Name: GEN - Ryo Noda by alexsellers
Duration: 13 min 33 s
Description: Ryo Noda's GEN performed with the Oakland University Wind Symphony, Nov. 2014

Scandinavianz - Sunset Beach (Free download)

Sunset Beach

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Ryo Noda's GEN performed with the Oakland University Wind Symphony, Nov. 2014

GEN - Ryo Noda

In “Sunshine,” I'm looking to explore the sonic possibilities of the text’s eight short words, creating sung or spoken consonant and vowel sounds that are extracted from the text.  The piano accompaniment assists in creating the images of various forms of sunshine; sometimes gentle and warm, other times piercing and bright. The text itself (a quote of Walt Whitman) does not concern a story, but merely addresses a subject, perhaps a friend or partner, and compares him/her to sunshine. 

Sunshine was commissioned by Alyssa Wetovick, who performs on this recording along with pianist Jayoung Hong. 

Sunshine - For Mezzo - Soprano and Piano

Jun Nagao, "Paganini Lost"

Prelude VII: Canon 2

Prelude IX: Sonnet

Score and more: http://www.stevenbryant.com/music/catalog/nothing-gold-can-stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay was commissioned as a surprise gift for Kevin Sedatole in honor of his first ten years at Michigan State University. His conducting students spanning that decade, led by Jamal Duncan and Armand Hall, banded together and approached me at the 2015 College Band Directors National Convention in Nashville about writing the work, and I knew immediately that I couldn’t refuse this special project, made all the more appropriate because my wife, Verena, was one of Kevin’s very first students at MSU.

The music is my deliberate attempt to write a chorale – something simple, beautiful, and familiar. The deceptive surface simplicity of Robert Frost’s poem seems to coincide with this music, particularly the paradoxical descending of dawn to day, all embodying the concept of felix culpa, or “lucky fall” – the idea that loss can bring greater good, and is in fact necessary.

Nothing Gold Can Stay (MSU World Premiere)

Plectra, performed by the Chicago Harp Quartet in Chicago, October 2016.

Chicago Harp Quartet

Plectra

Recording from the premiere performance: 

Noa Even and Connie Frigo - Alto Saxophones

Casey Gene Dierlam - Piano

Live at the Kent State University Saxophone Day.

GEN - Ryo Noda

alexsellers

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