A day after I returned home, Wally and Sherry asked if I'd accept a new commission for flute, clarinet, and piano, to celebrate the retirement of Helen Ann Shanley and Richard Shanley, the flute and clarinet professors at Baylor University, where Sherry had studied with Helen Ann.

While beginning work on the trio in July 2010, I was learning to garden for the first time and had decided to spend the summer enriching my new backyard with perennials that I could plant once and enjoy forever. I was very taken with this metaphor about building permanent structures and have always felt composing is about building repertoire that endures, rather than popping out annual crops. This attitude parallels just about everything else in life, building for the longterm, like the messages of The Three Little Pigs (which I've set to music) and The Ant and the Grasshopper (which I haven't set yet).

Relationships between people are no different, and in celebrating the Shanleys teaching together at Baylor for 40 years, the parallels between all these "perennial vs. annual" metaphors became striking. I had to call the trio PERENNIALS to tie everything together - celebrating the Shanleys' lives and careers together, and everything else perennial about ideals in music and life.

The 7-minute commission request turned into a 5-movement suite of 21 minutes, and it became something of a life cycle.

REVIEWS
review in Fanfare Magazine by David DeBoor Canfield
review in Fanfare Magazine by Lynn René Bayley
review in American Record Guide by Todd Gorman
review in The Flute View by Tammy Evans Yonce
review in Flutist Quarterly by Francesca Arnone