Less than one week before beginning my first semester teaching at Texas Christian University, I received a phone call that my best friend from high school and his wife had been killed in a car accident. I was devastated. One month earlier I had begun composing a choral piece with text by Walt Whitman; the text is patriotic, but literally holds its arms open to the World. The spirit of the words complemented the personality of the friend I had lost, and so I dedicated Salut au monde to Ron Woods.