Below I have culled some of my pieces for lis­ten­ing from sev­eral categories.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Sym­phonic ↑

Ceil­ings in Your Eyes

The title of this orches­tral work comes from a scene in the film, Water Lilies: the main char­ac­ter has learned that the last thing peo­ple see before they die is imprinted on their reti­nas, and she sur­mises that there must be a lot of peo­ple with ceil­ings in their eyes. I thought this was a com­pelling image for the piece, sug­gest­ing to me the per­sonal lim­i­ta­tions we all face our entire lives.

From the open­ing, ascend­ing rush in the orches­tra, I estab­lish a split between big, expres­sive music, and small, intro­verted ges­tures. The music grows out of small-group tex­tures, intro­duc­ing long, expan­sive lines in the strings, push­ing the expres­sive lim­its of the piece. But the momen­tum dis­ap­pears pre­ma­turely, and the music reverts to frag­ments played by small groups of musi­cians. The final peak is by far the biggest, gain­ing sig­nif­i­cant momen­tum, but it too pre­cedes a sud­den col­lapse of inten­sity. The piece fin­ishes with an echo, a final swell in the strings, with the ceil­ing in view.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

All the vio­lins are silent
That impelled our feet to danc­ing,
To the giddy dance of pas­sion–
Silent are the vio­lins.
—Hein­rich Heine

The Vio­lence of Ragtime

I’ve always enjoyed play­ing with rag­time rhythms on the piano: the left hand gets even notes, while the right hand fills in the time with lots of notes going at twice the speed of the left hand. And I love how musi­cal styles get mis­ap­pro­pri­ated over time. Mozart’s pop­u­lar singspiels—read: commercial—become quin­tes­sen­tial high art. Baroque dance music turns into med­i­ta­tive, relax­ing music.

So I wrote this orches­tra piece to express my fond­ness for rag­time rhythms and to delib­er­ately mis­ap­pro­pri­ate rag­time style. The har­monic pro­gres­sions cer­tainly aren’t clas­sic rag­time. A huge orches­tra is not rag­time. And what violence?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Amer­i­can Com­posers Orches­tra, May, 2008

Cham­ber↑

Pin­ning Music

When mem­bers of the trom­bone quar­tet Guidon­ian Hand asked me to write some­thing for their group, I imme­di­ately saw an image that seemed to relate: a ring of light that expands quickly and pauses before col­laps­ing again. I also thought of my par­rot Char­lie, who talks a lot but actu­ally com­mu­ni­cates his var­i­ous emo­tional states by dilating—pinning—his eyes. See­ing a bird’s eye go from pin­hole to gap­ing black hole and back again was always cap­ti­vat­ing to me. It’s a bit unset­tling to see for the first time, espe­cially when you don’t know what he’s try­ing to say.

With these mem­o­ries and images, I wrote the piece. Pin­ning alter­nates between long­ing, lyri­cal lines and mus­cu­lar, rhyth­mic inter­play. In the most intro­verted moments in the piece, the play­ers per­form mul­ti­phon­ics; trom­bones one and two hold notes on their instru­ments while singing bits of a lyri­cal theme. A pair of unmuted trom­bones then sig­nal the return of vig­or­ous rhyth­mic mate­r­ial and the pinning-eye ges­tures from the beginning.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Get­ting There

A per­cus­sion, vio­lin, and dou­ble bass trio is an unusual ensem­ble. There are unique chal­lenges for the unam­pli­fied group: the bass must project to match the vol­ume of the vio­lin and per­cus­sion; the strings must match pitch (which can be more dif­fi­cult when the pitch of the bass is often far from the vio­lin); and the per­cus­sion must bal­ance with the strings.

I heard “You Can Just Park Right Here” per­form a Wuori­nen trio for the com­bi­na­tion and I was astounded by their abil­ity to deal with these chal­lenges with mus­cu­lar flair. Matt Donello, the per­cus­sion­ist, asked me to write some­thing for the group, and I said yes, know­ing I wanted to explore bass tech­nique, to work with kitchen per­cus­sion (pots-and-pans-type sounds), and to cre­ate an over­all “earthy” sound world in a cham­ber ensem­ble. So I wrote a piece in which the strings often dis­pense with the silken approach of a Clas­si­cal cham­ber ensem­ble in exchange for rugged and some­times unruly sounds.

The struc­ture for Get­ting There is largely char­ac­ter­ized by rhyth­mic pro­file: the piece moves from reg­u­lar, insis­tent pulse in the begin­ning to slower, frag­mented rhythms in the mid­dle, to reg­u­lar pulse again. I accom­pany each shift in the piece with chang­ing per­cus­sion sounds—drums, metal, ceram­ics, then drums again.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This excerpt comes from the last sec­tion of the piece.

Slip­pery Music

“Elec­troa­coustic” music can mean sev­eral things. It can refer to a piece involv­ing mic’d and live-manipulated instru­ments, elec­tronic instru­ments per­formed live with an acoustic ensem­ble, or acoustic work per­formed with a pre­re­corded elec­tronic part.

This third way is how I use elec­tron­ics in my piano trio, Slip­pery Music. I like to write elec­tronic music with Logic instru­ments, and here I’ve cre­ated a pre­re­corded elec­tronic part which begins and ends the piece. The vio­lin and cello instru­ments mimic the slid­ing sonori­ties and glitch­i­ness of the elec­tronic part in the episodic mid­dle sec­tions, while the piano’s stac­cato punc­tu­a­tions sup­port the action of the strings.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s Mutual

In It’s Mutual, a marimba soloist leads a trio of per­cus­sion­ists, per­form­ing mostly on unpitched wood and skin instru­ments, through a series of volatile tex­tures and rhythms. The mate­r­ial in the other per­cus­sion instru­ments often reflects the music of the marimba, but only in gen­eral, up-and-down, loud-soft contours.

I wrote this piece with the idiomatic marimba tech­niques I love. Because the marimba notes decay so quickly, I pre­fer har­monic pro­gres­sion by sug­ges­tion and arpeg­gia­tion over insis­tent, rolled four-note chords. Marimba notes have a char­ac­ter­is­tic and beau­ti­ful attack, so I use uneven groups of repeated notes punc­tu­ated by strong accents through­out the piece. Grand, five-octave marimbas—such as the one used in this piece—also have a unique prop­erty: the low­est notes pro­duce more than one tone. They sound the fun­da­men­tal deep pitch, but they also pro­duce a clear tone much higher than the actual pitch of the rose­wood bar: this ghost note is called an over­tone. With this attribute in mind, I wrote melodies in the mid­dle part of the piece that chain together high pitches with the over­tones of the low pitches. This del­i­cate sec­tion then gives way to exu­ber­ant music, clan­gor­ous at the cli­max, before clos­ing as it began, with the marimba alone.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This excerpt comes from a stu­dio record­ing made by Sean Statser and the howl (the­ory).

Songs↑

I Could Dis­solve into Sunlight

The text for this song comes from a large poem cycle by Sarah Kate Moore, called The Song Sings Itself. A con­tem­po­rary gloss on the Eury­dice and Orpheus myth, this work retells the Orpheus myth from the var­i­ous per­spec­tives of the women in Orpheus’ life. The excerpt used in the song comes from Eurydice’s chap­ter, where Orpheus is a rock star-like fig­ure, irre­sistible and unfaithful.

The three sec­tions of the song deal with ini­tial love and infat­u­a­tion; mid-relationship dis­ap­point­ment; and spite and bit­ter­ness at the end of their earthly relationship.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Carla Jablon­ski, soprano; Paulina Simkin, piano;
Le Pois­son Rouge, May 2, 2010

for the Record↑

Sleep Cycles

I cre­ated this piece with five elec­tronic instru­ments, in the fall of 2009. There are two sim­i­lar episodes in this track, sug­gest­ing the idea of a recur­ring series of events—sleep phases or what­ever; I wasn’t sci­en­tific about it.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(excerpt)

Between Lovers

This is a short piano+violin+cello+double bass inter­lude, writ­ten along sev­eral song arrange­ments for a show at Brooklyn’s Death By Audio, in the fall of 2009. The chords in the mid­dle of the inter­lude form the basis of a com­po­si­tion for string quin­tet and elec­tronic tex­tures called Nearly Resolved Chords.

Patti Kil­roy, vio­lin; Leat Sab­bah, cello; Car­los Bar­ri­ento, bass; Con­rad Winslow, piano

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Minia­tures↑

Sir­ius Spots

I wrote sev­eral jin­gles for Sir­ius radio, for their show “Doc­tor Radio.” I am told they used one for a pro­mo­tional spot, though I never heard it on the air. Minia­ture com­po­si­tions are fun to make! The material’s got to stand up imme­di­ately, do its busi­ness and go away. At the very least, it’s a fun exer­cise in production.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This one, “Dr. Raj” includes a celeste part at 0:27 that reminds me of Copland’s Piano Con­certo, at 1:08 in part 1.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And my first attempt, which was rejected for being too cute:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ring­tones

I’ve writ­ten sev­eral ring­tones for friends and for myself. It’s a fun exer­cise in prac­ti­cal minia­ture form.

Bounce

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ike No. 1

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ike No. 2

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MJ

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I have opin­ions about ring­tones, which I express here.

Col­lab­o­ra­tive↑

dodger

I played and wrote with the exper­i­men­tal rock band dodger from 2002–2007. We wrote weird music, rooted in 60s melodic sen­si­bil­i­ties, the­atre of the absurd, and a ten­dency to favor dense instru­men­ta­tion. Matt Kamm (aka Telethon Veg­i­nald Cheese­burger) set the vibe for the band, Phil McCombs loved every bass line he wrote, Miguel Miranda and then Jeff Ilgen­fritz (of Mumpsy) played drums, and multi-instrumentalist and com­poser Sean Moore wrote and recorded vio­lins, trum­pets, and vocals.

I love the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to writ­ing because your ego must absent itself. You can’t walk into an arrang­ing job, for exam­ple, with the atti­tude of own­ing the piece; it doesn’t work. It’s lib­er­at­ing then, because you have to serve the project. Every­one involved must refer to a com­mon tone.

This track, “The Organ Grinder” is a good exam­ple of that type of process. It was through-composed by all of us. Matt came in with a skele­ton for a song, and we each wrote (recorded) sec­tions of the song, and built the song out from that. This is maybe my favorite track we did.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can hear the rest of our last album here.

Here’s a per­for­mance from 2006. I love these guys.

CAMP WANATACHI Ben­e­fit Concert

The CAMP WANATACHI ben­e­fit con­cert at the 3 Legged Dog Art and Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter was so much fun. There’s a com­pelling story at the heart of the mate­r­ial now. And the best thing about the whole night was that a guy named ‘Har’—blessed with the most ele­gantly groomed Indian beard—told me that it seemed to him the stereo­typ­i­cal idea of Jesus had been replaced by some­thing more gen­uine at the end. This is ter­rific, because that’s all Matt Cow­art (the direc­tor) and Natalie have been artic­u­lat­ing through­out the rehearsal process.

The cast was fan­tas­tic; the house was sold-out; peo­ple responded vocally to every­thing. They laughed, and they were shocked, and even gave us a few “No, she di’in’t”-type out­bursts. Which is totally sat­is­fy­ing. And peo­ple were freak­ing out about the orches­tra, which the orches­tra deserves. Along with play­ing their instru­ments, I made them rip pieces of paper, play shak­ers and drums. It was awe­some. Deniz Hughes snuck another pic­ture of me at my conductor-DJ-percussion sta­tion: