Orchestra and Large Ensemble

Untitled Playlist

a good place to start if you’re getting to know my work!

Highlights

Commissioned by the Albany Symphony 
Completed April 28, 2021
Premiered June 11, 2021 by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony's Dogs of Desire

Newness was on my mind in late February 2021 when David Alan Miller asked me to write a piece for the Albany Symphony’s ‘Dogs of Desire.’ I had recently graduated from school, spring was around the corner, and slowly but surely, the world seemed to be inching toward some semblance of normalcy. It had been a long, dark winter, and there was a hesitant hope in the air even around me where I lived: some of Baltimore’s more enthusiastic cherry blossoms had begun to prematurely flower. 

I did not want to write a simple ‘spring has sprung!’ piece, however - the harsh realities of the last year would have made such an approach disingenuous for myself. Instead, I was drawn toward the beauteous ambiguities of Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi’s work. His poetry was filled with natural imagery of the seasons that he shaped into dark yet lyrical ruminations on life, death, and rebirth. 
	
		Fall - ‘...The wind that burns to ash then restores.
			The air fills with embers
			And you go with them.’ 
						- excerpted from his poem, ‘草 (Grass)’

		Winter - ‘Bloom, unbloomed - snow soon thaws (by the dawn)
			midnight snow shrouds the night...’ 
						- excerpted from his poem, ‘花非花 (Flower, no flower)’

		Spring - ‘The gate illumined by
			The sun brings the sweet taste of spring.’
						- excerpted from his poem, ‘春眠 (Spring sleep)’ 

Relatively few of Bai’s poems seemed to concern the summer, and so The Gate Illumined is shaped around his preferred seasons. The music begins tentatively, opening with a brief flurry of motion that is quickly suspended. The gesture repeats, slowly unfolding into running scales and drifting harmonies as two singers trade phrases back and forth. The two are initially opposed - one sings of desolation, the other restoration. Gradually, the music begins to shed its equivocation as its pulse solidifies into running motion. A gathering sense of optimism swells through the ensemble as the singers find agreement. Ultimately, the piece ends the way it began, culminating in the opening gesture.

Large Ensemble

The Gate Illumined, for two sopranos and sinfonietta

Completed June 5, 2021

Commissioned by Dr. Wendy Case

Cities can mean vastly different things for different people. Glimmering masses of glass, steel, and concrete, such urban centers often see some of the world’s richest occupying the same spaces as the poorest. For some, city streets might represent glamor, thrill, and culture; for others, they are a grim and unforgiving purgatory. I would always feel a touch of the surreal as I took walks through the various metropolitan centers I had lived in, passing soiled back alleys near gaudy concert halls, parched soup kitchens set against ostentatious skyscrapers. Somehow, it felt as though these worlds should not be able to coincide. 

Doppelgänger Streets draws its inspiration from China Miéville’s smoky noir, The City and the City. Ostensibly a murder mystery, the novel explores a peculiar world in which two different cities quite literally occupy the same physical space, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to perceive one another. The idiosyncratic setting and intoxicating prose left a strong impression, stylishly evoking the paradoxical dualities of urban environments. 

To explore these themes, I wanted violin and electronics to feel dimly related yet foreign to one another, occasionally intertwining with analogous gestures. The violin plays searchingly through chiaroscuro soundscapes, drifting in and out of focus as it explores fragments of a melody. Halfway through the piece, crackling glitches begin to break up the sound, suggesting sights of things that should have remained unseen. Eventually, the violin manages to realize its ruminative melody, bringing a touch of warmth to a world otherwise coldly aloof. 

This piece would not have been possible without the dedication of Dr. Wendy Case, whose humor, kindness, and enthusiasm made her a wonderful collaborator to work with.

Doppelgänger Streets, for violin and electronics

Co-commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony and the Interlochen Arts Academy as part of the First Music program

Completed October 23, 2022
Premiered March 19, 2023 by Michael Repper and the New York Youth Symphony 

Growing up between the US and China, I always found the idea of home to be somewhat elusive. This was never truer for me than in 2022: I passed through more than 20 cities over an exhilarating nine months, teaching scores of students, working with orchestras, and composing frantically the whole time. As excited as I was to take in all the sights, sounds, and locales, I also began to feel profoundly lonely. Almost every aspect of my life - my community, my family, my faith - had undergone seismic upheavals in that same stretch of time and, as I introduced myself again and again to dozens of new people in dozens of new places, I started to feel as though my name was the only point of stability I had left. 

In the midst of all the flying, I began to consider the swallow: a small, common bird that makes its home on every continent. Their ubiquity has made them symbols of familiarity for cultures across the globe. For the ancient Romans, they heralded the arrival of spring; in Chinese folklore, the swallow (燕子 - yanzi) signifies the warmth of family due to their careful attention to their young; for European sailors, sighting one was as good as sighting home, as swallows rarely flew far off the coast even during their migratory season. In this time of travel, though, they still remain extraordinarily caring, continuing to feed their young mid-flight. I wondered if swallows were able to find a sense of home in the middle of transit, and soon started to wonder if the same might be possible for myself. Despite my locality continually shifting, I was still able to maintain a few anchoring relationships in my life that give me some measure of groundedness. 

These relationships provided the seed for Sighting the Swallow, a work of restless modulations and shimmering textures that is ultimately as much a journal as it is a tribute to my loved ones. The piece begins inchoate and sparkling as songful horns carry the main idea. Gradually, the ensemble’s swirling harmonies contract into a tightening spiral, flitting birdlike from key to key with increasing energy. Finally, the roving modulations stabilize, and the music, content, quietly returns to roost in the orchestra’s highest register.

Sighting the Swallow (NYYS), for symphony orchestra

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.

Continuity Errors, for alto saxophone and wind ensemble

NOTE: This piece is meant to be enjoyed as an audiovisual work! To see the video, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0w2LJfEISA 

Completed March 7, 2024
Written for Aliayta Foon-Dancoes and j clancy
Premiered April 16, 2024 at Taplin Auditorium

No art exists in a vacuum. Everything owes its existence to something earlier, and this cycle of ideas forms the backbone of creativity. The public domain - the body of work free from copyright restriction - is one of the most important fixtures of today’s creative landscape, providing a rich library of source material for artists of any medium. 

The Disney Corporation has long had a difficult relationship with the public domain. Most famously, when their copyright on Steamboat Willie was set to expire, Disney aggressively lobbied the US government to pass the Copyright Act of 1976 (derisively called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by its critics) to dramatically extend copyright term limits for all intellectual property.

The law’s worst effect was to cast the public domain as a villain to be guarded against, a stance that could not have been less prescient. The world was on the cusp of the digital era, a time of unprecedented availability of information, and such a newly protectionist approach to IP would eventually lead to the kinds of headaches artists of all kinds face today - from remixes getting ‘copystruck’ by content monitors to exclusivity restrictions that vary confusingly from country to country. 

In 2024, Steamboat Willie finally ran out its copyright limit. Hundreds of thousands of memes sprang up to crassly mock Disney, and this piece - as much as it is a joyous celebration of the public domain - is proudly suffused with that same kind of over-the-top, meme-worthy contempt. 

It was an absolute delight to create this piece, and I must also give credit to Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and John F. Kennedy for providing such wonderful source material to supplement Mickey with.

You Have Entered The Public Domain, for violin, percussion, and fixed media

Completed July 29, 2024
Premiered December 4, 2024 by the Attacca Quartet

Dedicated to the Attacca Quartet, whose omnivorous enthusiasm for music was as infectious as it was inspiring

When preparing to write a new piece for the incredible Attacca Quartet, I had to reformulate my attitudes toward music. Where other ensembles would specialize, Attacca approached a stunningly wide repertoire with wit, joy, and open-mindedness. For them, there could be no music too high or too low, too silly or serious, too old or new. Instead, any music could serve as its own justification. 

Loosely inspired by William Blake’s parallel poetry collections ‘Songs of Innocence & Experience,’ this piece is structured in two halves that correspond roughly to the titular themes. Blake completed Songs of Experience six years after Songs of Innocence, and he originally intended the former to be exclusively centered on adulthood while the latter concentrated on youth. By the time he finished the collections, however, neither half was purely innocent nor experienced. The two contained poems of the same subject matter, the same titles, and in some cases, the same content - Blake actually moved some of the poems in 'Innocence' to 'Experience' upon completion, suggesting a complex relationship between the halves. 

I reflected on the soundworld I had developed over the six years or so since I started composing: a music of rushing motion, extended techniques, and mischievous self-awareness. This style stood in stark contrast to the first few pieces I had written: pop-like chord progressions, simple melodies, emotional transparency to the point of embarrassment. I decided I would set these old, ‘naive’ ideas in conversation with my current musical language. 

I hope that by juxtaposing and interweaving these musics that I can cast some doubt upon the linear narratives of growth we often feed ourselves. Sometimes, perhaps, one must double back to go forward.

Music of Innocence & Experience, for string quartet

Scored for string orchestra (3.3.2.2.1)

Completed 06/28/2019
Premiered 02/14/2020 by Jebat Kee and members of the Peabody Conservatory

Violins: Audrey Maxner, Nicolle Avila, Anna Pavlou, Sarah Thomas, Hanyu Feng, Adam Davis
Violas: Amy Tan and Daphne Bickley
Celli: Kyle Victor and Zoe Hardel
Double Bass: Patrick Raynard

Among my favorite pieces of music is Sibelius’s 6th Symphony. It is an extraordinary work not just for its contrapuntal elegance and formal innovation, but also for its remarkable treatment of time. From its gentle opening, the piece establishes a floating and ethereal soundworld that sounds almost unmeasured, despite its melodic and contrapuntal clarity. This image of well-formed musical objects floating, unimpeded by barlines, laid the groundwork for Minutes
Between. 

I sought to explore contrasts in the passage of time - slow melodic figurations over fast harmonic rhythms, wild arppeggios embellishing glacial chord changes, entirely unmeasured segments guided purely by musicians’ intuition, rigorously beat passages with sharply defined pulses. At many points, musicians are in entirely different tempi, stretching and playing with materials to create swirling textures at turns and dreamy counterpoint at others. 

At its heart, though, Minutes Between is guided by a romantic impulse, built as it is out of two main motifs - the soloist’s opening three notes of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, as well as a descending scalar melody. The two intermingle throughout the piece against a persistent harmonic backdrop, recast in roles austere, contemplative, anxious.

Random Stuff

Minutes Between, for chamber strings

Completed August 30, 2020
Premiered May 6, 2022 by Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra as part of the 2022 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute

Remember to Have Fun began its life as a mixed quintet written for conductor Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz. Started in the midst of an existential funk early 2020, the piece was intended to remind myself that I should, in all things musical, have fun. After all, the reason I had taken to music in the first place was because I had discovered in composing a wholly unique kind of fun that I could not find anywhere else. 

Cast in three continuous movements, Remember to Have Fun is best understood as a triptych recontextualizing a handful of simple motifs into three different kinds of fun: I. ‘Master of None’ is overly excitable, interrupting and tripping over itself as it tries to decide where to go with its cellular, half-step dominated main idea. II. ‘Think About What You’ve Done’ picks up the pieces after its exhausted predecessor, initially introspective but growing, with a twinkle in its eye, increasingly quirky and mischievous. III. ‘Remember to Have Fun,’ spurred on by the music’s increased confidence, takes the first movement’s main idea and sprints at breakneck tempo toward a rip-roaring, frenetic finish. 

The majority of the work on this piece was completed during a particularly dour and sedentary year. With all the loneliness, anxiety, and pessimism floating about, I wanted to create a piece that would be characterized by the exact opposite of all those emotions. The piece’s prosaic title ends up being many things: a title, yes, but also a word of advice to the conductor, an expression marking for musicians, a reminder to myself as an artist, a small instruction for listeners, and maybe even a bit of hopeful inspiration for you, the reader.

Continuity Errors, for alto saxophone and wind ensemble

Bobby Ge