ekmeles vocal ensemble. recorded at scholes street studio in brooklyn, 27/03/2021.
https://joshuamastel.com/animal/

animal (for six voices: ekmeles ensemble)

Woven In Earth And Sky (I) (live recording performed by A Far Cry)

Schallfeld Ensemble and Pierre-André Valade at Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, Austria

(For Matt Butler, with thanks to the Nuckolls Family)

https://joshuamastel.com/Birds-fly/

Birds Fly

When you spy the cap of a mushroom in a forest, what you are actually seeing is a mere fraction of the fungal organism that produced it. The vast majority of the organism is comprised of mycelium—subterranean tendrils that form vast networks beneath the forest floor. These networks are not only what allow the fungus to propogate, they also act as an integral player in the entire forest ecosystem. Specifically, mycelium networks latch onto the roots of trees and other plant life, exchanging some energy for essential nutrients the trees and plants rely upon to be healthy. This symbiotic relationship runs deeper, however. By passing nutrients through these networks, some trees and plants have evolved a remarkable ability to literally communicate with one another: They alert one another to disease and predation, and even assist one another, altering their root structures to make space for growth, and sharing their nutrients.
  When musicians perform as an ensemble, they must form a collective intelligence to produce a desired group sound. Sometimes this collective intelligence can behave quite like an organic network, analogous to trees and plants communicating through mycelium. In creating A Mind in the Branches, I intended to realize a work of music that would bring this process of collective intelligence to the forefront of the performance. Rather than treating the ensemble as a homogenous unit that traverses a linear work of music from beginning to end, the performers instead have their own individual agency, their own ability to explore the score a number of non-linear ways. However, in doing so, they will also encounter instances in which they must work together, or musically communicate with one another, or even behave as a homogenous unit for a moment, should the need arise. In doing so, the performers become interdependent "trees" in the ecosystem that is A Mind in the Branches.

Performed by the ECHOES Ensemble, Prague. July 2023.

Composed by Nicholas Denton Protsack.

A Mind In The Branches

Orfeo Duo asked me to write a piece that would relate to our neighborhood in Manhatten - the stretch from 96th to 145th Street of the Upper West Side and Harlem. 
One of my favorite two places in the area is St. John's Cathedral, specifically its St. Savior Chapel dedicated to the people of the East. It is a quiet, little chapel with a cllection of seemingly beautiful altarpiece - the last sculptural work of Keith Haring who died of AIDS in 1990. "Eastern Chapel Meditations" are inspired by the atmosphere of this tiny, but quintessential New York City place in which prayers, worries, aspirations, and hopes in many languages hover in pregnant silence." 

Aleksandra Vrebalov 

"Eastern Chapel Meditations" for violin, piano and prerecorded sounds, 9 minutes, written in 2010, commissioned by Orfeo Duo for What a Neighborhood!. Premiered by Vita and Ishmael Wallace on the 28th February at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem. Released on "Music From the Balkans" on Centaur Records, 2012. 

Eastern Chapel Meditations

"Ur Song" for string quartet and soprano, excerpt from opera "MILEVA." 10 minutes, text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, premiered by Kronos Quartet with Judith Berkson, October 9, 2010, Le Poisson Rouge, New York City. Piano-vocal version premiered by Two Slides Sounding, South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, October 23, 2010.

Ur Song

XXII was written in 2015 for the Serbian National Radio Choir and is based on the very last, unfinished work by Stevan Mokranjac (1856 - 1914).  Live performance from December 12, 2015, Serbian National Radio Choir, Bojan Sudjic conducting at Kolarac Hall in Belgrade, Serbia.
Alternate titles: The Unheard Song; Neotpevana Pesma (Serbian)  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJp6QwLP8Ng

XXII

Released on Innova Records in March 2012.

Kaleidoscope (2011)

Pieza sonora en dos actos simultaneos a modo de función.

El primer acto reproduce registros a partir de varios enunciados repetidos en distintos espacios del Museo Casa Natal de Jovellanos. Acomete las relaciones entre enunciados y condiciones singulares de enunciación: espaciales, temporales, formales, sensibles. 

El segundo acto reúne los registros de un único enunciado materializado en una serie de locuciones por el personal que desempeña distintos cargos dentro de la institución de dicho museo. Trata el enunciado en orden a cómo se constituyen sus campos de utilización, operaciones, intención, alcance, validez, jerarquías. 

Un sondeo que permitiera apreciar aquellas diferencias, desviaciones, mutaciones que podría producir este sistema de presencias; y cuáles, por otro lado, serían los límites, recortes o umbrales para una identidad. 

Hacia los desajustes  diegéticos que encarna el enunciado en el sujeto y viceversa:  
sea aquel que toma la voz, el autor de los textos, un personaje ficticio, el espacio en que tiene lugar la resonancia para el oído del que escucha, la memoria o la tradición interpretativa, un espíritu colectivo recurrente…

La brecha acusmática que abren las sucesivas reproducciones: 
respecto a la escucha de quienes asisten a un momento de ellas, por una irremisible incompletud; respecto a la acción elocutiva, por el alejamiento progresivo y el desvanecimiento; respecto a sí mismas, por la exclusión indefinida del reconocimiento en la dispersión.


http://danielfrancog.wixsite.com/danielfranco/funcion-enunciativa

 (Todos los enunciados están extraídos de escritos, diarios y cartas de Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos)

FUNCION ENUNCIATIVA

FUNCIÓN ENUNCIATIVA. Primer acto elocutivo

Performed by Duo XAMP at the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik in Bludenz, Austria, 6 October 2019.
https://joshuamastel.com/only-a-still-wind/

only a still wind (for two microtonal accordions)

for solo violin (for Giancarlo Latta)
https://youtu.be/Kl6SsRJmo2c
https://joshuamastel.com/writhe-wither/

FUNCIÓN ENUNCIATIVA. Primer acto elocutivo

adnihile

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