Anxiety is a solo guitar piece I wrote back in graduate school, and it’s probably not too much of a mental leap to imagine the inspiration. Stress-related anxiety is a strange thing. There are times when it feels like the world is closing in around you, and times when you just feel at peace with whatever is going to happen. Then, an hour later, you feel just as trapped as before. I tried to convey those swings of emotion in this piece.
This piece started its life as a study on the style of Andrew York. If you’re familiar with York’s works, you may recognize a bit of Sunburst influence in this piece. The study quickly took a life of its own, and I expanded far beyond the bounds of the original project, but the root influence still shows.