Title: Epitaph Incarnate
Year: 2019
Instrumentation: Alto Saxophone & Piano 
Duration: 6' 00"
 
Commissioned by and written for Lewis Banks as part of "Afterlife" for Alto Saxophone and Piano.
 
Epitaph Incarnate is the 7th movement in a larger series of works called Afterlife (written for Alto Saxophone and Piano) which is inspired by David Eagleman’s short story cycle ‘Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives’ that comprises of several speculative stories that postulate a diverse range of scenarios in which humans might find themselves in the afterlife.
 
Epitaph Incarnate is based on the chapter entitled “Reversal”, which describes not an afterlife, but an inverted or rewound experience of life. Instead of being born as a baby, we are born from the earth as aged humans and relive every single moment of the previous full life backwards into infancy once more. This reversed life reveals misremembered memories and moments that further mystifies life as well as the journey of living the same life in contrary motion. In this way, the music plays itself backwards by revisiting key moments from the whole story of Afterlife in a kaleidoscopic dream that brings us back to the very first utterance and opening chord of the whole work. Thusly, Epitaph Incarnate attempts to convey a whole life’s story (as well as Afterlife’s whole story) in a single movement.