Trombone Reel (Live)(2021) - Ben Phillips

25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago
I'm Coming Out - Diana Ross
bad guy - Billie Eilish
Changes - David Bowie

Trombone Reel (Live)(2021)

i found this on my computer from almost a year ago

untitled work in progress 2021

MIDI realization of Nostalgia II. 1997 Subaru Legacy. This movement was inspired by and is dedicated to Leslie, the 1997 Subaru Legacy that I drove in high school and my first semester of college, before she was ultimately deemed unsafe to drive by a mechanic and was sold on Craigslist for $350. It took my sister and I exactly four minutes to drive home from our high school, and so everyday on our way home, we would listen to a live version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver that was four minutes long. The guitar picking pattern from that song is quoted in the pizzicato strings.

Nostalgia II. 1997 Subaru Legacy

MIDI realization of Randall Park Blues, a brass quintet (2 tpts., horn, tbn, b. tbn [or tuba]). Please excuse the computerized swing rhythms.

The initial melody and the chords throughout the piece are based off of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” and so I titled it Randall Park Blues after the neighborhood that I have lived in for most of college. The majority of the piece could be described as moody, as I am getting very sick of my apartment where all of the walls are slanted, I’m paying for a dishwasher that doesn’t work, and I can hear my upstairs neighbors wake up at 4:30am everyday. There are improvised solos in the trombone and both of the trumpet parts, and the bass trombone has the option to improvise a walking bass line during the solo section. This piece is heavily influenced by Luther Henderson’s arrangements for Canadian Brass.

Randall Park Blues

MIDI realization of an exercise in patience, a chamber piece written for tpt., tbn., 2 vlns., vla., vc., pno., and synth.

an exercise in patience

MIDI representation of MK Ultra, a string quartet.

Samples (screams, stomps, and coughs) from fesliyanstudios.com

Project MK-Ultra was a top secret program ran by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in reaction to the Cold War, in which people were given drugs, such as LSD, and subjected to electroshock therapy to assess the potential of these methods for use as mind control, interrogation, and torture. These experiments were often conducted without the consent or knowledge of the participants. The project ran from 1953 to 1967, and although the files were ordered to be destroyed by former CIA Director Richard Helms in 1973, 20,000 documents related to Project MK-Ultra were uncovered in 1977 and more documents were declassified in 2001 and 2018.

This piece was inspired by the docuseries Wormwood (2017, dir. Errol Morris), which tells the story of Frank Olson, a scientist and CIA employee who died under “mysterious circumstances” in 1953. The docuseries is told through Eric Olson, Frank Olson’s son, who believes that his father was murdered by the CIA after being administered LSD against his will and without his knowledge.

MK Ultra

Lemons is a duet for percussion and drum set, performed by Stas Hable and Patrick Phalen. Recorded separately to comply with social distancing.

Benjamin MacIntosh Phillips