O r c h e s t r a l
C o n c e p t
Hear the Waters is Joe's capstone project for his BFA in Composition from Carnegie Mellon. He travelled around the state of Oregon to collect footage to underscore and then ran those visuals live during the performance. The origin of the name "Oregon" is unknown, but Joaquin Miller theorized that it was named by the Portuguese, rounded down phonetically from "ouve a agua" which translates to "hear the waters".
P r e m i e r e
The piece was premiered by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic on April 12, 2022 at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.