Four Poems was written as the first piece in an ongoing musical exploration of how different artistic genres intersect. Each of the four movements is a musical counterpart to poems that I’d written in high school. The movements do not directly relate to the poems themselves; rather the tone and ideas of the poems are explored through music to make a sort of musical “response” to each poem. I Rain is a more somber poem, focused internally on my personal struggle at the time with interpersonal relationships. The fear of beginning college and leaving behind what I’d always known as home was deep in my thoughts, and as such the music takes on a more clouded and moody tone. The incessantly repeating theme of the music takes on the persona of a repeated thought, ruminating and getting more and more lost in the ever-densening texture. After a climax, the music fades, again returning to the theme, as if watching a home slip away.

Performed November 1, 2021 at McIntosh Theatre, University of Michigan.
Enormous thanks to Liz Ames, piano, for sticking with this performance even after a year and a half of delays

Four Poems, mvmt III: I Rain

Four Poems was written as the first piece in an ongoing musical exploration of how different artistic genres intersect. Each of the four movements is a musical counterpart to poems that I’d written in high school. The movements do not directly relate to the poems themselves; rather the tone and ideas of the poems are explored through music to make a sort of musical “response” to each poem. Wonderland, a poem about finding confidence in the face of regret and discomfort, finds its musical counterpart in the contorting and changing of motifs. A pair of primary motives are repeated at regular intervals throughout the piece: each begins as a confused and dissonant figure but is transfigured into a soothing or exhilarating version of itself.

Performed November 1, 2021 at McIntosh Theatre, University of Michigan.
Enormous thanks to Liz Ames, piano, for sticking with this performance even after a year and a half of delays

Four Poems, mvmt I: Wonderland

I don’t think I ever truly grew past my dinosaur phase.

No matter how much I learn about prehistory, or how many extinct animals I learn about, there’s always something weirder than everything else I still haven’t come across. Nothing has proved that to me more than the animals that lived during the Cambrian period. This ancient period, marked by an incredible explosion in the diversity of life on Earth, is the home of two of my favorite groups of animals: Anomalocaris and Hallucigenia.

Both of these groups have an amusing history of reconstructions, with Anomalocaris initially being misidentified as three different animals and Hallucigenia being reconstructed upside down. But modern reconstructions and complete fossils don’t exactly paint a straightforward picture of either of these creatures- both are completely unrecognizable among today’s relatively familiar animals.

Cambria is a tribute to my fascination with this alien world.


Perf Britton Recital Hall, 3/31 Alex Blanpied

Cambria

Ousu Doue/Ik-Ik Imi is an ongoing artistic experiment regarding language in the abstract. The title comes from an algorithm I designed with a friend to produce computer-generated “words.” The algorithm pieced letters together randomly based on lists of user-input words by adding one letter at a time, favoring certain letters that the data showed were more common to follow the previous letter added.

The resulting words were strange but pronounceable, and each seemed to express a real idea, despite being computer generated: "Wofemal wik" to my ear seemed ominous or somber, with its closeness to "woe;" "reado lyie" was somehow free, with hints of grandeur; and "cofeem" was, of course, surprisingly reminiscent of "coffee." When reading through the computer's attempts at creating language, I was fascinated by the way these words, which had I not read them would have never existed, seemed to hold meaning purely by association with existing words.

With the Ousu Doue/Ik-Ik Imi project, I explore the ways in which language holds - and doesn't hold - meaning, as well as ways that modes of communication intersect and overlap. The project lives in the spaces where language and expression meet their boundaries. Its current facets are a paired chamber piece and poem bearing the project’s title; an in-progress oboe concerto in collaboration with Dr. Nancy Ambrose King titled Ekphrasis, which focuses on how expression through painting mirrors expression through music; Four Poems, a piece for piano solo which musically mimics four poems that I had written in high school, and an in-progress piece, Bureaucratese, which will explore navigation through opaque language.

Perf. MacIntosh Theater Feb 5
Violin I - Izzy Amador
Violin II - Xenia Gilbert
Viola - Josh Thaver
Cello - Maxwell Remmer
Flute - Tess Lauer
Oboe/E.H. - Jeff Langer
Clarinet - Oliver Bishop
Conductor - Dan Johnson

Ousu Doue/Ik-Ik Imi

0:00 - Introduction
1:52 - Drawl
4:26 - Chatter
6:10 - Jargonize
8:30 - Squabble

"Quips" is an installment in the Ousu Doue/Ik-Ik Imi project, focusing on exploring types of speech. Each movement reflects the energies and patterns of a different type of speech. After a short introduction, the second movement imitates the lengthened and stretched sounds of a drawl, as well as its slow cadence. "Chatter," the third movement, is filled with dizzying motion and call-and-response motifs spread across a mosaic texture. "Jargonize" is a word meaning to describe something using overly complex and field-specific language, often as a form of doublespeak. The movement satirizes its own complex title by playing out in canon a musical cipher spelling the word "jargonize," accompanied by a chromatic chordal homophony. The final movement caps the set with a intensely rhythmic and aggressive sound, imitating the sound of a verbal fight.

"Quips" was written and performed as a part of the 2022 Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival Emerging Composer Fellowship program in The New School's Stiefel Hall by the West 5 Quintet. Many thanks to Imani Winds, the IWCMF staff, The New School, and composer-in-residence Jessica Meyer for contributing so much to make this performance possible, and to all the members of the West 5 Quintet for their incredible work put into this piece!

Jessica Ringston (flute)
Matthew Miller (oboe)
Jesse Winslow (clarinet)
Patrick Williams (horn)
Mason Cox (bassoon)

image credit: neuralblender.com "Jargon", Oceanus blend

Quips

Listen to the entire album at https://alexblanpied.bandcamp.com/

To the ones who decided the sidelines had the nicest view,
what next?
My mother always scolded me for sitting on our fences:
she told me that, one day, I'd slip
and the wooden spikes could pierce my stomach.
I'm sorry that's a lesson that you'll have to learn the hard way.

To the old whose greed was worth its weight in ozone,
what next?
You built the best for yourself:
everything we have we owe to you, and so
I'm sorry that you'll never live to see
the rubble that you built for us.
When the world ends you'll be locked
in your personal bunkers six feet underground,
your bodies safe from your rotted imagination,
the final insult to a forever filled with injury.

To the young who stare up at night,
watching each star disappear one by one,
we know what’s next:
our world is being stolen, too fast to afford
to wait for old power to die.
We need to take it back.
as the sun sets on history
take your place with the rest of us
and we'll carve a new world from the globe
we're forced to hold.

11 - Will The Sun Still Shine Without Our Eyes To See It?

7 - Interlude

4 - Current

Recorded 5/14/19 at Cohen Davison Theater, Peabody Institute

Kara Poling - Oboe
Catherine Renggli - Piano

II - Spectra

Alex Blanpied is an eclectic composer, oboist, and pianist whose musical interests range from the EDM of artists like Au5 and Tristam to the ecstatic energy of composers like Leo Ornstein and Einojuhani Rautavaara. Their music often explores the overlaps between modes of communication and genres of art, culminating in the multi-disciplinary project Ousu Doue/Ik-Ik Imi. Alex is earning their BM in Composition and Music Theory at the University of Michigan, where they have studied with Michael Daugherty, Roshanne Etezady, Kristin Kister, and Evan Chambers.

Alex Blanpied

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