Release date: October 11, 2026
Available on all streaming platforms.
CDs & Cassettes of Daughter, we will name are available by request. (Shipping should be ready by November 1).
CDs – $7
Cassettes – $10
plus shipping
Track Listing & Performers
Click on the title of each piece to learn more about it.
1. Amane: The Sound of Rain (2014)
7:44
Jerry Weimer, clarinet
Elizabeth Purvis, cello
2. Morika: The Scent of the Forest (2019)
5:43
Bonnie Schmader, flute
Sitara Schauer, violin
Cory McBride, viola
Elizabeth Purvis, cello
Tracks 3 – 5: Tamaki: The Cycle of Seasons (2025)
Total Duration: 18:55
Casey Bozell, Jenny Estrin, violin
Amy Roesler, viola
Dylan Rieck, cello
3. Part 1. Intro – Early Spring – Hanami – Summer Begins
4:45
4. Part 2. The Desperate Need to Get Outside – Midsummer – Autumn – Waking to Snow – Winter – Solstice
7:56
5. Part 3. The wider season sequence – Conclusion
6:14
(Timestamps for where each section of Tamaki appears in its track)
Other Credits
Tracks 1 & 2 were recorded at Paradiso in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2019
Audio Engineer: Jackson Mathey
Tracks 3, 4, & 5 were recorded at The Hallowed Halls in Portland Oregon, 2025
Audio Engineer: Justin Phelps
All Tracks mastered by Justin Phelps
Cover art by Kiah Raymond riversteeth-art.com
Notes
For more background and details on each piece, visit their individual pages below:
– Amane 雨音 The Sound of Rain
– Morika 森香 The Scent of the Forest
– Tamaki 環季 The Cycle of Seasons
The three pieces that comprise Daughter, we will name you arose from a collaboration between me and a friend. Back in 2014, I was studying composition at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, and he and his family were living in Japan. As the two of us still do now, we would have long conversations about what was going on in our lives, our fears, hopes, trials, and we would try to help each other make sense of it all and hold ourselves up.
One of my strongest passions is the hunger to be seen and to help others to be seen and recognized. Music is not only the nourishing auditory sensual substance that we consume; it’s also a way of communicating value in a lasting way. What or whom a piece of music chooses to represent will be seen and therefore appreciated by those who hear it. There’s something compelling to me about the idea of making music intimate as well as public. I want my music to be heard by many people, of course, but I like the idea of music being for one person, who has the opportunity both to enjoy the music and to be the recipient of the music’s structural lift, that ultimate sense of value and inclusion. When we’re not thinking of music as a product, but as something more than that, something that bestows value, we think of it as an adornment for the general public, for the artist, or for an abstract idea. But I feel that everyone, every local quiet intimate self, deserves their own theme music, and I wondered what it would be like to create it.
My friend recognized this desire and – I don’t remember the exact steps – we arrived at the idea that I would write a piece of music that would represent his little girl, Amane, who was about to turn one. Over the course of a couple weeks, I wrote that piece, a duet for clarinet and cello, had it performed and recorded, and sent it back across the world so it could be played at her birthday.
When Amane’s sister, Morika, was born, of course I had to write a piece for her, as well. I spent several months on it, writing in 2019 and, at the end of the year, we arranged a recording session and a small concert in Santa Fe for both the pieces. The recordings we made on that day are what you hear in Daughter, we will name you.
It took me much longer this time, but when the third sister, Tamaki, arrived, I wrote her piece. This one was more complicated and took me over a year to complete, but I’m pleased with the result, a lush, complicated piece that reflects the complicated times the girl was born into.
I’m now pleased to offer all three pieces together on one album.
The title, Daughter, we will name you, refers to the fact that my starting point for each composition was the name of each daughter, which for all of them is a Japanese name that reflects a different aspect of the nature. As with the communicating power of music, names also bind us to the world and give people a way to recognize us. In this album, I’m celebrating the act of naming, the way a parent calls their child into the domain of life and also gives the domain a life a way of knowing and seeing that child. Along the way, we often forget that promise of belonging, but there are fortunately many signs we may stumble upon that remind us that we are known and wanted.