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Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear (2000) for clarinet, trumpet, xylophone, and piano was commissioned for Stephen Lias and the Kilgore College New Music Ensemble.

The work was inspired by the classic old story of how a young child in Sunday School would often mishear things and assumed that a hymn containing the words "Gladly the cross I'd bear" really was "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear."  The idea of a cross-eyed bear named Gladly intrigued the composer, and he began searching for the hymn which contained this reference.  Despite a great deal of searching, he was unable to locate it and so decided to write an original "hymn tune" in that old American gospel hymn style.  The "new" hymn tune opens the work and the entire rest of the work is, in effect, a trope on that tune.  All material is derived from transformations of that tune as well as the treatment of a bouncy melody which invokes, to the composer, the image of a smiling cross-eyed bear skipping across the stage.  It is intended to be a humorous work. --Carson Cooman

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