Zegiel, Evan - Firestorm

Written for tuba and heavy metal band (fixed media)

Performance Part

Firestorm takes a hard left turn from Blossom on the track list of The Human Element. Whereas Blossom evinced hope and a beautiful future, Firestorm imagines a catastrophic failure in our efforts to curb climate change’s effects. The title is another rumination on themes I explored in Fire in the Sky, from my Heavy Metal Concerto. Firestorm takes things a step further, and it is arguably the heaviest track on The Human Element and does not incorporate any clean guitar tones. This track is metal through and through, imagining the firestorm of a world that the Earth could become without efforts to slow down global temperature rise. On another note, for fans of old real-time strategy games, I also wanted to write a piece that would be a tribute to one of my favorite childhood video games: the expansion pack to Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, which was titled “Firestorm.” I can’t possibly count the hours I spent playing this game, and the soundtrack is ingrained in my brain. While it wasn’t as heavy a soundtrack as my piece, there were a few hard rock-influenced tracks that I always loved jamming out to while playing.