Heart of Glassflake (i) [2021]
for prepared cello
Live recording by the composer.

Heart of Glassflake (i)

Unmask the Magic

小幸運 cover

Copyright for this Album is owned by China Records Corporation & Modern Audio. This is for Entertainment Purposes only

Roots of the Chinese - Traditional Chinese Music Concert

Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra - Free Imagination about the Yellow River (2008)

for double reed quintet [two oboes, English horn, two bassoons]

The USDA uses the term “extra fancy” to label foods that pass the highest quality standards. For example, the USDA website describes extra fancy apples as “mature but not overripe, clean, fairly well formed, free from decay, internal browning, internal breakdown, soft scald, scab, freezing injury, visible water core, and broken skins.” Since I usually don’t think of apples and mixed nuts as fancy foods (let alone extra fancy foods), I’ve always found the term quite endearing and have always wanted to write a piece that’s discernibly fancy. This piece doesn’t exactly convey the USDA’s pristine connotations of the term, but instead sets some music in motion and then folds in a plethora of double-reed extended techniques to make the once-normal musical ideas sound extra fancy and, more importantly, deliciously strange. 

Extra Fancy was commissioned by James Blachly and the Experiential Orchestra for its Double Reed Madness concert on January 12, 2017 at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY.

Extra Fancy

For String Quartet
5'30"
1st Runner-up in New Generation 2014 (co-organized by Radio Television Hong Kong and Hong Kong Composer's Guild)
Performed by Romer String Quartet

Hyper Dance (2014)

Live performance by Zoë Martlew at Dark Music Days Festival, Reykjavik, 31st Jan 2019.
"Bow to String" by Daníel Bjarnason (2010)
Movt 3 "Air to Breath"

Venue - Kaldalón, Harpa, Reykjavik, Iceland
Sound technicians Jesper Pedersen
Þráinn Óskarsson
Recorded by Cato Langnes (NOTAM)

Dark Music Days

Daniel Bjarnason, Bow to String 3) Air to Breath

this song means a lot to me. i made it as a result of discomfort. i cannot advocate enough for coping with internal malaise.

thank you for listening<3

master: https://soundcloud.com/knoir <333

thrifting in the fall

Commissioned and premiered by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Laura Arganbright and Robert Walker oboes.

Video of this performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRWutfyY2eo

During the Baroque era the double oboe concerto was somewhat of a genre, especially among Italian composers. Alessandro Marcello wrote two, Antonio Vivaldi wrote four, and Tomaso Albinoni—who seemed really taken by oboe—wrote eight. Over the last few years, I too have grown to adore the instrument. In fact, I’ve become such an admirer of the oboe and other double reed instruments that in 2017 I wrote a piece for double reed sextet called Extra Fancy. The sextet is an exploration of “extra fancy” techniques that these instruments can produce, particularly multiphonics. Multiphonics are produced when the performer uses a technically incorrect fingering to create a distorted, complex sound with two or more pitches. Multiphonics can sound bizarre (if not foul) to some listeners, but I’ve always found them to be enchanting and, for lack of a better term, misunderstood.

Though the pieces don’t share any musical material, I think of Extra(ordinarily) Fancy as a bigger and better sequel to the sextet. While the concerto again explores the melodic potential of various multiphonics, it also works as a whimsical exploration of duality; while one oboist is focused on sounding ordinarily fancy, the other oboist is determined to prove the extra fancy virtues of multiphonics. After a short Vivaldi-esque introduction that establishes the main melodic ideas of the piece, the oboists go at it. They mock each other, squawk at each other, and even talk over each other. The orchestra observes and joins in as the oboists continually bicker back and forth, all culminating in a reconciliation where the once-hesitant oboist learns (and even enthusiastically performs) a few multiphonics alongside the other oboist.

This piece was commissioned in 2019 by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra and is dedicated to oboists Robert Walker and Laura Arganbright.

Extra(ordinarily) Fancy: Concerto for Two Oboes

Track 2/9

From the album, Spiritdance

DOWNLOAD: aethoro.bandcamp.com/album/spiritdance
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/0rlVVwRtWUfbF76sLiXzrg?si=xfh0UHj5TfGO560sB1aYYQ

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Spiritdance

Luma

NEW NEW Download link (3/12): http://www.mediafire.com/?irhf0llfskv3590

Unmask the Magic

Alvin Leung