From the composer: 

Time Flies is an orchestral overture that celebrates one hundred years of music with the Fort Smith Symphony. When I was first asked by John Jeter to commemorate this auspicious occasion with a new work of music for the orchestra that is filled with my friends and colleagues, I immediately jumped at the opportunity. I knew I wanted to write a piece of music that highlighted the many colors, orchestrations, and moods of the last century of symphonic music, and, knowing John’s love of aviation, wanted it to feel like an adventurous airplane flight through one hundred years of music. 

The piece begins with what has been described as an almost mysterious fanfare, similar to the beginning of an old black and white TV show, radio drama, or for those who are fans of aviation, the starting of a plane beginning its ascent. This is followed by a series of melodies, harmonies, and orchestrations that purposefully reference the harmonic language and post-romantic grandeur of the 1920s and 30s – when composers like Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Respighi, Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok, and Fauré were at their peak. After its initial ascent, this overture begins to fly through a series of sonic adventures through varied orchestral vignettes inspired by the other highlights of the past century of music. 

Some of these embedded musical love letters to the history of symphonic music in America includes references to golden era Hollywood film scores, 1980s musical intellectualism, the American post-romantics, pointillism, serialism, and the space race; the classic recordings I grew up on by Stokowski, Toscanini, and Bernstein; and a combination of the rich extended tonalities of the Jazz masters and the almost overripe orchestration of late-stage romanticism. 

I hope you all enjoy this journey through a century of music with the Fort Smith Symphony!