Misael Tambuwun, Introduction to Javanese, 2013

This piece is about a traditional dance from Java island utilizing a gamelan as the musical background. When I was traveling to Central Java and East Java, I saw some java dances with gamelan accompaniment. This is kind of music has traditionally been used in ceremonial Javanese rituals. Incorporating dynamics within the gamelan sound was challenging. In this piece, the dynamics from the piano 1 and 2 control the mood of the piece. The purpose of Introduction to Javanese is to bring to the audience an interpretation of the ethnic style of Javanese music that arose from life surrounded by a traditional culture. 

Introduction To Javanese

John Stacy, Permian Rose - 2013

Permian Rose - I wrote this melody years ago, and it used to have words that I have long since forgotten. The first time I remember using it was around my sophomore year of high school. I had the melody and a basic chord progression, and attempted to orchestrate it into various styles. None worked, and I wasn't satisfied with the results. So, with a lead sheet of the melody (and a new B section) written out last summer, I leave it as a piece with no fixed style, that changes every performance. The most consistent use is as a ballad, because the tune lends itself well to that.



Permian Rose

Quintet No. 1 is a tone poem, largely in a Lydian mode, that follows the story of a character from birth to adulthood. My goal with this piece was to give it a “cinematic” feel, attempting to evoke parts of the story or emotions that the character experiences with leitmotifs rather than harmonic techniques.

The birth is not an easy one — ￼there are complications — and her parents are worried and stressed, unable to know whether their newborn child will survive or not. These fears are represented by the “Worry” theme (Figure 1).

Miraculously, however, the child makes a sudden recovery, ￼and doctors clear the family to leave the hospital. At this point, we hear the first sounding of the main theme of the piece, the “Hope” theme (Figure 2). There are still moments of worry; the child is weak and occasionally sickens, but, for the most part, her young life is filled with joy and play, as heard in the waltz-like section.

Suddenly, though, in a random act of violence, both parents are murdered. The child is off playing when it happens, but returns home to find them lying dead. At this point, the waltz falters, the “Worry” theme sounds, and shock and numbness take over — she can’t process what she’s seen, so her body shuts down. We hear dissonant perversions of both the “Worry” and “Hope” themes (combined with set theory), with occasional hints of anger, but, for the most part, this section of the girl’s life is spent trying to bury all of the trauma she’s endured.

Inevitably, she reaches a boiling point as a young adult where everything she’s buried and bottled up explodes in a flurry of rage — the music speeds up, switches to an octatonic mode, and turns very aggressive, with clustered rushes of sound representing the energy being released.

The young woman eventually burns most of it off and collapses, exhausted. The “Worry” theme returns, in a new key, and she goes to a therapist, working through her problems and beginning to come to terms with her past. Finally, the “Hope” theme returns in its initial form in the horn, but with the other musical material either being altered or re-ordered.

The last section of the piece is calm, collected, but never reaches a strong resolution, with multiple iterations present of both main themes. The character has started to accept her past and she’s beginning to move forward, with hope for the future — the lack of resolution implies the long and unpredictable road ahead of her.


Quintet No. 1

Quartet No. 1

Alex Pettigrew, Images of Sarajevo Roses - 2012

	In 1992 during the Bosnian War troops blockaded the capital city of Sarajevo and started to bombard the civilian population with mortar fire in an effort to prevent the army in the city from deploying. Many innocent civilians were killed as a result. After the war had concluded the city of Sarajevo filled in explosion marks from the mortar attacks with red resin to mark where these attacks had resulted in one or more deaths. These depressingly beautiful marks called Sarajevo Roses are all over the city and are memorials to those innocents lost.
	The images in this piece capture brief moments in time of life that has come to an almost complete standstill because it is no longer safe to venture outside. Long moments of stillness give way to moments of great fear and anxiety juxtaposed together in dreamlike images.
	I chose to create this piece using the set (0,1), which is the half step, in order to maintain the feeling of anxiety and fear that would have been present in the city. The piece has no time signature and the performer takes each gesture at their own tempo, pushing and pulling as the mood fits. 



Images Of Sarajevo Roses

John Stacy, Regina - 2013

Regina - Usually, when a piece or song is given a person's name, it is a gift to that person, or a confession of love. Following that established logic, it would make sense to think that this piece was written about a girl named Regina. However, this is not the case for this piece. Regina is the name of Jacob Christensen's beard. So here is a piece, in jazz, dedicated to Jacob Christensen's beard.

Regina

A Fractured Passacaglia

“On the Beach” started out as an exercise on form, but grew into more during spring break of 2013. My family took a trip to Florida and we stayed in an apartment on the beach. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to go out every night with my recorder, paper, and a pencil. I jotted down anything that popped into my mind. I noted everything from how I felt to the sounds I was hearing. What I noticed most was how the waves came in groups of three before the water receded and started the pattern again. Three can be felt in the “A” sections of the song with triplet quarter and eighth notes. This pattern of three was only broken on one moonless and windy night where the waves came in farther, quicker, and in groups of four. This is felt in the “B” and “C” sections where one hand of the piano has a sixteenth note ostinato throughout the entirety of both sections. The text, to me, conveys an overall feeling of sadness and a loss of hope. The piece is centered around C minor, and while the song ends with three rings of C minor, each are interrupted by Bb diminished. Below is the poem.

NIGHT, a grey sky, a ghostly sea, The soft beginning of the rain: Black on the horizon, sails that wane Into the distance mistily.
The tide is rising, I can hear The soft roar broadening far along; It cries and murmurs in my ear A sleepy old forgotten song.
Softly the stealthy night descends, The black sails fade into the sky: Is this not, where the sea-line ends, The shore-line of infinity?
I cannot think or dream: the grey Unending waste of sea and night, Dull, impotently infinite, Blots out the very hope of day.


On The Beach

Emily Rubio, Eulalia - 2014

I was originally inspired by the piece “Elegy” by John Barnes Chance. It is beautifully dark and disturbing, exactly what my mood was the night I wrote Eulalia. However, as I continued writing what I thought was going to be an elegy, I realized my music wasn’t as depressing as I was originally planning. It transformed into piece that I feel represents a life of someone very dear to me; my grandmother, Eulalia. Once this occurred to me, I was suddenly flooded with more musical ideas that represented peace and hope. My grandma, who more recently has been in and out of good health, has been through so much pain in her life yet somehow remains the most peaceful and beautiful woman I have ever encountered. I hope my piece does her the justice she truly deserves. 

Eulalia

The Road Not Taken is a work exploring interpretive ambiguity. The surface level examines the meaning of the text, and its musical implications. Text painting and my own interpretation of the poem’s meaning are considered in the contour of the phrases. A background examination of the two roads of tonal and neo-tonal concepts occurs concurrently with the surface layer. As the text suggests a traveler’s contemplation of a choice in direction, the music responds with subtle changes from the tonal idiom, with its defining harmonic goals, to a neo-tonal octatonic pitch organization with harmonic goals that are less familiar. This dichotomy is highlighted with Wagner’s “Tristan” chord to suggest a change or choice in the historical direction of musical goals. The work as a whole ends in the ambiguity suggested by the text with no one road being the “correct” choice. 

BJ Brooks