Sun Catcher takes its name from the delicate glass ornaments often hung in windows to catch and scatter sunlight, casting bursts of color across a room. This piece is a quiet reflection on light and shadow, memory and loss, shaped deeply by the passing of my father in 2019.

During that time, my room let in very little light. But now and then, especially on clear evenings, the sun would briefly pour through the window, lighting the space with a soft, vivid glow before disappearing again. Those brief moments, where light would cut through the stillness and then vanish, stayed with me. They became the emotional foundation for this piece: a meditation on the fragility of presence, the tension between holding tightly and letting go.

The trio’s palette gave me room to explore texture and color in subtle, shifting ways. I used harmonics, microtones, tambura-like resonance from the guitar, and scratch tones to create a delicate, atonal soundscape, something that felt both present and fading, like light flickering in a dim room.

Throughout the piece, the three instruments blend and pull apart, casting “reflections” of each other, musical fragments that echo and dissolve. At times, traces of modality appear, like distant memories surfacing and then slipping away.

Sun Catcher is an inward-looking piece. It’s about loss, but also about how even the smallest glimmer of light, beauty and, memory can shift the atmosphere of a space, even if only for a moment.