The Origin of Life is a piece for string orchestra inspired by a field of science of the same name, which seeks to discover how life on Earth began. The piece reifies the primordial pre-life air, rock, and water in which chemistry, elements, compounds, and heat intermingled in wave-like motion on an alien Earth. After much fluctuation and striving, tenuous life at last emerges. (9 minutes)

The piece has three movements:

1. In Darkness. (Primordial soup of elements crashing together in pre-life Earth)

2. Dawn (Elements start to cook up into molecules and compounds)

3. Chemistry (Strands of RNA form and eventually yield DNA, life)

*This piece exploits the use of vibrato as a major technical and expressive device.

Download includes score and parts.