It Is, Isn't It

An orchestral piece by Isaac Villaroya, born in 1998 in Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines and trained at the UMKC Conservatory in Kansas City. It grew out of a reading session with student players, whose recorded audio the composer has kept alongside the score, and was first heard in July 2022 in Temple, Texas. Later performances include the National Theatre Orchestra of Brazil in 2023 and the Columbia Civic Orchestra in 2024, where it won the open orchestral division of the Missouri Composers Project. The music works through interlocking patterns and harmony that circles through all twelve centres.