Description
In 2024, I wrote a suite for bassoon and piano about one of my favorite things in the entire world: the hippopotamus. At the end of the summer, as I was preparing to send the piece off to the commissioners, a viral sensation hit the scene: the baby pygmy hippo from Thailand, Moo Deng.
Frustrated as I was to have missed the opportunity to include her in my piece, I decided to include her in Viral Hippo as a coda. Based on the hundreds of different video clips of the tiny beast, I wanted to write about the energy, jumping and biting with her small, tuskless mouth.
In a world that is often stressful, sad, or scary, occasionally, we are lucky enough to have a small body of pure joy invade our lives. Hopefully, I have been able to capture even a small bit of that joy in this piece.
