La frontera nos cruzó (in progress)
for wind ensemble
PROGRAM NOTE:
This piece takes its name from a truth many of us inherit: we did not cross the border — the border crossed us. Drawing on Tex-Mex folk music, the score is both a celebration and a lament. Rancheras, corridos, and conjunto rhythms emerge and dissolve, as if overheard across fences or remembered from dances long past. The piece isn’t about geography so much as memory: the slow desecration of a river that was once a place of life, and how culture survives even when bodies are made to move.
— Cody Criswell-Badillo