Raindrops Are the Tears We Don’t Shed is, for me, a quiet meditation on memory, longing, and the fragile weight of choices—both those we make and those we leave behind. I wanted to write a piece that felt like the sound of something remembered too late, or perhaps never fully grasped to begin with.

Though it lasts only about six minutes, the music is intentionally unhurried. I scored it for brass quintet, originally with bass trombone in place of the tuba, to achieve a warm, unified blend—something rich, molasses-like, where no voice dominates. Rather than reaching for virtuosic display, I was drawn to subtler challenges: wide intervallic leaps that stretch just beyond comfort, entrances that must emerge from nothing, long lines that test breath and stillness. The writing is intentionally exposed and fragile, because the emotions behind it are, too.

Much of the piece plays with time—ambiguous meter, fluid tuplets, gestures that never quite settle. I wasn’t interested in rhythmic complexity for its own sake, but in bending time to reflect the way memory works: fluid, hazy, unreliable. These blurs and imperfections are, to me, at the heart of the piece. Longing is rarely clean or clear. Sometimes, it just hovers.

In the end, this piece doesn’t resolve in the traditional sense. It dissolves—like a thought that never fully forms, or a feeling you carry without words.

– From the composer