Chamber Ensemble
Synoptic Interference (2018) for Bb Clarinet, Bassoon, Trombone, Violin, and Double Bass (5'15")
Synoptic Interference is the third movement in a cycle of extractable works each inspired by categories of natural disasters, in this case meteorological disasters. This piece is for a quintet made up of violin, clarinet, bassoon, trombone and double bass. Atmospheric Rossby waves are a type of inertial wave in the middle and upper troposphere that creates large-scale meanders in the air pressure systems of the earth, creating our seasonal weather patterns. Rossby wave sizes are measured by meteorologists using the synoptic scale (also known as the cyclonic scale) length of more than 1000 km horizontally. There are typically four to six Rossby waves circling each hemisphere of the globe, though the number varies seasonally. The increased amount of sunlight being absorbed by the northern hemisphere in summers means more energy in the air pressure systems that needs to find equilibrium. The erratic local action of these pressure systems build up energy and can form hurricanes, tornados, hailstorms, haboobs and all the other weather events depending on the larger seasonal conditions within which they occur.
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Into the Black (2018) for Bb Clarinet, Bassoon, Trumpet, Trombone, Violin, Double Bass and Percussionist (12')
Into the Black is a composition for septet which is the first movement in a cycle of extractable works each inspired by categories of natural disasters. The idea for this piece and the title are taken from a wildland firefighting survival technique called retreating “into the black”. When a crew is fighting a wildfire and is on the fire front, sometimes during a flare up of the blaze they have to move from outside the fire line to inside an already-burned area, because it is the safest place to be. Over the course of the piece, pairings of the instrumentalist emerge from the septet and form a trio with the percussionist, each eventually merging back into the ensemble.
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Double Bind (2017) for Two Pitched Instruments (6' to 10')
Double Bind was written in collaboration with performers Luke Ellard and Jessica Stearns from the Nova Ensemble at the University of North Texas. This is an indeterminate work which uses Annette Vande Gorne’s ideas on the categories of energy models as improvisational cues for the different sections. Double Bind is my first experiment with composing a space in which two talented performers and improvisers could meet and communicate with a significant amount of freedom.
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Porous (2016) for Percussion Quartet (7'45")
The terrifying impact and long-term implications of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan along with the steadily increasing use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the water table pollution it creates, have caused me to think recently about our connections to the basic essential requirements of human life – edible food, drinkable water and breathable air. This piece is a meditation on the fluid nature of the borders between us and the physical environment we inhabit. As humans, our bodies are made up of at least 50% water at any time. The air we breathe condenses into the water that we drink, and evaporates back into the air that we breathe. This is mirrored by the ways that rhythmic phrases seep from one performer to another, and by the act of returning to the opening material. The boundaries between us are porous, and poor us for forgetting that.
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Tessellations (2016) for Oboe, Viola and Piano (5'30")
Tessellations was written for oboist Lindsay Wiley in 2016. It features the unusual oboe trio combination of oboe, viola and piano used by Loeffler and Klughardt. The piece is based on permutations of a single descending tone row. In mathematics, “tessellation” is when a plane is filled using repeating patterns (called tiles) of one identical geometric shape. Many of us are familiar with this concept from things like M.C. Escher’s designs in his series of Metamorphosis woodcuts, for example. I think that the idea of tessellations is an apt metaphor for working with tone rows, and I was inspired by the way Escher treated the tiles as mutable even as they maintained the overall pattern.
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Variations for Woodwind Quintet (2015) for Woodwind Quintet (9'30")
While writing this piece, I was interested in exploring the range of sounds and moods possible with a woodwind quintet all coming from a single thematic idea. It is a set of eleven variations on a theme, and on a large scale is organized into a three-part form connected by two musical bridges. The variations range in mood from upbeat and pleasantly flowing, to melancholy, to hymn-like.
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Solo Works
A Spire (2016) for Solo Flute (1')
Six Views of Li Bai (Li Po) (2015) for Solo Piano (7'15")
Li Bai (also known as Li Po) was a poet during the Tang Dynasty (8th century) in China and is regarded as one of the most important figures in Chinese literature. Among other things, his writing is known for the use of incredible imagery and for technical virtuosity. In addition to his works, Li Bai is known for being an extravagant and multi-faceted personality. Stories about his personal life and various escapades paint a picture of someone wild and unbounded, yet he was admired by both Emperors and priests. I have enjoyed Li Bai’s poetry for some time, and eventually, inspired by paintings such as Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series and Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji, I tried to capture some of these different and often conflicting aspects of the man behind the work. In this piece I tried to illustrate contrasting pairs of these different impressions of Li Bai, and organized them into three short mini-movements – hence the “six views”.
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Electroacoustic
Deluge (2019) for Bb Clarinet, Bassoon, Trumpet, Trombone, Violin, Double Bass and Computer (14'30")
Deluge is the fifth movement in a cycle of extractable works inspired by various categories of natural disasters. It is written for septet (clarinet in B-flat, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, double bass, percussion) with computer. This is a through-composed piece in which the concept of the form is inspired by hydrological disasters such as flooding and sea level rise. The acousmatic portion of the composition uses hydrophone recordings as well as audio of snow, ice, and icebergs as compositional material. It traces the path of arctic pack ice from formation, through its slow descent to the ocean, calving into icebergs, and then becoming part of the sea and contributing to sea level rise. Spectral analysis of these sounds provided the harmonic material for the instrumental ensemble.
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Gleaning (2019) for Percussion, Trumpet, Violin and Computer (6')
Gleaning is a composition for trio and computer which is the fourth movement in a cycle of extractable works inspired by natural disasters. After a geological disaster like an earthquake or landslide it seems that our inclination is to quickly reconstruct what has been lost, to recapture some sense of normalcy, gleaning what we can from the rubble. This movement is organized around that cycle of domesticity interrupted by disaster, rebuilding, and then yet another disaster. The instrumentalists start each of the three sections of the piece, without the computer, by slowly coming together and constructing a sound world. Each time they are then interrupted (without warning) by audio samples consisting of various sounds of destruction and geological events, which are played back and modulated by a Max/MSP patch on the computer.
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Perturbations (2018) for Double Bass and computer (10'30")
Perturbations is a composition for double bass and computer which is the second movement in a cycle of extractable works inspired by categories of natural disasters, in this case extra-planetary events such as solar flares and meteors. The disturbances and eccentricities from the normal course of an orbit which are cause by outside forces are called perturbations. In this piece, the bass plays against a drone to which the computer is adding unexpected gestures and interjections. The gestures in both the bass and computer parts are all abstracted from sonifications of various magnetospheric events including solar flares, lightning whistlers, bow wave shocks, and auroral kilometric radiation (AKR). The pitch material is derived from the Schumann resonance spectrum of the Earth.
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Playground (2015) for String Quartet and Max/MSP patch (19')
Playground is a work for string quartet in two movements. Sandbox, the first movement, is an exploration of the string quartet’s sound world, building up various possibilites and knocking them down to build something new. The second movement, Swing Sets, introduces a new element - sampled sounds from a child’s playground. These sounds along with the quartet’s parts are manipulated via the computer, which acts as a hidden ‘fifth’ member of the quartet playing back fragments of memories.
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3 Pieces for Clarinet and Computer (2015) for Solo Clarinet in Bb and Max/MSP patch (11')
3 Pieces for Clarinet and Computer is a set of short works involving the possibilities open to a live performer interacting with a computer as performer. The computer part was created using Max/MSP software. In each movement the computer is listening to the clarinet and responding in some way. In Mirror Mirror, the clarinet is working with the computer in periodically adding loops to the performance, and is listening to the performer and responding to what it hears by altering the recordings in small ways. In the second piece, Cycle Mod, the clarinet and computer start trying to cooperate and collaborate, each one contributing musical phrases of their choice to the piece. The final movement Crosstalk involves the computer and clarinet in a dialog – listening to each other, finishing each other’s statements, adding additional comments, interrupting, and eventually coming to a common conclusion.
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Acousmatic
Metal Fatigue (2023) binaural fixed media (4'40")
Metal Fatigue is a fixed media, acousmatic piece created using recordings of various types of metallic objects both small and large, as well as motors and other mechanical sounds. A combination of field recordings and close-recorded samples comprise the raw sonic materials used in the work. It is an exploration of the sounds of mechanical stresses as they break down more and more, and the different interactions into which those changes can develop, be entrained, or be transmuted.
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Venom Thief (2022-2023) binaural fixed media (17')
This piece is a fixed media, acousmatic, imagined soundscape. The idea comes from a sea creature with the scientific name Glaucus atlanticus. It is a variety of shell-less mollusk which is pelagic (it floats on the ocean surface, carried by the winds and currents), and has various poetic nicknames such as the sea swallow, blue angel, blue glaucus and blue dragon. Atlanticus feeds on other larger pelagic creatures like the Portuguese man o' war, being immune to their venom. It can move toward prey using the thin feather-like "fingers" on its body (cerata) to make slow swimming movements, then consume the entire organism, storing the venom for its own use. Concentrating the captured venom, Atlanticus produces a sting more deadly than the Man o' War it feeds upon.
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Into Entropy (2017) 2-channel fixed media (5'06")
This piece began as a series of improvisations with the PureData program earGram, developed by Gilberto Bernardes. I then shaped the material from these improvisations into a piece which generally progresses from order into entropy. A single sound quickly becomes a complex, rhythmic sound mass. That conglomerate then undergoes different transformations as if we were zooming into the various layers of the sound mass and exploring them.
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The Stranger Next Door (2014) 2-channel fixed media (4'44")
The Stranger Next Door was a commission for a dance work of the same name created by Mariah Rieves at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in April of 2014. This piece features drum kit improvisations by Randy Seals.
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