In my freshman year of college, a classmate introduced me to a sound world I had never encountered—the music of traditional Bulgarian women’s choirs. That sound haunted my imagination for two years before breaking free as Svatba! (“The Wedding”), the opening movement of Songs of Bulgaria.

The title and inspiration come from "Svatba," a traditional wedding processional in the Shopsko style, native to the mountainous region surrounding Sofia, Bulgaria—a tradition celebrated for its fierce, high-energy vocal writing. In this style, two singers occupy the same narrow space: one carries the melody while the other holds close beneath it, the two voices grinding against each other in dissonant intervals. It is a sound that is as much ritual as it is song—music built to portray the bittersweet weight of a grand, noble wedding procession.

That tension between celebration and gravity is what I set out to capture. The movement plunges directly into the heart of the procession, its melody unfolding in shifting variations as it passes between instruments. Rousing woodwind lines drive the music through changing meters—a high-energy dance fueled by asymmetrical rhythms and the bright, biting colors of the wind ensemble standing in for that dense vocal friction.

Svatba! is not merely a transcription or arrangement of the original song, but my own personal interpretation of it—new melodies, colors, and themes woven alongside those of folk tradition, filtered through the power and color of the American wind ensemble lineage.

World Premiere: April 18th, 2024 by the Austin Community College Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Albert Lo.