Vicente Lusitano’s radiant vocal music sounds like something beamed in from a distant time and place, which, in a sense, it is. Lusitano was an African-Portuguese composer who lived in 16th-Century Europe, writing motets and music theory treatises before falling into obscurity for roughly 400 years. I became fascinated with Lusitano in 2023, and his music has since seeped into my recent compositions in different and unexpected ways. Earth Moves, written in response to Lusitano's beautiful motet, Heu me Domine, takes its title from the piece’s final lines of text: “Free me, Lord, from eternal death on the awful day when heaven and earth move.”

At the basis of Earth Moves is a cyclical chord progression that rotates through various permutations, musical contexts, and color combinations. I hope the music conveys a hint of that very particular blend of hope, awe, longing, and inevitability that accompanies the inexorable passage of time.