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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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His junior recital was a student workshop of his musical Birds & Beansprouts, which is technically still in development, but has completely transformed.
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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: