ountains Rising Everywhere is an homage of sorts to Joseph Schwantner’s And the Mountains Rising Nowhere which rocked my world when I heard it at age 26 in my first composition class. I had played in band all the way through college, but had never heard anything like Schwantner’s work before. “If this is what music can be,” I said to myself, "then, I want to make it!!" I wrote my first composition in that class, and the rest, they say is history.

When I was younger, I climbed all 54 of Col...