon | 3. The Crossing