Joyride was commissioned by the North Jersey School Music Association in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the North Jersey Region I High School Band Concerts and premiered at their festival in 2003.

The genesis for the composition occurred while I was doing doctoral work at the Eastman School of Music in 1996-1998. I began work on a piece for orchestra in which I hoped to explore some of the sounds and concepts of composers like John Adams, who have created a music which has been labeled as post-minimalism. Although I abandoned work on that particular piece, some of my ideas for it continued to percolate, and the commission from the North Jersey School Music Association finally allowed them to be realized.

There are many processes at work in Joyride, most notably the fairly constant repetition of a chord that initially consists of the notes C, F and G. This set of pitches is the main unifying feature of the piece, controlling most of the underlying harmonies, establishing melodic material, and even dictating the large-scale sections of the piece (the four main sections of the work are in C Phrygian, F Phrygian, G Mixolydian, and C Major). Joyride also uses a technique called metric modulation, in which each new tempo is related metrically to the previous tempo. Finally, the first half of the piece is essentially repeated in the second half of the piece, although the overall effect is completely altered because the keys and tempos have changed. All of this, however, is simply intended to create a piece that will be a rhythmic, exciting, and enjoyable "joyride" for its listeners.