As a composition student at Carnegie Mellon, all students are required to write an orchestral piece upon graduation to be performed by the school's philharmonic.
Joe knew that he wanted to dedicate it to his home state, so he crafted a plan to collect footage from all around Oregon and set a score to it.
The origin of the word "Oregon" is unknown, but there is a theory that it came from the Portuguese phrase ouve água, translating to hear the waters.
The piece was premiered by the CMU Philharmonic in April of 2022, a year delayed due to the pandemic. Joe is operating the live video feed himself.
He wrote For My Sister as a gift to a close friend of his from high school, premiered at the School of Music's 2018 Freshman Showcase.
His junior recital was a student workshop of his musical Birds & Beansprouts, which is technically still in development, but has completely transformed.
There is nothing that remains from the workshop at the 2019 School of Drama's Playground Festival. It has all been cut, even the title. But you can get a peak of how the story has grown since then here: