For My Mother (July 2017)

is dedicated to my mother Susan Boiko a breast cancer survivor. She lived through the start of me and my twin’s brass playing careers where when playing on the French horn we sounded like a couple of dying elephants. If the elephant sounds weren’t enough, when my mother was driving us to school we would take out our mouthpieces and surreptitiously buzz on them until she noticed and told us to stop. These two sounds, the soft buzz of a mouthpiece secretly played in the backseat and the bombastic enthusiastic brashness of twin middle school brass players, are the foundation of this piece. Mom, Thank you. Please enjoy this rendition of sounds you never thought you’d hear again, because you got us French horn lessons a week in to picking the instrument