A Hero’s Welcome was written as my son Bruce entered the world in the spring of 2019. At the same time, my little brother Trenton, entered the Marine Corps. This piece is my attempt to process the complex emotions I experienced contemplating the future of these young men. The song is pensive and energetic, brooding, and hopeful.

The song moves through a few key centers but is tied together by pentatonic riffs and common chords. While at first this may seem a lot to take on, you will find many similar patterns and themes that make this piece relatively easy to play.

A Hero’s Welcome was premiered at the Reinhardt University Honors Guitar Orchestra Festival on Saturday October 28th, 2019. Students from all over the state of Georgia performed this piece, delighting the audience and myself.

In teaching and performing this piece, I find it helpful to work the transitions for each section, to keep a consistent tempo as this piece likes to speed up, to highlight the rhythmic tensions, and to exaggerate the dynamics and phrasing. The given tempo is Adagio but, in my experience, this lives between 65-72 BPM.