Hommage à B.B.

“soft gradient” is dedicated to Annea Lockwood in gratitude for her friendship and her music. Annea’s gift of a kempul gong recurs quietly in this piece.

Best heard on headphones, soft gradient reflects on the concept of the petit Bardo through multiple, often parallel presences - first through human movement in the soundscape and then by overlapping vestibules of abstract and concrete sound. What might be described as liminal polyphony is demarcated (or decentered) through passageways that are short (such vintage light switches and their tinkling bulbs recorded in France) or ever-elongating inharmonic clouds.

Begun in 2023 and completed in 2024, soft gradient also marks a personal rebirth—an ongoing passage to good health after COVID-19. Based on responses I continue to receive after this music was released in July 2024, soft gradient also offers a pathway for rest and rejuvenation, which is essential to survive and transform our troubling times.

soft gradient

Support this music

soft gradient (complete)

https://thump.vice.com/en_us/track/lorna-dunes-covalent-bond-is-a-love-song-from-a-science-geek-who-happens-to-write-dance-music

Lorna Dune - Covalent Bond

Recorded by WNYC's New Sounds Live at SONiC Festival 2015. Mechanical instruments by Nick Yulman. http://www.wnyc.org/story/new-sounds-live-concerts-2015-part-1/

Me he perdido (performed by the American Composers Orchestra)

Composition for solo alto saxophone and pre-recorded audio. All parts performed and recorded by Jonathan Nichol.

Smoke

#@&%!* (expletive deleted) for Percussion Quartet was premiered in Ann Arbor, Michigan in December 2000. This dynamic piece exhibits a heightened state of frenetic energy through explosive outbursts and a bubbling undercurrent of churning rhythmic figures. It explores disparate musical influences like popular and world music, while highlighting the flexibility and virtuosity of the percussion ensemble. The title reflects the demanding physicality of the individual parts and the tricky ensemble work. In fact, I was once told the expletive should have been inserted!

Many thanks to Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Roland Vazquez, Miller Asbill, Jay Bordeleau, Carrie Magin, Jason Markzon, and André Dowell for their artistic support.

Perusal score: https://issuu.com/alreinke/docs/11-0511-pq-score

Purchase Score & Parts

#@&%!* (expletive deleted) for Percussion Quartet (2000)

Music for the Third Place is an aleatoric work for violin and electronics comprising pre-composed fragments, found sounds, field recordings, synthesizers, and live audio processing systems. The shape of the work is governed by a set of rules in the style of competitive board games and the players' choices in accordance with those rules. Aside from the content of the violin fragments, found sounds, and field recordings, nothing is pre-determined.

This is a recording of the world premiere performance (first of two readings) at the Third Place Gallery in Minneapolis, for which the site-specific work was composed. In addition to the violin fragments and electronic components, a variety of bells - collected from antique shops in St. Paul, Stillwater, and elsewhere - were distributed among the audience: listeners were invited to ring bells whenever they heard something they liked or did not like, thus contributing to the overall soundscape of the performance.

Karen Kim, violin; Patrick Castillo, electronics
September 15, 2012, The Third Place Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

(c) 2012 Patrick Castillo

Music for the Third Place

Clarinet in Bb, violin, cello, piano
Live Recording - 5.08.98
SOLI Chamber Ensemble

Crows is dedicated to the SOLI Chamber Ensemble. Inspired by the writings of poet Joy Harjo, each movement is based upon a short excerpt that describes some aspect of life in the desert southwest. These excerpts serve as a starting point for the creation of five musical landscapes:

red earth
My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New York, Paris or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred wordless form…

clusters
We fly into the body and we fly out, changed by the sun, by crows who manipulate the borders of reason…

silver breaths
I see the flash of silver breaths on the wing of the sky, and hear the explosion of a thousand horses running…

invocation
I think of the lush stillness of the end of a world, sung into place by singers and the rattle of turtles in the dark morning…

drying stone
Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sound, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the drying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers' descendants, who are going to the store.

Poetry by Joy Harjo, from Secrets from the Center of the World (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989) and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).

In Native American tradition, the crow represents the gateway to the supernatural, possessing the ability to see simultaneously past, present and future. While writing this piece I often wondered how these birds (which appear often in Harjo's poetry) might experience the journey through these musical expanses from their special perspective. 

For additional information, visit: https://www.alexandragardner.net/works/crows/

Crows - 4. invocation

A piece for bagpipe and electronics inspired by the shofar service in Jewish High Holidays.

Tekiah

Composer & Sound Artist
Find out more at https://alexandragardner.net/

Crows - 4. invocation

Alexandra Gardner