As an original composition, the title, Trio for the End of Times is a play on Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). The piece is a general reflection of the year 2020, which is infamously now known as one of the worst years most generations alive have lived through yet. From the first impeachment proceedings in January further polarizing the political landscape in Washington, to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, to an influx of conspiracy theories and disinformation, to one of the most intense presidential elections of our lifetimes, 2020 has been quite a year. The piece begins sporadic, with themes often interrupting each other, in uneven and unsteady meter, and which I can think of no better symbolism to represent the year 2020 than with these “unhinged” motifs that recur throughout the piece. There is a slow, relaxed, and somber middle section intended as an elegy for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during the deadly coronavirus pandemic; may we never grow numb to any lives lost to such a miserable disease. It is also an elegy for the way-too-many minorities killed by the police every year across the country. In the final section of the piece, the material grows more and more unhinged, leading to the final few bars which end on a kind of cliff-hanger – an accelerando with no destination or resolution. This piece was finished on October 28, 2020, a few days before the presidential election on Nov. 3, where anticipation, anxiety, and unease were all emotions felt by many Americans for the fate of our country, should we re-elect the President. I intentionally left the piece “unfinished” without knowing the results of the election and without any kind of resolution or final cadence, leaving it up to the listener’s imagination to create their own individual endings. Trio for the End of Times was originally commissioned by Jeremy Perkins as part of a Black Lives Matter composition fundraiser I put together in the summer of 2020 when the BLM Movement and BLM demonstrations were at their peak. Special thanks to all who participated in helping raise money for a very important cause.