List of Works
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List of Works *
Hi! Please listen to Sacred Object, Towards the Vanishing Point (excerpt), and Strategies to Disappear in that order. The link to view/download scores should go to a dropbox pdf file.
Sacred Object
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for string quartet (2024)
I’ve been interested in rituals lately. You do not have to believe in the dogmatic truth of a ritual to take part in one, as they are supposed to work regardless. Ritual can be thought of as a kind of performance, where the act itself trumps any kind of authenticity or deep personal belief. Sacred Object features distorted and slowed down references to medieval, baroque, spectral, and folk music, with a focus on "sacred" qualities. I do not personally believe in music as a divine expression, this piece was a surface level reproduction of what to me would sound like “sacred music”. Just like rituals however, the piece works whether or not you believe in it.
This recording is of the JACK Quartet in the Spring of 2024 at Mannes School of Music.
Towards the Vanishing Point
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for two percussion and electronics (2024)
I enjoy playing tricks on the listener, and in my opinion, music and magic go hand in hand. People have always tended to gravitate towards the idea that music possesses some kind of magical or extraordinary properties. Towards the Vanishing Point features two percussionists and fixed electronics. Each player is displaced by a sixteenth note throughout the piece via separate click tracks. These offset click tracks allow for the playing of extremely fast and complex composite rhythms as well as several auditory illusions, such as downbeat displacement and stereophonic effects. Instrumentation of this piece was based on what I could somewhat easily make/tune myself in a DIY (do-it-yourself) setting. The electronics for this piece all come from sampling/processing the instrumentation of the piece through a variety of granular processes.
This is an excerpted multitrack recording of myself with the help of percussionist/composer Dylan Gearhart. All the percussion instruments played were homemade excluding the kick drum. The excerpted section of this piece is from the beginning to letter H in the score.
Strategies to Disappear
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for full orchestra (2023)
This piece wants to disappear. Musical lines vanish and reappear, blurring into each other. As I wrote, many of my initial compositional processes disappeared as well, giving way to a passacaglia based on four notes: E‐G‐D‐C. The climax of the piece results in a reversal of the beginning material, thus the form of the piece takes the shape of an arc.
This recording is of the Mannes Orchestra playing in Tishman Auditorium in December of 2023.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
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for piano and electronically processed gong (2023)
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? is originally a hymn attributed to the American gospel composer Charles H. Gabriel (b. 1856). Growing up in Texas, I had heard the hymn performed in Church as well as from country singers like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, each performing the hymn in vastly different ways. I wrote this piece while staying in Rabbit Hash, a small town in Kentucky where the mayor is a dog. The piece features electronically processed gong (or fixed media backing track due to the nature of such instrumentation) and piano. The gong is meant to mimic the church bells that were reminiscent to me as a child while the piano reimagines the original hymn in the context of a contemporary piano work.
Gray on Gray
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for full orchestra (2022)
String Quartet [No. 2]
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for string quartet in 3 movements (2022)