“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas 

Seascape was written for the first Atlas Ensemble Composers Competition. It was premiered by the Atlas Ensemble at the Muziekgebouw aan't 1J in Amsterdam on 7 September, 2014, conducted by Artyom Kim. As I have never written for an ensemble of a combination with Asian and European instruments, the challenge to create a body of work to balance both sound worlds was daunting.  I investigated the non-western instruments that resonated with my style as a composer, and therefore created an atmospheric and haunting landscape that embraces both forces from the two continents.  I decided to explore the voices and densities of the sea, as some of the Asian instruments in this piece often depict the fluidity and density of water.  Seascape includes various motifs represents sounds and clichés from the ocean, notably waves, water currents, drones, and ship foghorns.  In addition, this work illuminates a melancholic and meditative experience for the listener.

Instrumentation

Flute/Alto Flute/Shakuhachi
Oboe/English Horn
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Soprano Saxophone/Sho

Duduk
Sarangi
Qanun
Zheng
Sheng
Kemençe

Percussion (2 players): Tam-Tam, Crotales, Triangle, Woodblocks, Vibraphone, Bass Drum, Waterphone

Harp

Violin
Viola
Violoncello
Contrabass


Also, special thanks to Anne Breathwick for sharing her artwork on this page ("Seascape" oil on canvas, 2008)

Seascape

From an early age, Jason Michael Gerraughty (b. 1982) played brass instruments in community bands, drum and bugle corps, musical pits, and orchestras in small towns throughout New England. These influences solidified a desire to create music of value to both amateur and seasoned listeners.  A central tenet of his work is combining innovative approaches to form, color, and texture with a direct and intuitive musical framework. Gerraughty’s music produces new and peculiar blooms from its roots in the classical tradition.

Gerraughty holds a PhD from Stony Brook University, but currently works outside of academia.  Composing, his true passion, occurs in the early morning hours before work each day. He lives in the desert outside Los Angeles, but dreams of the Atlantic beachside towns of his youth often.

The Atlas Ensemble is a unique chamber orchestra uniting brilliant musicians from China, Central Asia, the Near East and Europe. The ensemble presents an unheard sound world of instruments from different cultures. The repertoire consists entirely of specially commissioned works.

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.