Jake Runestad

Looking forward to conducting the National Symphonic Chorus this weekend at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas! Thanks to for making this happen. Excited to share the stage with my friend !

❗️It's alive! This 30-minute, extended work is now available!❗️

Scored for SATB Choir, Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Percussion, and String Quintet.

Using texts by Guatemalan-Mayan poet Humberto Ak'abal, "Footprints" explores our relationships with our elders. The work traces a path through the poet’s world—a place where the boundary between the living and the dead is porous, where a child learns the songs of trees, where fireflies flee from unseen spirits, where grief ripens into understanding, and where the earth itself is our teacher.

At the heart of "Footprints" lies a simple, profound truth: every step we take carries the imprint of those who walked before us. Ak’abal invites us to recognize these traces—not as ghosts of a vanished past, but as companions woven into the fabric of our present. This work is an offering to that continuity, to the voices that shape us, and to the living earth that remembers all things.

Huge thanks to Joey M. Martin for commissioning it and Craig Hella Johnson for conducting the premiere along with the Texas State Choirs and instrumentalists.

Listen and learn more at the link in my bio or on my website!