The work unfolds with a gentle, pastoral, and reflective character, favoring atmosphere and emotional stillness over dramatic virtuosity. Its folk-like melodic language gives the piece a sense of simplicity and memory, while the orchestral writing expands that intimacy into something broader and more cinematic.

This work is written in dedication to my greatest supporter in life and in my musical career, Larry Dale Shaneyfelt.

In school, I always performed very well. Among family, people thought I would one day become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or something else that would somehow elevate the family. You can imagine their dismay when I told them that I instead wanted to be a musician.

Not my father, however. He never doubted me for a moment. Instead of questioning my decision or pushing me toward another path, the conversation became, “Alright son, let’s figure out how to make your dream happen.”

He paid for every lesson, came to every performance, listened to everything I wrote, and never faltered in his belief in who I could become.

Then, in August of 2021, at the age of seventeen, I lost my father to the COVID pandemic.

Needless to say, it was crushing. My hero and my idol had been taken from me before I would ever get the chance to call myself an adult.

Unfortunately, for much of my life, I mostly knew my father through the phone. He was a truck driver, which meant he would often leave home for months at a time. But when he did come home, we often went on walks together, following a local trail that cut through the woods and passed by a nearby pond.

We would have these spectacular conversations: philosophy, theology, history, life, morality, belief. Occasionally, he would inquire about any female persons I may have been in contact with at school, much to the discomfort of my then-shy self. Little did I know how precious those moments would one day become to me.

But beneath the humor and conversation, he had an extraordinary ability to pierce through the veil of a feigned belief. He could get to the heart of the matter and make you question whether you truly believed the things you were saying, or whether you were merely echoing them. When you are young, it is easy to mistake repetition for conviction.

I think about those conversations often. They remain some of my fondest memories, and not only that — they shaped my identity in a spectacular way.

I have questioned why that is. When I think of my father, no spectacular event comes to mind. Not elaborate gifts, not amusement parks, not grand gestures. What I remember most are the simple conversations between a father and son, walking familiar paths beneath the trees.

Several months after his passing, I had a dream.

In it, we walked those same paths we had walked hundreds of times before. The rolling hills, the chirping birds, the wind-rustled trees — it was a perfect echo of reality, indistinguishable from the paths I had spent the previous months walking alone.

But this time, he was at my side.

And it felt wrong.

The tragedy of his loss had left a mark on me. It had rendered me immune to the masquerade of an untarnished life — one where things progressed as they ought to have, in peace. I knew, even in the dream, that this could not be real. And yet, there was a distinct spark in his eyes — not the hollow shimmer of some idealized reflection, but the unmistakable spark of life.

I confronted him in that moment, and in response, he feigned confusion. He tried to assure me that nothing was wrong. But I probed further. I asked questions, and eventually, he faltered. He admitted that he only wanted to have one more moment together, like we had before, when he was alive. To not be some lingering phantom, a reminder of what was lost, but instead a father with his son.

As we walked, I told him what life had been like without him. I told him about the grief, the absence, the things he had missed, the things I wished I could have said. And when there was nothing left to say, we simply walked some more.

Eventually, we reached a bench along the path overlooking a pond. The lily pads seemed to wave in greeting as fish swam beneath them, leaving little ripples across the water. His arm wrapped around me, and for a moment, I felt peace.

I turned away from the scenery to look at him.

And there I saw something I had never seen in the seventeen years I knew my father:

tears falling from his face.

I wrote the theme of On a Midsummer’s Eve not long after that dream. It was born from that experience — from grief, memory, longing, and the strange mercy of being able to see someone again.

Having known the darkness that a chronic depressive state can offer, I wanted to write something that served as a light. Not a piece that ignored suffering, but one that looked beyond it. A testament to better days. A testament to tomorrow.

A testament to life.