Browse Items (868 total)

• Aphantasia

• Redundancy in Perceptual and Linguistic Experience

  Algorithmic text based programming; Nyquist Programming Language

• Antagonism Constellation Factory

  Stereo fixed media; found and synthesized sounds
  In this electronic piece I used the temporal aspect of the material to create contrast; instead of transforming the material over the course of the piece, I tried to make the sounds stay largely the same and build the piece out of the subtleties of the relationship between them. The opening section puts sounds that seemingly have little in common in close proximity; the relationship is not developed, and instead a contrasting section begins, which soon ends up combining with the opening sounds. The resolution of this section is not what would be expected, and instead the sounds are finally transformed into something new; this, however, is short-lived. In a manner similar to Varèse’s Poème électronique, the piece focuses on the unexpected, and creates an evocative narrative through the juxtaposition of material; Antagonism Constellation Factory presents this narrative in a terse and sometimes antagonistic fashion.

• Desert Presence

  Desert Presence reminisces on the landscape of the American West, dwelling on how the vast, open spaces of the region are both “quiet” and “loud:” silent and empty, but also overwhelming because of that very emptiness in such large space. The performer interacts in dialogue with an unseen presence. As this back-and-forth develops, the two voices begin to come together as echoes of one another, creating a fleeting sense of union between the known and unknown. The piece is performed through Max/MSP, using both recorded sounds and live processing of the guitar and electronics during the performance.

  Cues specified in the score determine the entrances of electronic elements; some sounds are triggered by volume choices made by the performer, while others use randomization. The cues may be controlled by the performer, with a pedal, or an outside person. The guitarist must be playing into a microphone, both for balance and to make use of the live electronics.

• Break Free

  A paper score is not used for performance; because there is very little to no sense of pulse in large parts of the work, video files of the scrolling score are provided (in three segments), for the players to read from. These files include the piece’s audio as well.
  
  A good set-up is: one person cueing the 3 videos on a laptop, which is fed to a larger monitor for the players to read from. Stereo audio comes out from the laptop. The only other component is the separate amplification of the violins, for blend purposes.

• Ghosts of Cluny

  The Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, established in 910 by William I of Aquitaine, was the leading center of monasticism in the Middle Ages and boasted the largest church in Christendom prior to the 16^th-century reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  Today only the bell tower of the church and a fraction of the great abbey remain, having been devastated by plundering during the French Revolution.  Otherworldly echoes of the millennium-old ruins resound in Ghosts of Cluny, a piece which evokes both the sacredness and the immense acoustic space of the former monastery.

  The work was realized in the IMPACT Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and was named a Finalist in the International Composition Competition “Città di Udine,” ninth edition.

• Wunderkind

  “Wunderkind” is a well-known German term historically applied to a person who possesses an extraordinary talent or brilliance (particularly musical) at an early age.  The creative impetus for this work was the desire to explore the intellectual workings of a developing child prodigy, the electronic component used to expand the palette of such a restricted instrument while representing the mind’s ear of the child.  The opening cadenza begins clumsily as the “child” seemingly explores the instrument for the first time.  Musical ideas begin to mature, congeal, and find meaning.  The fixed media playback begins after two minutes of solo, and a complex and harmonically-saturated sound world emerges from and interacts with performed gestures, meant to be perceived as imagined musical structures, astonishingly advanced for a mere child.  All of the sounds in the fixed media were created by recording and processing my own toy piano.

  Wunderkind was awarded First Prize in the 2013 Prix Destellos competition, mixed media category.

• Behind the Back

  Work for pipa (traditional Chinese lute) and electronics (triggered fixed media and some live processing). Commissioned by The Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra for Su Yun-Han.
  
  The musical inspiration for this piece comes from my fascination with the murals of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China. The artwork famously depicts musicians performing while dancing and flying though the air. One image – that of a woman playing pipa behind her back – is so iconic that many Chinese dancers train in order to recreate her graceful pose. Behind the Back alludes to the ceremonial atmosphere of the Mogao murals while imagining the sort of music provided by the acrobatic women depicted within – a music which incorporates passages suggestive of dance and aerial maneuvers. At all times, the virtuosity and lyricism of the pipa is the focal point.

• Surveillance State for soprano, alto saxophone and live electronics

  A 19-minute work in three movements examining the impact of the National Security Agency's (NSA) massive surveillance programs on the condition of Americans' Fourth Amendment right to privacy.
  
  

  In early June 2013, security infrastructure analyst Edward Snowden leaked numerous classified documents detailing the comprehensive global surveillance programs and tactics carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U.S. and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the U.K.  This revelation prompted widespread and heated concern over U.S. and British governmental policies in the bulk collection of private communications and internet data of citizens and foreign nationals as a means to counteract terrorist activities at home and abroad.  Surveillance State for soprano, alto saxophone and live electronics, op. 10, takes as its subject the impact of massive government surveillance on the condition of American Idealism, specifically in matters of the individual’s right to personal freedom and privacy, in the years following the events of 9/11.

  Part 1: Snowden / Interlude: Sacrifice Liberty / Part 2: Scherzo – The Fourth Amendment / Epilogue: The Leviathan

• Driftwood Box Puzzle

  Structured improvisatory musical figures with strictly notated sections create contrasting textures juxtaposed with one another.
  
  Driftwood Box Puzzle mixes structured improvisatory musical figures with strictly notated sections to create contrasting textures juxtaposed with one another. The resulting form of such interactions may be analogous to a labyrinthine kind of musical game in which the instruments and electronics wind around each other in order to find a “way out.”