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

pour

Completed September 11, 2023
Premiered by JACK Quartet in Taplin Auditorium, November 29, 2023

Written for JACK Quartet

The grisaille technique has always interested me for the challenges posed to its practitioners: the technique limits painters to monochromatic palettes. Beginning as underpainting for stained glass, grisaille eventually flourished as an entire form of its own in the 16th century. Today, art historians depict it as a singularly rigorous exercise that forced artists to more carefully consider their brushstrokes and composition in the absence of color. 

Many of my teachers spoke similarly about writing for string quartet: a practice that forced artists to write with economy and intention within a limited color palette. This piece, Panes of Grisaille, is a study in timbre, seeking to pull as much depth and energy from its homogeneous instrumentation as possible. The music leans heavily into sounds and tunings that are only possible on strings, ricocheting through as many techniques as possible while barreling forward with incessant momentum. 

I owe much thanks to the astounding musicians of JACK Quartet, to whom this piece is dedicated. I only dared write something so frankly demanding knowing it would be in their hands.

Panes of Grisaille, for string quartet

Kory Reeder Walls of Brocade Fields

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

Panes of Grisaille, for string quartet

Bobby Ge

Related tracks