composed for Mivos Quartet
premiered on April 9 2023 at Tenri Cultural Institute, New York

pour

Kory Reeder Walls of Brocade Fields

Commissioned by the U.S. Navy Band for Jonathan Yanik

Completed Oct. 17, 2023
Premiered at the International Saxophone Symposium on January 12, 2024 at George Mason University

As a child, I used to obsessively rewatch my favorite movies. Seeing the same sequences over and over, I would begin to notice little mistakes across cuts - misplaced items, inexplicable outfit changes, loose strands of hair - and I started to wonder how actors managed to keep their characters consistent if they could barely maintain their physical appearances. I soon realized that many actors, quite simply, did not. 

Continuity Errors, true to its name, celebrates the unexpected surrealism of inconsistency. The piece is filled with sudden, frenetic shifts in tone, register, and key, with these drop-of-a-dime changes kicked off by the clapboard-like ‘crack!’ of a whip. The solo saxophone is the star of the show, eager to shine but occasionally out of step with the whip’s cues. The music frequently invokes the stylings of grand, cinematic soundscapes, even as the soloist obsessively brings the music back toward a more mischievous, off-kilter dance. As the piece builds towards its relentless climax, it cycles again and again through the soloist’s dance, as though trying to rehearse it again and again. The piece ends explosively with a series of wild jump cuts, culminating in a final exhausted smack of the whip. 

Many thanks to Jonathan Yanik and the amazing musicians of the U.S. Navy Band for realizing this piece.

Large Ensemble

Continuity Errors, for alto saxophone and wind ensemble

Performance by Julius Akira Mauldin and The Westside Chamber Players in the Church of the Holy Apostles, New York, NY.


Program Notes:

Back in 2020, after I finished my first commission from the Albany Symphony, they sent me a wonderful book of collected poems. One of the poems included in this book, Of Rain and Air by Wayne Dodd, immediately resonated with me with its beautiful, evocative imagery and its striking relevance to both the sounds I was exploring in my new piece for Albany Symphony and what I was experiencing at the time. My piece is not a musical setting of the poem, but I feel it shares much of the same feeling as that of the text, as if they were part of the same world.


Wayne Dodd - Of Rain and Air
from Sometimes Music Rises

All day I have been closed up
inside rooms, speaking of trivial
matters. Now at last I have come out
into the night, myself a center

of darkness.
Beneath the clouds the low sky glows
with scattered lights. I can hardly think
this is happening. Here in this bright absence

of day, I feel myself opening out
with contentment.
All around me the soft rain is whispering
of thousands of feet of air

invisible above us.

Of Rain and Air (2021, rev. 2023) for chamber orchestra

For ATTBB choir. Performed by Gallicantus

I am You are Who?

"Interwoven Interstices", for improvising sextet
Premiered at Princeton Sound Kitchen, 2/6/2024

tenor saxophone: Travis Laplante
trumpet: Nate Wooley
percussion: Russell Greenberg
violin: Yuniya Edi Kwon
cello: Lester St. Louis
electric guitar: Wendy Eisenberg

Interwoven Interstices

Studio version of the first movement of Following and Flocking and interactive audio-visual piece co-composed and performed by Charlotte Mundy.

Interactive visuals, and live electronics by me
Vocal part - Charlotte Mundy

Full performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4dbT443MwE

Following And Flocking (2023) I.

Blackout -  for amplified chamber ensemble, motion sensors, live lights, visuals, and electronics

Written for TAK Ensemble 

Perusal score on my website!

Blackout (2024)

I wish for the rain

the being/the world (2024)
for Juliet Fraser and Ensemble Musikfabrik

extract recording: 
scene 10: the atmospheric agent, 
scene 11: aria (happiness) [from 4:28], 
and part of scene 12: ensemble (love) [from 10:00]

premiere recording extract from WDR, Köln on 3 March 2024

total piece duration: 1 hour

in loving memory of Amelia Cuni

commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik and Kunststiftung NRW
photograph: Janet Sinica

the being/the world (2024) scenes 10, 11, 12 (extract)

Created for An Taobh Tuathail 25th Anniversary

Continuity Errors, for alto saxophone and wind ensemble

Bobby Ge

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