Alabama Symphony Orchestra’s 20/21 Sound Investment composer, Martin Kennedy, was born in England in 1978 and moved to Alabama with his family while still a very young child. After graduating from Central High School in Tuscaloosa in 1996, he earned degrees in composition and piano performance from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and a doctorate from The Juilliard School. His music has been performed by ensembles close to home and worldwide, from the Tuscaloosa Symphony to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Composition and Theory at Central Washington University, having previously served as a member of the academic faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kennedy composed Drift for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in 2021. As he describes the work, 

Drift came about as the result of an image that entered my mind of a moth traveling upwards through an endless sky, carving out a sinuous and wayward path in defiance of gravity or reason. The moth’s action struck me as audacious yet forlorn, like a boat untethered, drifting out to sea. In my mind, the moth drifted out of view and I can’t say for certain whether it reached a wondrous destination or simply flew on forever, past the vanishing point.