O Traurigkeit (2020 / rev. 2022)
by Adrian Foster

Adrian Foster, organ (recorded at the Sacré-Cœur-de-Jésus, Montréal)
Kimberley Lynch, voice

O Traurigkeit (2020/2022)

pop song for piano & electronics performed by conrad tao at new music on the point 2022

audio engineering: brian riordan
https://soundcloud.com/conradtao

pop song

This is a live performance piece composed and performed during my undergraduate career in receiving a Bachelor's in music.  It is meant to be performed for Voice, Synth, and Playback File with accompanying visuals.

The program notes are as follows:

An atmospheric and improvisatory soundscape exploring the ebb and flow of human intimacy.  From inner soliloquy to interpersonal expression, it is a disjunct tableau of first meeting to final goodbye.

Special thanks to Anson for voice acting!

Optic Nerve

Vocalise Two for solo cello by Alex Van Sant. Written in 2024 for performance by Clara Griffin on December 11th 2024. 

Vocalise Two is a piece for solo cello that I finished in fall 2024 that expresses my experience with taking testosterone as a transgender vocalist. Voice was my primary instrument during my undergraduate studies, and I was a soprano. I felt apprehensive about the change that my voice would undergo as a result of testosterone, but I decided to start because I knew testosterone is necessary for my emotional wellbeing. This piece is an exploration of those vocal changes—a chronicle of frustration and frenzied battling with my voice that eventually settles with a consonant and melodious ending in the instrument’s lower register. I chose to write for cello because its range is so wide, offering ample space to explore different timbres and registers, just like I had to in the process of learning and then relearning how to sing.
Vocalise Two uses a solo instrument to express my experience of my voice as a locus of struggle, self-discovery, and self-construction. At the beginning of the piece, the cellist saws away at the strings in the high register, and this gradually unfurls from tremolo, to runs, to a singable melody, all while the register generally lowers. I took inspiration from a classic piece of soprano repertoire, Mozart’s aria Der Hölle Rache, for the descending runs—a reference to the convention of the mad scene in opera. As a site of gendered musical expression, the mad scene is turned on its head, ending comfortably in a completely different timbral world that opens onto new possibilities. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with a fellow transgender musician on this piece, Clara Griffin, who was kind enough to supply this recording in advance of her performance of Vocalise Two at her senior recital on December 12th in Montreal.

Vocalise Two

a friend to sheep

New England-based composer, conductor, and vocalist. They/he. alexandervansant.com

Vocalise Two

Alex Van Sant

Related tracks