To start with, Moraine is not a Lisztian tone-poem about glaciers or moraines, but rather it explores certain aspects of moraines that I found particularly interesting: The idea of slow, steady movement that is impervious to any surrounding superficial motion no matter how violent; the idea of objects transported from one location, broken up, and left behind; the idea of multiple layers moving together but not in unison; the idea of constant forward and backward motion, repeated on the micro and macro levels - an ongoing process that is never completely finished even when it appears to be; objects standing alone, seemingly out of place, like huge boulders left standing alone on a northern landscape. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that moraines are quiet monuments to the past - the remnants of a time and landscape from long ago.
However, rather than programmatically depict the movement of rock & ice or paint an arctic landscape in sound, these ideas are only underlying foundations and inspirations for the music. This is immediately apparent from the opening of the piece, which is anything but glacial. Themes and gestures gradually appear; some repeated, some developed, and others broken up and left behind. Meanwhile, underneath is the real "theme:" a slow chord progression that is omnipresent in some form or another, impervious to surrounding objects and carving slowly forward and backwards.
Moraine was the First Place winner of the Kenneth Davenport National Competition for Orchestral Works, and co-winner of the Charles Ives Center Orchestral Composition Competition.