(Program Note: Once Down South (orchestral variations on a forgotten spiritual tune) is a kind of theme with variations based on an old spiritual I remember hearing as a very young child. We were making a car trip down south to Florida on a family vacation. Somewhere along the way the car radio went on and I can recall listening, rather uninvolved, to a mixed chorus singing a spiritual. I don’t remember the whole tune but certain fragments of the tune always remained in my memory. Not wishing to avail myself of the resources to research the spiritual tune I decided to expand the fragments I remembered so as to compose my own short spiritual-hymn and use it as the theme for a set of orchestral variations. The variations that follow my "recomposed" spiritual are not true variations in that they do not vary the entire theme as is the traditional, classic technique of theme and variations. Just as my memory of the original spiritual is fragmented the variations I have composed are also only able to “remember” particular characteristic motifs or fragments of the theme. It is these little bits and pieces that are then varied and/or transformed throughout the course of the piece. JAG