Shortly after beginning my college compositional career, I experienced one of the hardest life experiences, my grandfather dying. 

Not long after I started taking composition seriously, my grandfather fell ill. This was quite difficult for me to deal with since up to this point, I had never dealt with a family member being this ill or worse, dying. I began to write a piece for a string orchestra and the result was Transcendence. This piece conveys my feelings of joy, sorrow, bitter sweetness while processing the life of my grandfather and what his future would be.