Written by rising high school senior Leandro Torres as part of the Compose Yourself Intensive program in August 2022.

ACO's Compose Yourself! program is for high school age musicians who want to compose their own music. Classes help young composers develop their creativity and learn professional standards in a supportive, hands-on environment. This program has a strong record of preparing students for the rigors of college and beyond.

Enough by Leandro Torres (ACO Compose Yourself Student)

Three Shades Without Angles

for none shall gaze upon the Father and live

"Shifting Sands" (2016) for trumpet and electronics, by Saad Haddad

Perusal Score, Program Notes, and Purchase Information: 
http://www.saadnhaddad.com/shiftingsandstrumpet.html

Theo Van Dyck, trumpet
https://soundcloud.com/van_dyck

Shifting Sands (version for trumpet and electronics)

"Kolmanskop", by Will Healy, performed by the Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall. Conducted by Jeff Milarsky. This project was funded by the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College.

Program note:

Kolmanskop is a ghost town, located in a desert near the coast of Namibia. A German diamond mining settlement until its abandonment in the 1950's, the surrounding sands have filled the homes. The first time I came across pictures of Kolmanskop, I was awestruck by the beauty and strangeness of the place. The photographs looked like surrealist art, with mountains of sand, sometimes to the tops of doorways and roofs, inundating ornate colonial houses. 

In 2014, I was awarded the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College to go to Kolmanskop and compose a piece based on that setting.  I spent countless hours sitting in the houses last April with blank staff paper and a pencil, sketching out a plan for the piece. In the end, I wanted to represent more than just the visual elements of Kolmanskop. I tried to depict the idea of decay as the sand fills the houses, the sense of loss and nostalgia as the structures fade away, and the passage of time. The whole town is a bit like an hourglass--the more time that passes, the higher the sand becomes. I found a violin in one of the houses behind a glass case, apparently made by a violin-maker in Kolmanskop at the turn of the century. It was strange to know that in these eerily silent buildings there had once been music, and I decided to represent that with a recurring offstage violin solo. As the violin plays, it is often hidden by walls of sound, struggling to be heard above the orchestra. 

This piece is written in memory of my teacher, Steven Stucky. He and I had many discussions about the time, loss and what that meant in music, and those sections took on new meaning after his death. I want to thank him, as well as John Corigliano, Samuel Adler, and Harold Meltzer for their guidance on the piece. I also want to thank Mr. Milarsky and the Juilliard Orchestra for their hard work and their continuing dedication to making new music.

Kolmanskop

Trio for Violin, Horn, & Piano

BABBITT - COMPOSITION FOR 12 INSTRUMENTS - Monod - BBC

Get in the mood where you wanna punch your opp in the face!

Stop It

modest attempt to record For Cornelius by Alvin Curran, true to some subjective hearingexperiences - a live transformation by Reinier van Houdt

Enough by Leandro Torres (ACO Compose Yourself Student)

AmCompOrch