Other Selected Music Examples

Chain Shift

contrabass flute/piccolo, tenor saxophone, percussion, voice, violin, and electronics; composed for the Wet Ink Ensemble

A chain shift is a linear movement along a phonological scale. For example, in the Great Vowel Shift in medieval England, the pronunciation of English underwent a significant dialectical change: over the course of a few hundred years, nearly all of the vowels were raised. For instance, the English word “beak” was once pronounced “bake.” Thus, the Middle English “eh” vowel was raised in the mouth to the Modern English “ee” vowel while still corresponding to the same written symbols -- the phonemes themselves shifted along the chain. Gradual changes in pronunciation occur in all languages and are expressed in the rich diversity of dialects around the world. Chain Shift draws on this concept as an abstract seed and takes multiple dialectical glances of the opening word of a fragment from Eugene Onegin.

Combination 15.13.16.12

Combination is a generative work for violin and percussion, in which the score regenerates for each new performance situation, determined by the percussionist’s free selection of metallic instruments. The acoustic features of these selected percussion instruments determine the exact scordatura tuning of the violin strings though a series of equations. To preserve the relationship between the specifically tuned violin strings and the percussion instruments, only natural harmonics and open strings are used in the violin.

Most musical parameters, such as bow technique, percussion beaters, rates of change, types of inflection, textural and gestural typologies, dynamics, individual section timings, and the minimum duration of the work are all determined from the acoustic relationships between the selected percussion instruments and violin tuning.

Marées

Marées, meaning tides, is about the movement of water. Although the work generally proceeds slowly, it is always guided by a strong sense of forward momentum.
flute, oboe, piano, violin, viola, cell0

A Fountain Unseen

clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, 3 cellos

On January 19th, 2011, the nearly completed first version of A Fountain Unseen, in addition to all sketches, was stolen at gunpoint. The only remnant of this version that still exists is a blurry cell phone picture of five measures – only 11 seconds in length. As a composer dealing with this loss of record, my strategy was to wander the space of my memory, recreating the paths between musical memories and allowing them to cluster into concrete musical statements as they formed an orbit around the recovered five measures. Like a fountain’s cascading water, the essence of the musical statements is preserved, yet the flow has been recontextualized by my experience. The particularly unusual instrumentation of clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, and three cellos casts a uniquely dark and dense color upon the work and saturates the texture.

Direct your step further along the road’s course

flute, percussion, organ, electronics

The title Direct your step further along the road’s course has at least three meanings: (1) on a technical level, the title is a metaphor for the musical transformations, which are somewhat directional; (2) on a compositional level, the title refers to my continued exploration of the overlap between diatonic and spectral sound worlds — this work is perhaps my most balanced pairing of the two worlds to date; and (3) on a personal level, it encapsulates my love of exploring by foot. As for listening, imagine a road and in your mind’s eye direct your step further along its course.

Watercolor

piano

Although Watercolor is more about the color of water than the technique of watercolor painting, the work is particularly evocative of the soft undefined shapes and slightly blurred marks that result when pigments are applied to wet paper. The piano is analogous to colorless water because of its relatively uniform timbre and an identical spectral envelope across its range. Accordingly, I aim to capture the prismatic and fluid nature of the piano.