City - acoustic

It always takes a bit of time to feel like you’re a part of something, especially a city as large as Northern Hollywood. This piece tells the story about a girl (the clarinet) who imagines the city (the piano) as a place where she feels comfortable and at home, shown in the music of the beginning. Later however, she learns that the city is not what she expected: loud, interruptive, boisterous, and always on the move. She takes the TTC trains and buses to get away from it all, but still ends up crowded in loud environments. She encounters the unsafe areas of the city streets, and is even chased by dangerous men.
However, little by little, the girl begins to feel like she understands the city, feels it’s pulse, it’s flow. She then becomes a part of The City, finally fitting in an environment she thought she would never understand.

Performed by the talented Jolynn Robins on the clarinet and Matthew Boutda on the piano in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music Walter Hall.

Fitting In Toronto

The music in this piece represents h20 molecules. It begins with the molecules packed together in the frozen, solid state. As the piece progresses, the molecules begin to move around, quicker and quicker to melt into the liquid state. The moving water is represented in the quick-moving triplets. This speeds up to eventually come to a stop where the evaporation occurs, to create the gaseous state. The large distances between each note indicate the large distance between these quickly moving h20 molecules. The molecules have no structure, but continue moving, as does the music. The molecules begin to come together again, as the deposition change of state occurs. The piece ends in an icy and slow conclusion, with the molecules coming to a halt. 

Played by the talented Michael Murphy on Percussion and Michael Bridge on Accordion.

Azän on a Toronto Streetcar by Bänoo Zan:

My heart hears it
before I do

I start to vozoo[2]
in tears

praying
to stop praying—

the ritual
branch
of the tree of speech

roots
falling like leaves

Years back
in the land of Azäns

my disbelieving body
shook at the gropings
of the lecherous call to
piety

In the land of now
this call to freedom
by a slave[3]
frees me
from separations

shackling questions
released by love

shaking roots
to the falling

fruit—

Azän on a Toronto Streetcar is part of a contemporary music workshop organized by University of Toronto student Daniel Robinson, where composers are paired with poets and singers. I was paired with the fantastic collaborator Bänoo Zan, an Iranian poet residing in Canada. Her poem speaks about her experience hearing an Azän (a muslim call to prayer which is sung by the muezzin) on a Toronto streetcar. It brings memories of the past, both horrific, yet nostalgic. It speaks on her difficulties as a refugee here in Canada, as well as the absolute love of her country. Safe to say, the powerful emotions of the poem allowed the music to write itself.

Performers: 
Tenor: Elias Theocharidis
Violin 1: Georgia Grace
Violin 2: Cassandra Leshchyshyn
Viola: Clara Nguyentran 
Cello: Benjamin David Louwersheimer

My Compositions

Azän on a Toronto Streetcar (Poem by Bänoo Zan)

I wrote this as a tribute to Grant Kirkhope's "Glitter-Glaze Glacier," a theme on Playtonic's game "Yooka Laylee" with many elements of Christmas-y snow-themed music.

Sparkly Snow Cave

Composed using sample instruments in Cubase. Happy Halloween!

Fear the Haunted Castle

Poem by Bänoo Zan
Baritone: Korin Thomas-Smith
Piano: Frances Armstrong

The basis of this poem is the idea of acceptance in a new society. Written by a lake in the nighttime, the moon symbolically represents the poet who views herself in the wavy reflection of a lake, represented by the wave-like accompaniment in the piano. These waves are symbols of a fragmented immigrant, misrepresented by our North American society. The sun represents Iran, the home country, represented by a small theme. These themes circulate throughout the piece to conclude to harmony in acceptance of this trait, this façade of newness to a different culture; the acceptance of embracing one’s culture within another, to the betterment of the poet as a person. 

This was commissioned by Daniel Robinson as part of the "Sounds of Silence" Initiative at the Music Gallery on December 7th, 2017.

The Moon

The beauty of Canadian winters is characterized by the sparkling sensation of the snowflakes, which make up the white horizons. Each little frozen crystal has its own design and, gathered with billions of others, creates the cold snow which we hate but love because of its clear beauty. This piece conveys that beauty seen behind a closed window...Where there is heating.

Performed by the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra on March 7th, 2018.

Snowflakes (for Orchestra)

This piece for organ, string quintet, and percussion is an interpretation of Claudia Rynkowski’s painting. This interpretation demonstrates the two hands that hold on to the thread as a hopeful but teetering element of an artist’s comfortable compositional past which influences them, with the havoc below representing the uncomfortable surrounding artists’ crave of experimentation and innovation. The piece takes the idea of the continuous thread and does not let the artist fall, nor does it let it hang any longer but harmoniously mixes the elements of creative past and innovative future, therefore displaying that which makes all artists so original. 

Conducted by: Victor Cheng
Performed by:
 Tyler Versluis (organ) Jamie Godber (Violin I)Emily Bosenius (Violin II) Clara Nguyentran (Viola) Madeleine Smith (Cello) Chiara Culmone (Double Bass)Andrew Gordon Bell (Percussion I) Keshav Sharma-Jaitly (Percussion II) and Lian McMillan (Percussion III) 
at the Student Composer Concert No. 5 in Walter Hall in March 2018.

Composition Portfolio 2018

Hanging On By a Thread (Based on a Painting by Claudia Rynkowski)

Bones of the old watch as we deal with the same atrocities they did, only to dance and giggle at the otherwise tremendous lack of weight we put on our circumstances.

Dancing Bones

After this scary time, only the ghosts of the past will dwell. Never to be forgotten, these memories only help us to cherish that which we have and enjoy.

The Haunt

forced into a time of unproductiveness, those that can create, create! Those that can conjure, conjure. Creativity is a kind of magic that all humans possess. We're all a little witchy, if you will.

Witchy

This boss-type battle theme emits the battling of vampires among us. A well-deserved stake in the heart of the immortal discrepancies in our world.

Stakes In Hearts

This depicts those icy winter walks where one reflects on the beauty of the fresh, soft winter snow, the challenge of that biting cold, and that magical feeling of the holidays.

alexfsands

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