So Beautiful and such talent. LOVE this premiere... You are an incredible young man Austin. 🥰

Recorded by Nanci Belmont (bassoon) and Contemporaneous

Aperture (2021) for bassoon and Contemporaneous

Violin: Celeste Pena
Cello: Haley Hedegard
Clarinet: Madelyn Armes
Flute: John Robert Santiago
Piano: Austin Ho

Recording, mixing, and mastering by Sergey Parfenov.

Good Trouble

Christian Gonzales, violin I 
Alice Townsend, violin II
Angie Zheng, viola
Calvin Kung, cello
Chris Baechtel, double bass

Pluck (2021) (Version for String Quintet)

for violin, alto saxophone, piano, and pre-recorded electronics
recorded by What's Next Ensemble

Mr. Distinguished

For clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, and double bass. Commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music with the support of Allen R. and Judy Brick Freedman. Performed 3/21/23 at the Philadelphia Film Center.

DARMOK & JALAD is an unabashedly nerdy piece of music. Fellow nerds may recognize that the title refers to an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that episode (one of my favorites), Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard encounters a spacefaring civilization called the Tamarians. We quickly learn that it isn’t possible for humanity to communicate with these intelligent aliens – a strange and concerning fact, since the “universal translator” in the ship’s computer magically solves this problem most of the time. The first words the Enterprise crew hear from the Tamarians are: “Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Umbaya. Umbaya of crossed roads. At Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray.” These phrases are as meaningless to the crew as they are to you and I, though I’ll admit that I very much enjoyed the feeling of near-comprehensibility I experienced when first listening to this strange, partially translated speech.
 
After some spacefaring adventure, the problem with translating Tamarian becomes clear: the Tamarians speak almost exclusively with proper nouns. Without knowing the stories that surround the names and places of the Tamarian language, it isn’t possible to understand its meaning. For example, saying “Romeo and Juliet” might mean something like “star-crossed love” for you and I, but that’s only true if we’ve both read Shakespeare. Ian Bogost writes a compelling article in The Atlantic in which he argues that to think like a Tamarian, “we would have to meditate on the logics in everything, to see the world as one built of weird, rusty machines whose gears squeal as they grind against one another.” In other words, the Tamarian way of thinking doesn’t reference the characters in mythological narratives. Instead, it uses those referents to convey the actual process by which a story unfolds, the same way a line of computer code might stand in for a complete underlying procedural algorithm.
 
DARMOK & JALAD is music that obsesses over some of the “weird, rusty machines” underlying the vocabulary of tonal composers. This piece atomizes and twists standard grammar from Mozart and Beethoven, revealing once-familiar patterns as slightly strange, only partially translated bits of musical material. A delightful squealing of gears, even – music that is made of a mashing up of familiar moves. “Darmok and Jalad” is, as you may have guessed, a phrase from Tamarian. The full thought is “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” or “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.” These phrases convey something like “cooperation,” or “new friendship” – as Captain Picard translates it, “Darmok and Jalad” means “that a danger shared might sometimes bring two people together.”

Darmok & Jalad

Defiant Overture is dedicated to the victims of oppression worldwide and to the brave people fighting for human dignity and freedom. 

As a U.S. citizen, I am fortunate to live in a country where I can speak freely and create art to share with the world. Not all are so fortunate. In fact, my father immigrated to the United States from Afghanistan—a country war-torn since the invasion of the Soviet Union and currently under control by the fundamentalist Taliban regime. Under Taliban rule, composing music for an Afghan is forbidden. Thus, as an American of Afghan heritage, I feel the deep, personal responsibility to amplify the spirit of freedom through my music. 

Defiant Overture features a musical motif (D Eb C B), representing “DSCH”—the initials of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, prominent critic of the autocratic Soviet regime in the 20th century. While the overture features flashy woodwinds and raucous brass and percussion, the work eventually finds peace in its middle section. The ethereal harp and whispering strings breathe tranquility into the piece—only to be swallowed again into thunderous fanfare.

I am dedicating this piece to:

The victims of the terrorist bombing on August 26th, 2021, at the Kabul International Airport including several U.S. service members and members of my family.

The people of Ukraine, suffering under the indiscriminate violence and cruelty of war.

Defiant Overture - Tampa Bay Symphony Premiere

© Tilly Jones 2023

Originally written to describe the feeling of brain fog nearing when you're on the cusp of a perceived great idea and the ensuing drifting in and out of it.

Performed by the NOW Ensemble at Bates Concert Hall, Austin, TX.
Headphones recommended, very quiet technique in the beginning!

Light Through Restless Nights

An excerpt taken from the final movement of True Great. A piece of music about growing up in South Wales.

Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnow) as part of Composition Wales 2019, conducted by B Tommy Andersson.

True Great (excerpt taken from movement 3)

Dances from a White Wicker Drawer

Dances From A White Wicker Drawer

Iannis Xenakis: ”…I think that the music that I write is not important for most of the people. It is like an island. …maybe after my death [people] will be more interested in what I have done during my life. But that is not a problem because I cannot do anything else. I am writing music…”

Nisi was composed for hornist Adam Unsworth, motivated by his highly personal approach to the horn. It is dedicated to composer Iannis Xenakis to commemorate his 90th birthday (May 29th, 2012), inspired by Xenakis’s singular spirit, his totally unique sonic palette, and the uncompromisingness of his ideas. Xenakis truly was and is a musical island unto himself. It’s materials are drawn from several of Xenakis’s works, notably Eonta (1963-64), Anaktoria (1969), and N’Shima (1975).

All of the electronic sounds of for Nisi are drawn from horns, in most cases from Unsworth’s own instrument(s)–recorded together at Cornell University in 2011 and 2012–with the exception of several “vocal” sounds derived from the sung text, “in vanum laboraverunt” (“labor in vain”) from Claudio Monteverdi’s Nisi Dominus (from Venetian Vespers, 1610) that appear in the last coda.

Defiant Overture - Tampa Bay Symphony Premiere

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