Browse Items (868 total)

• Scene Unobserved

  A black and white film by Jon Appleton, Wayne Wadhams, Pierre Payne, John Mellquist (poetry) made to the music.

• N'air sur le lit

• Die Herrlichkeit Loch in den Bundling Bord

  in collaboration with Paul Botelho

• IRIVISKIA

  Violin-Horn duo with computer-realized surround sound

• The Lightning Field

  The Lightning Field for baritone, bass clarinet, trumpet, bass trombone, and computer was written for the loadbang ensemble with text by poet, Anne Shaw. The Lightning Field is a land-art work in the western high desert of New Mexico by Walter De Maria. The work consists of 400 stainless steel poles sticking out of the earth in the shape of a grid. The poetry was written during a trip to view the work.  The overriding concepts at play during the compositional process were isolation and introspection. This work is the fifth collaboration between myself and Anne Shaw.

  The four seamless movements track various emotional states that Anne encountered while walking through the field and writing. The third movement exhibits a numerical connection with the original land-art. The first 400 unique words of the poetry were recorded and are played at random creating a murmuring texture above the ensemble. The harmonic material likewise was put through process of my own design, which involves pitch set evolution as opposed to variation. The final movement features Anne’s own voice reading a letter about her time spent at the field while viewing the piece.

• Flown

• Homologic

• now our grief is put away

  now our grief is put away uses the poem titled Khao Lak Paradise Resort by Anne Shaw in her book, Undertow. I found Anne after searching for poets I wanted to set for a different project. This poem leapt off the page with its vivid imagery and haunting descriptions of the tsunami that occurred on December 24, 2004 in the Southeast Pacific which included Thailand, the setting for this poem. Due to its length and singularity of subject, I decided to not include this poem in what would eventually become Transit for soprano, vibraphone, and double bass but rather set the work as its own piece. The poem is filled with Anne’s own description of her experience in the relief efforts, sayings from Thai culture, and descriptions from survivors of the tsunami. Shaw writes, “Thai culture allows a mourning period of 100 days, after which the soul of the departed - and the lives of the living - must move on,” as a description for the line, now our grief is put away.

• untangle my tongue

  untangle my tongue (2011) is a piece for fixed media in collaboration with poet, Alix Anne Shaw. We sent each other small samples of new work for use as material to inspire new words or music. After months of trading work back and forth, the piece was realized. Some sounds in the piece are cicadas, cars/trains, text being read by Alix and whispered by Hilary Purrington, and various instrumental sounds.

  The title is taken from Alix's poem inspired by my sounds, Small Bang Theory. It directly references that there is text that is altered, distorted, and overlapped. However, a deeper statement is being made about the current pace of our lives. I am a culprit of this technology and social media-driven lifestyle. Yet, when I went on walks to record sounds for this piece, I was forced to slow down, listen, and be present and engaged in the sounds around me.

• oNe

  closed