Jake Runestad

It’s Earth Day. 🌎 I am more and more amazed by the non-human intelligence that is all around us: how trees communicate, smell, hear, and care for each other; how whales, when they’re ready to die, fall to the bottom of the ocean to become food and energy for new life…

We humans think we’re so damn smart, and the reality is we, as a whole, are more destructive than loving to our great Mother. 🌍 Our selfishness has fed a desire to distance ourselves from the life around us, instead of living in partnership with it. We take and take and take, and show little if any gratitude. When will we prioritize giving? When will we focus on gratitude? When will we remember we’re not better than nor separate from the rest of this gorgeous, suffering planet?

May we celebrate this beautiful, floating rock we call home — the only one we have.

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 been a whirlwind of a spring with lots of wonderful travel, music-making, time with family, and welcoming friends to Guatemala. Here are some highlights!

🚨 New video alert!!! 🚨

Andrew Trachsel so beautifully led the UNT Wind Studies wind orchestra and choirs in “Vincent’s Sky” at the CBDNA - College Band Directors National Association conference at UNT College of Music. And such fantastic choral preparation by Jessica Napoles and Marques L. A. Garrett.

Vincent's Sky - Jake Runestad "Vincent's Sky" by Jake Runestad. Performed by the University of North Texas Wind Orchestra and Choirs at the CBDNA Southwestern Conference. Andrew Trachsel,...

A HUGE thanks to Andrew Trachsel, Jessica Napoles, Marques L. A. Garrett, and the students at UNT College of Music for your gorgeous and powerful performance of “Vincent’s Sky” at the CBDNA - College Band Directors National Association conference. You all sang and played with intention and grace and moved all of us by telling Vincent’s story.

Also, a big thanks to Andrew Hunter and the UTEP - The University of Texas at El Paso Wind Symphony for your moving performance of “Let My Love Be Heard.” I loved working with you!

It’s always a joy to get back to my band roots (saxophones, represent!).

🎺Band friends!🎷

“Flower Into Kindness” originated as a movement of my larger choral-orchestral work “Into the Light,” and it’s now available for wind ensemble. Huge thanks to Rickey Badua and Mitchell Fennell at for commissioning this transcription back in 2020.

This version was commissioned in 2020 as a tribute to those lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to moving forward in the hope of making music again.

Link in bio!

❓Looking for repertoire? Here are two new works for your upcoming seasons! Find many more on my website (where you can search by theme, poet, instrumentation, and much more)!

❗️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!