​I am in my 38th year of teaching music and have found that the most difficult occurrence in my job has been the loss of a student to death. The loss of a former student pains ones heart and those of his friends, but the loss of a current student can devastate a program and the school.
     Within the last two years, I have developed a close working relationship with Dr. Thomas Verrier and the Vanderbilt University Wind Symphony through a series of recording sessions.
     This past October, 2015, a week prior to the Wind Symphony’s first concert, their first chair clarinetist, Sang Han, died as a result of his own hand.  Immediately upon hearing the news and reflecting on my own student losses over the past years, I wrote this eight-line poem:
 
I bow my head in disbelief
The sorrow and the pain;
I search my heart; was there a sign?
And grief pours down like rain.
The world can be so vast and cruel
we have to stall this pace,
and gather round the ones we love
and share a warm embrace.
 
     I then set out writing this short piece as my way of dealing with “band tragedy” and as a way to help my musical family in Nashville.
The opening and ending clarinet solo (marked with an asterisk in the score) signifies the fallen student’s instrument; Sang Han was a clarinetist. The instrument of the individual fallen student can be substituted in both sections.  In an attempt to make this work as accessible as possible, double reed solos have been cued in other parts. The vocal section of the piece can be sung in any octave but it is notated in treble clef. I apologize for this graphic reference, but the line: “I search my heart, was there a sign?” deals with a situation where the student takes their own life. I have written substitute words, should the situation be different: “I search my heart, this fragile life;”.
     I give this work as a gift to the band world to possibly help with those heartbreaking losses that we hope never, ever happen.

—— Jack Stamp, Hudson, WI – October, 2015