Chamber and Solo Music

Commissioned by Copland House for CULTIVATE 2021
Completed 03/25/2021

Recorded by Pala Garcia (violin), Alexis Pia Gerlach (cello), Moran Katz (clarinet), and Peggy Kampmeier (piano)

Based on Mokha Laget's 'Moroccan Capriccio'

I first met Mokha at an artist colony during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. We both felt extraordinarily fortunate to have been given the opportunity to concentrate on creating art during such an exhausting time, and as such, we both spent the majority of our residencies working in our respective studios. It was only in the tail-end of Mokha’s stay that I finally got to see her work. 

I was instantly enthralled. Her paintings possessed a palpable immediacy through their surprising scale, vibrant contrasts, and endearing whimsy. They were frequently unpredictable - trying to follow any one particular shape, I would quickly lose my place in a sea of impossible geometries. Even so, when I stepped back to consider the whole, Mokha’s paintings nonetheless felt cohesive and organic. We spoke then and there about collaborating, eventually deciding that I would write a new work based on her Moroccan Capriccio. 

The resulting piece, Intuitive Geometry, seeks to capture the same kind of mercurial yet self-consistent discourse that defines Mokha’s resplendent art. Filled with whirling arpeggios, mixed meters, and restless modulations, the piece is one of constant motion. Should any listener try to follow any one particular instrument, they might quickly become lost - yet even as ideas ricochet between the members of the quartet, the piece remains united through its economy of material. Virtually every gesture is built out of an unevenly oscillating third, ensuring that the piece as a whole maintains its congruence.

It was delicious fun translating Mokha’s kaleidoscopic architectures into music, and I am truly grateful for her friendship and artistic generosity.

Chamber Pieces

Intuitive Geometry, for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

Completed Feb. 17, 2023
Premiered Mar. 7, 2023 by ~nois
Recorded and mastered by Mike Tierney

The more people I’ve spoken with, the more I have come to cherish moments of shared understanding. For me, language often feels rather insufficient as a means of expressing thought - like trying to portray a three dimensional image on a flat surface. Understanding someone’s words is a delicate process of reconstructing the ineffable depth and interiority of their thoughts, and quite frequently, much is lost in translation. 

These ideas provided the seed for To Speak As One. To me, the saxophone quartet as an ensemble naturally contends with such questions of mutual understanding and communication. It is conversational in scale; its instruments share much in common both registrally and timbrally; virtually any technique that can be done on one instrument can be done on any other. The result is a collection of instruments that very easily behaves as a hyperinstrument, able to blend and move with uncommon unity. 

Over the course of the piece, I sought to shift throughout between treating the quartet as a singular entity versus four unique players. The resulting work scatters its lines across the group, assigning disparate notes and rhythms to each musician as they discover the composite together. Players enter and peel off constantly, and even in moments of stasis, there is an element of confusion - it’s not always clear which instrument is playing which sounds. Even with all its raucous sounds and lurching instability, though, To Speak As One is intended to be an intimate piece, ultimately focusing on how a small ensemble - with all their cuing, breathing, and eye contact - can discover ways to nonverbally find shared understanding with one another.

This piece was begun while in residence at Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, New York, as a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award.

To Speak As One, for saxophone quartet

Commissioned by Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival

Completed May 27, 2023
Premiered July 29, 2023 as part of Bang on a Can's Loud Weekend 2023 by Todd Reynolds (cond.), Claire Litwinowicz (vln.), Santiago Velo Quintairos (vla.), Elizabeth Kate (vc.), JP Bernabe (cb.), Abrielle Scott (fl.), Anne Pinkerton (ob.), Lucas Gianini (cl.), Will Pyle (sax), Maya Stone (bsn.), Betty Chen (pno.), and Ethan Strickland (perc.)

I love watching ensembles play. There’s always so much happening at any given moment: all this cuing and tuning and listening and watching. The complicated group dynamics going on can be dizzying to keep track of, and within larger chamber ensembles, there can be such an intricate web of communication that it feels like a miracle that pieces hold together at all. 

This kind of intimate group communication happens all the time in nature, and one of the most familiar is the flock. Flocks of birds have often been written about in a near-mythological manner - the massive patterns they form and their hypnotic motion have inspired studies and superstitions alike. They can grow to be tens of thousands strong, but despite all their apparent organization, flocks do not have a solitary leader. Instead, individuals hone in on the signals of their seven closest neighbors, and they move about together. Since each neighbor will have its own seven neighbors and so on, a signal from one end of the flock eventually ripples all the way to the other. 

Of a Feather is inspired by the whirling coordination of flocks. Gestures are imitated and scattered throughout the group a la flock communication, and much of the vocabulary of the piece is filled with rushing motion. The piece is mercurial and vibrant, moving rapidly through key areas while freely expanding and contracting its motifs. Ultimately, Of a Feather is a study in ensemble communication, treating its members equally as individuals and parts of a whole.

Many thanks to Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for commissioning the piece, and much gratitude to the fellows of the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival for realizing it.

Of a Feather, for chamber ensemble

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

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

Completed February 21, 2022
Recorded April 1, 2022 by Robert Brown (alto saxophone), Sherry Du (piano), Ben Giroux (percussion)
Mixed and mastered by Ed Tetreault 
Written in collaboration with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Supported by funding from the Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant

Coral reefs have fascinated me since my childhood, when I first learned about them watching Pixar’s iconic Finding Nemo. I remember being entranced in theaters by the animated reef’s resplendent colors, hypnotic variety of life, and stunning textural complexity. When I had the chance to work with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center to create a new work, coral reefs instantly came to mind as an obvious point of inspiration. 

I knew that in creating a work based on the remarkable vibrance of coral reefs that I would want to evoke, first and foremost, their almost contradictory capacity to be as alien as they were beautiful. Much research has been done to better understand coral, an academic field aging back millennia with luminaries like Pliny the Elder struggling to classify them. To capture their eerie allure, I decided to use saxophone multiphonics to ground the entire piece. These sounds could be raucous, violent, and unexpected, but also shockingly beautiful. The resulting piece, Variations for Worlds Below, is an essentially cyclic piece, consisting of four variations on a simple progression of chords built around a number of these saxophone multiphonics. 

The piece begins meditatively, establishing a broadly peaceable yet unpredictable atmosphere imitating the swaying motion of anemones and polyp tentacles. The next variation moves through songful rumination against a bed of sparkling aleatory in order to suggest the glimmering of sunlight through water. From there, the music deepens in unease to consider the alien worlds of deepwater coral and culminates in a rumbling, overpowering climax. Finally, the soundworld drifts apart into pieces, as we return to the surface.

Special thanks to Karen McDonald, Christine Buckley, Kristen Goodhue, and the rest of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Folklife team for the indispensable support they provided in realizing this piece.

Variations for Worlds Below, for alto saxophone, percussion, and piano

Bobby Ge