In retirement, Emil Soderstrom moved to California and honoured his new home with this light-hearted but demanding march. The composer has said that the motif given to the upper cornets in the second strain stands for ‘Ca-li-for-nia’! His love of startling chromatic passages is evident in the ‘break up’ strain of the trio section which is marked by a sudden key change and a fragment of the song Sunshine in my soul today, a reference to the Californian weather.
