Completed September 14, 2022
Premiered June 3, 2023 at Current Space by Danielle Williams (cond.), Mind on Fire, and recorded live by Jason Charney

Supported by New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund for 2022-23
Commissioned by Mind on Fire
Winner of a 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award

Original text:

Movement I - The apparition of these faces in the crowd...

worn-down, faded bench 
companion to weary travelers 
catching their breath between stations
we sat together
laughing into each other’s shoulders
as we ducked beneath neon-singed clouds 
of rush hour smoke
rolling, tumbling down
old-town alleys turned glass walkways 
noodle bars turned Apple Stores

Taoist temples turned shopping malls 
teeming 
thrumming
into the night
our hands nearly touched 
amidst the rhythms of the crowd 
as indefinite and fleeting
as the skyline around us 
my train arrives
I rise to leave
looking back through tinted plastic, I wonder 
in this city of forgetting
will you remember me?

Movement II - ...petals on a wet, black bough.

when I returned
the bench was no longer there 
they turned it into 
a Starbucks
the largest in the world 
I went in
a ghost among the rows of emptied Gravitas blends 
silhouetted against the Roastery Bar’s harshly gilded tones 
floating up the escalator past smoky mocha updrafts 
and glimmering Tom Dixon fixtures
when through a tinted mezzanine glass panel -

I see us
          past coffee-stained mugs and soft curls of wispy steam 
     together, sitting
undisturbed by the surrounding rush 
of raindrops and unfilled orders
the moment suspended
     a gentle warmth about us
unconcerned, content
as we laugh, sip, and remember -
hazily I saw their outlines rise
the pair evaporating with the last of the moisture 
into the crowd, out the doors
as a gust of smog blew in 
and filled their void

they built a bigger Starbucks in Chicago.

Large Ensemble

Nanjing West Road, for soprano, mixed ensemble, and fixed media

Live performance by the Viridian Strings on August 28th, 2025 in Traverse City, Michigan.

Air On Haydn's Name

"Permafrost Ghosts" by Will Healy, performed live by Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra with Will Healy. Recorded in Santa Monica, California, July 2025.

Permafrost Ghosts (2025)

heads and thraws (wring it out) (2025)
for pianist, keyboardist, and two percussionists
Written for the 2025 Yarn/Wire Institute

Performed by Yarn/Wire
13 August 2025. Queens, NY, USA

Yarn/Wire:
Laura Barger, piano
Julia Den Boer, keyboard
Russell Greenberg and Dustin Donahue (percussion)

Programme note:
I like to think that the creative process is comprised of a convoluted collection of threads which call out, at some point, either to be untangled or tied together (knotted) for one purpose or another. In my recent works, the knot has become one of my go-to metaphor for the act of “fixing” (i.e. fastening) musical ideas using notation. This current work is made of up two movements which exist as two unique “knots”. Their respective ternary musical structures mirror one another, and serve as a “preview” of two possible approaches to dealing with the limited set of sound objects which I’d established during the process of sketching. The first movement (“first knot”) is written in the manner of the opening of a larger work. The second (“second knot”) as a bite-size encapsulation of a larger, imagined work.

— Njabulo Phungula

https://www.njabulophungula.com/heads-and-thraws-wring-it-out

I. first knot

II. second knot

odes to the body unsung (2025) for 13 players

I've been thinking a lot recently about music and the body. We react to sound in every single part in our anatomy, from our limbic system to our respiration to our motor system. But when we talk about how our bodies respond to music, we tend to focus on only certain parts – we feel it in our guts, it pulls at our heartstrings, it makes us tap our feet – and ignore others. In this piece, I imagine the music which resonates and activates the “unsung” parts of the body. What would music for the gallbladder, for the eyelashes sound like? Here, I take inspiration from the wonderful poet Sharon Olds, whose odes praise parts of the body that aren’t typical poetic subjects. 
 
“ode to the ligaments of the ankle” is a jagged, raucous folk dance, and “ode to the gallbladder” is a lullaby in warm, pulsing microtonal harmony. “ode to the vertebrae of the spine” reimagines the keyboard percussion instruments as the backbone of a skeleton, and “ode to the eyelashes” unfurls in fluttering wisps. The piece is rendered in a shimmering, dreamlike microtonal language. I invite you to not just listen to this piece, but to feel it resonate in your whole body.

odes to the body unsung was commissioned by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. It was premiered by the Grossman Ensemble, conducted by Timothy Weiss. 

Performed May 2025 by the Grossman Ensemble conducted by Timothy Weiss
Recorded by Chris Willis

odes to the body unsung is scored for sinfonietta - 1(+picc, alto fl.)1(+e.h.)10.alto sax.1000.2perc.pno.hp.11110


odes to the body unsung (2025) for sinfonietta

Michigan State University Wind Symphony - Michael Gabriel, conductor

Some of my earliest memories are of intricate boxes. My father, a furniture maker, often restores antique pieces, and I remember being fascinated by wardrobes and desks that had secret drawers and spaces. These are often only accessible by putting one’s hands in the right spot with the right pressure, a type of haptic code. In writing Puzzle Box, I wanted to create a work that pays homage to these beautifully compact pieces, where one has to explore around an object and test it in various ways until a hidden passageway opens. Puzzle Box was written for the Cabrillo Festival as part of the 2024 Conductors / Composers Workshop and is dedicated to my father. The wind band arrangement of Puzzle Box was commissioned by Kevin Sedatole, Michael Gabriel, and the Michigan State University Wind Symphony.

Puzzle Box (2024-5) for wind symphony

Premiered November 4, 2025 by Ekmeles (Charlotte Mundy (soprano), Amber Evans (mezzo-soprano), Timothy Parsons (countertenor), Tomás Cruz (tenor), Jeffrey Gavett (baritone).

Spaceships can land vertically, horizontally, or use parachutes and airbags, as with rovers and capsules. Controlled descents rely on retropropulsion, requiring precision, friction, transformation, and ultimately arrival - the shift from vast motion to stillness. The first controlled landing on another planet was Viking 1 on Mars in 1976, the same year the Rubik’s Cube was officially launched in stores in Hungary.

Decks of cards likely originated in China in the 9th century, spreading to Europe via Egypt. Shuffling can serve as a metaphor for chance, fate, randomness, and recombination - each shuffle creating a new possible universe. A conventional deck has 8×10⁶⁷ possible arrangements, a number vastly smaller than the atoms in the observable universe, yet unimaginably larger than the number of seconds since the Big Bang.

Six cards were chosen from a deck created by THIRTYMINUTES. Jeff Gavett and Charlotte Mundy both responded to these six cards. Most of the text you will hear was generated from their reflections, and in the case of V. Soldiers, the text was written entirely by Charlotte. Many thanks to Ekmeles, for guiding this musical spacecraft safely to your ears.


Six Hands for six voices

Spirare was written for CULTIVATE 2018 and was premiered by the Music from Copland House ensemble at the Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY on June 10, 2018. 

Violin - Pala Garcia
Clarinet - Carol McGonnell
Violoncello - Alexis Pia Gerlach

Spirare (2018) for violin, clarinet in Bb, and violoncello

Her Majesty the Fool (2020)
by Oren Boneh
Fanny Vicens, XAMP mictrotonal accordion and electronics

For the video: https://youtu.be/hagaxRg15FE

Composed for Fanny Vicens for premiere at Festival Manifeste IRCAM 2020
Special thanks to Grégoire Lorieux, Thierry De Mey, and the IRCAM Pedagogical Team.
Filmed at Centre Pompidou, Paris
Video production: Année Zéro – Benoît Martin, Guillaume Foresti

Nanjing West Road, for soprano, mixed ensemble, and fixed media

Bobby Ge