Stamp was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, my good friend Jack Stamp. The Indiana University of Pennsylvania Wind Ensemble, with Jack conducting, premiered the piece on April 25, 2015.

When Jack asked me, along with several of his composer friends, to write a short piece for his retirement concert, I was extremely honored. Jack has been a good friend and a mentor to me since I started in the music business.

Obviously, the title of the piece is Jack’s last name, but it is also a reference to the indelible “stamp” that Jack has left on me and all of us in the band world. This “stamp” is through his wonderful contributions as one of our finest composers and conductors (and I tried to reflect the energy of his music in this piece), but just as importantly as an advocate for new composers and compositions for band. It seemed especially fitting that for his final concert, Jack would, instead of performing all of his “old favorites,” lead a concert comprised entirely of premieres. So as I began work, I decided to simply try to write a good piece that Jack would be proud to have in his name.

The basis for the piece is Jack’s initials, J.E.S. I took those three letters and, assigning them in order to the musical alphabet, came up with C, E, E. The second E came from the original letter S, though, suggesting to me that this note should be E flat, thus creating the basic motive of C, E, E flat. By taking this trichord and inverting it and transposing it down a step, the next three notes became D flat, A, B flat. By creating one more trichord, starting with the B flat and adding G and F sharp, I was able to create a tone row that was comprised of the octatonic set. This set does not change throughout the piece, although the key centers do change. The piece is constructed in five short sections, moving from C to E flat to G flat to A, and back to C. The second and fourth sections both contain a longer melodic line, which is the retrograde of the opening “row” for the piece. The harmonic material is generally divided into two four-note chords that split the row into two equal tetrachords.

The resultant piece turned out to be pretty aggressive and angry sounding. In fact, after the first couple of rehearsals, Jack texted me and asked why I hated him. This, of course, brought a smile to my face….and hopefully his as well.