String Quartet No. 2 (2021) (https://lauremhiendl.com/string-quartet-no.2)
for 4 electronic string instruments, video and electronics (45 min.) View score

Commissioned by Musica Electronica Nova Festival Wrocław for NeoQuartet, co-financed by Polish Ministry of Culture

My second string quartet is animated by the wish to articulate a more intimate politics around queer distress and desires. The text, written by Jamie Shi, responds to and cares for the gifts and contributions by Wojtek Blecharz, Nico Navarro Rueda, Stellan Veloce and Weronika Wro Wrzesińska. The video is a kind of dialogic overdub that paces this immersive sound ritual, taking its cues from the late Barbara Hammer.

__________
Wrocław, PL
May 30th, 2021

String Quartet No. 2 [Excerpt]

First performance conducted by George Vass, August 2021
Commissioned by the Rodenkirchener Kammerchor und Orchester and the Presteigne Festival

Carpenter, Gary - As Dreams Are Made On...

Human Kindness is Overflowing

"And now wonder, ye angels, the Infinite has become an infant; he, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother's breast; He who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation, hath now become so weak, that He must be carried by a woman!"
   -Charles Spurgeon, from the 1857 Sermon “The Condescension of Christ”

Pillars of Creation was commissioned by Oklahoma based percussionist Hunter Gross, as part of a percussion consortium project that Mr. Gross assembled himself.  Hunter and I first met at the 2020 Sō Percussion Summer (Online) Institute, as we have collaborated on future projects since then.  Pillars of Creation was created as a request from Hunter for a large-scale type of work in the percussion medium.  Entranced by the iconic James Webb Space and Hubble Space Telescope images of the elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation is a 14.5 minute work for either percussion quartet with delay pedal, electronic sound design, or solo percussion with delay pedal and backing track.  This creation depicts the three main “pillars” with almost identical sections of exuberance, energy, and fast motion, surrounded by slow movement textures of spatial atmospheres, the formatting of stars and dwindling supernovas, cloud formations, and all cosmic sound particles that could symbolically exist in our universe.   Furthermore, the opening and closing delay infused sections with a mystical presence represents the vestige of the space’s past, given that the actual pillars no longer exist today, due to the pillars that once existed is 7,000 light years away from earth.

Pillars of Creation

Instrumentation: flute, oboe/english horn, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, horn in F, trumpet, trombone, 2 percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, violoncello, contrabass

Construction STILL in Process… is somewhat of a sequel to my piece for Small Chamber Ensemble “Construction in Process…” which had its premiere at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn from 2011, before having a performance at the 2011 June in Buffalo Festival. Ken Thompson, who conducted this premiere, also performed in the Buffalo performance of this predecessor, so I felt a composition in its earlier style would be appropriate. I incorporate similar cells, motives, and textures from the 2011 piece, including forms with overlapping textures and sections. From my 2011 programme notes, I was very intrigued by the “process in itself concept” as it pertains to the act of composing: the “process” of constructing a piece of music is an art in and of itself, rather than the finished product per se. Construction STILL in Process… continues in this tradition, as blocks of parallel fifth motives climbs and builds as a thematic foreground throughout the whole work, but never arrives at a final ending point. As this energetic fast piece is also an embracement to my New York roots, I include the tongue and cheek musical cliché insert “Take the T Train”, which is symbolic to the Second Avenue Local Subway infrastructure that has been in the process of construction for almost a century, though the final result of MTA service STILL remains in limbo. Construction STILL in Process…was premiered at MASS MoCA for the 2016 Bang on a Can Festival on July 25, 2016.

Construction STILL in Process...

Low Hanging Fruit

Awakening | Guidonian Hand - I. Tekiah (Blast)

“First They Came…”, for vocal quartet (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone) and string trio, was written for the 2018 Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium.  I had chosen this iconic poem due to my reaction of the current political state in this country.  In 2017 I was living in England at the time, and I was horrified to learn about the Executive Order 13769, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”, often referred to as the “Muslim ban” or the “travel ban,” signed by President Donald Trump on 27 January, 2017.  Although this law was revised to a “watered down, politically correct version” from its predecessor, the symbolism in this poem between Nazi Germany and Trump’s America is quite alarming and “speculatively” prophetic.  Clearly the ugly insidious mask of fasicm is subtly creeping up into America’s homeland: anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, sexism, and of course, the hatred towards those of the Islamic faith is on the rise, and in some instances, an acceptable form of scapegoat behavior in the United States.  When completing this work, by sheer “coincidence” I happen to stumble upon “The Handmaid’s Tale” TV series on Hulu, which is currently based on Margaret Attwood’s 1985 dystopian model.  The main protagonist and narrator, Offred the Handmaid, makes the following observation when reflecting of her “old life” as “June” before the great fall of America’s society to the “Republic of Gilead,” which caught my eye upon creating this piece based on Niemöller’s text:

“Now I’m awake to the world.  I was asleep before. That’s how we let it happen.  When they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up.  When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution, we didn’t wake up then, either. Nothing changes instantaneously.  In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” 

Offred’s repeated theme of “not waking up” is strikingly similar to Niemöller’s repeated stance on “not speaking out”, and the gradual “heating bathtub” could also resemble the slow purging of the collective groups from his poem.  Although Attwood’s vision of a totalitarian theonomic military dictatorship is not so quite far off from the Trump presidency, there are symptoms in our current political climate that are parallel to the Republic of Gilead.  It is my hope that my musical approach to Niemöller written in 2018 is a cautionary tale, rather than being a prologue for what could transpire if we are not careful.  Moreover, I will close this commentary of my musical rendition to Martin Niemoller’s “First they Came…” by stating a very special historical quote as a dire warning: “'Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.'  (George Santayana)
                                                                                                                        -Brian Mark

Soprano: Caroline Jamsa
Alto: Sarah Brauer
Tenor: Jens Ibsen
Baritone: Alex Goodhart
Bryce C. Caster: Violin
Celka Ilona Ojakangas: Viola
Ramsey Sadaka: Violoncello
Dawn Sonntag, Conductor

“First they Came…”

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

-Text, Martin Niemöller

"First they Came..."

RLPO and Junior Choirs cond. Michael Seal - 16th February 2019. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

The world of Marion Angus (1865-1946): ghosts, twilight, folk memory, music, mythology and legend. Her poems are direct, often wistful, certainly plangent, and imbued with a gentle, pantheistic mysticism. In setting them, I sought to explore the intersection between waking and sleeping, night and day, nature and supernature. By contrast, Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem is a biting critique of fellow guests at a spa (a rhyming ‘hell is other people’!) whilst the anonymous poem (one of Child’s Ballads) tells of a vertically challenged fellow with unpredictable superpowers. 

There are four particular elements that colour the piece:
•	Like apparitions, melodies in one song appear or reappear in others. For example, the Ghostly Companions tune haunts both The Ghost and The Wee Wee Man whilst a variant of The Ghost’s principle tune inhabits both Ghostly Companions and Annie Honey as a bass line. Similarly, Dawn and Twilight reappears in The Wee Wee Man and forms the harmonic basis for All Souls’ Eve.
•	Canons: these become metaphors for shadows, echoes and reflections.
•	Major/minor key ambivalences reflect hypnagogia (the in-between state where one is neither fully awake nor fully asleep).
•	Fragments of Scottish folk tunes also haunt the score, particularly - and appropriately - ‘Drowsy Maggie’. Writing this piece rekindled my own spectral memories of the many years I spent playing in Scottish country-dance and ceilidh bands!
© Gary Carpenter 2018

All Souls' Eve

Wet Ink Winter Chamber Concert - Music from hcmf// 2019
December 13, 2019 @ St Peter's Chelsea

Kristina Wolfe: A Mere Echo of Aristoxenus (2019)
I. Ghost Aulos for Vitruvius
II. Heptaechon

Performed by Wet Ink Ensemble:
Alice Teyssier, flutes
Alex Mincek, saxophone
Ian Antonio, percussion
Eric Wubbels, piano
Josh Modney, violin
Sam Pluta, electronics

Kristina Wolfe: A Mere Echo of Aristoxenus (2019)

New York City based composer, pianist and video artist Brian Mark has been hailed as an "attractive and intelligible" artist (Boston Musical Intelligencer), whose work is "compelling" (London Jazz News), and "preserves the vibrancy and relevance of contemporary art music" (New York Examiner). The American Composers Forum esteemed Brian as an "intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth”, and his concert programming has recently been described as “a fluid approach to presenting new music in fresh contexts and juxtapositions” (The New Yorker).

Brian’s music have been performed by many notable ensembles, such as the BBC Singers, Psappha Ensemble, Chelsea Symphony, Ensemble Signal, Atlas Ensemble, MikroEnsemble, Brave New Works, Choral Chameleon, both the Ligeti and Esterhazy String Quartets, Juventas Ensemble, Dither Quartet, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, among many others. His works have been presented around the world in festivals such as Bang on a Can, MATA, Oregon Bach Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Atlas Festival, Spitalfields Music Festival, i=u, June in Buffalo, Tutti Festival, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the highSCORE Festival.

Brian has recently been awarded a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council.  He has also received multiple awards and grants from the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program/Jerome Fund, New Music USA, the Grammy Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP and SCI, New London Singers, Ross McKee Foundation, Florence Gould Michael Iovenko Memorial Fellowship, the BMI Henry Warren Film Scoring Award, and was very highly commended for the 2016 Alan Bush Prize.  He has been featured as a composer-in-residence with the Chelsea Symphony, the Bizarre Noir Theatre Company, and was awarded multiple artist residencies at the I-Park Artists’ Enclave, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Ucross Foundation.  He has received an Honorable Mention from the 2015 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, and recently was awarded one of the top ten prizes from Mozaik’s Philanthropy’s “Future Art Awards” Competition for works created in response to COVID-19.  In 2019 Brian also received a fellowship to study Korean Music at the National Gugak Centre in Seoul.   

As a composer for film, his music for the Independent Short Film Misunderstood, directed by Pablo Herrán de Viu, was exhibited at the 2009 Screen Loud Film Festival in New York City, and the 2010 Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre de Humberto Solás in Habana City, Cuba. His collaborative work Sublime Oasis, commissioned by the East London Dance Company, was showcased at the 2012 Spitalfields Hidden Gems Dance Festival.

From 2009-2011 Brian was the Co-Artistic Director and Founder for DETOUR, a composer collective and New Music Ensemble, which was featured as “one the top five new music events of 2011" from New York’s Classical WQXR. He has also collaborated with UK’s record label Nonclassical as a concert curator, featuring emerging composers and artists throughout London and abroad. In addition, he was appointed as an Associate Member for the London Symphony Orchestra’s Composer Soundhub Scheme from 2015-2017, which culminated of his first video installation performance comprising of members from the LSO.  His curated concert series Ensemble in Process made its debut at the Iklectik Creative Space in Southeast London on 15 May, 2017.

Brian had completed his PhD at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Gary Carpenter.  He is also a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University.  He has received a graduate certificate in film scoring from the University of Southern California, and has also studied with Philip Cashian, Samuel Adler, David Conte, David Garner, James Russell Smith, and Howard Frazin.

Pillars of Creation

Brian Mark

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