“Xerxes” takes its name from Xerxes the Great, the King of Persia from 485 to 465 BC. The music, unexpectedly, is a concert march. Whereas most marches for concert band — at least the ones with which I’m familiar — are cheerful and in many cases patriotic (usually either American or British), I wanted to write a sort of anti-march: an angry, nasty march, that still follows the traditional structure one would expect from a military march.

Xerxes, as the music hopefully suggests, was one of you...