Trombone and Loop Pedal/Digital Delay

"You may say I’m a Dreamer" is written for solo trombone, delay pedal, and pre-recorded narration of the late John Lennon, featuring snippets of recorded interviews of the singer and musical quotations from iconic Beatles songs as source material. This piece focuses around Lennon's political engagements, peace activism, and fight for civil rights. 

The work includes musical quotations of 2 iconic Beatles songs: “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I am the Walrus” (both written by John Lennon and credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney), and the other 2 works featured are from Lennon’s solo years: “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine".  

The title of this piece comes from a verse of Lennon’s famous signature song (“Imagine”).  After my collaboration with Cole from a previous composition involving delay pedal, the trombonist requested I write a similar type of work using spoken narration for a grant he was eligible for.  As my 2021 Christmas holiday to England was approaching, we agreed to work with speeches from this British legend, and create a composition in a surrealist landscape, which eventually led to our live collaboration for a thematic concert.  More specifically, I had chosen these two Beatles songs since they have always inspired me during my early years when exploring the psychedelic era of the 1960s.  In addition, I have selected these 2 widely known solo works by John Lennon due to the political messages that were carried out from these songs. 

"You may say I’m a Dreamer" was commissioned by Madison based trombonist Cole Bartels, and was made possible for a grant that Cole was awarded by the UW Madison Division of the Arts. This work was premiered on 8 May, 2022 in Madison, WI, as part of Ensemble in Process Midwest debut concert “Ensemble in Process: Surrealist Dreamscapes.”

You may say I'm a Dreamer

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free is a solo work for trombone and digital delay processing pedal that was written for Madison, WI based trombonist Cole Bartels and was created as a direct result of COVID-19.  The title is a verse taken from Emma Lazarus’s iconic 1883 poem “The New Colossus,” which was a tribute to the symbolism of Lady Liberty and was written to raise funds for the statue’s pedestal.  I started this work right after New York declared a state emergency due to the virus.  I can view the Statue of Liberty from my Brooklyn apartment, and it was during this time that the whole situation regarding the pandemic came full circle as I was gazing out the window.  I was immediately struck by the 11th verse of this poem, since there is a cruel twist of irony that is currently taking place in America.  We are a nation of immigrants, yet it’s shocking that the previous administration had placed very strict laws on immigration since 2017, including the immediate suspension of other immigrants from April of 2020.

The landscape of New York citizens wearing masks in public, let alone those across the United States, was also a stark contrast from Lazarus’s plea to “breathe free.”  Although the masks are required to prevent the infection of this respiratory disease, at the time of the onset of COVID I felt that we could be entering a new dystopian age where the freedom to breathe and prosper will be suppressed by major forces beyond our control.  The mood on the streets in New York City felt very grim and ominous, yet at times hopeful, as these new “social distancing” laws have put its citizens through fear and uncertainty.
 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free depicts the atmosphere felt by many concerned Americans during the height of the COVID pandemic, as it felt that our society was in fact “yearning to breathe free” from a socio-economic, physical and psychological perspective.  This piece was constructed as a ternary musical form with a duration of ten minutes, due to the inclusion of the delay pedal loops.  I experimented with various techniques and textural ranges of this instrument, as the material contracting and expanding throughout the work symbolizes the poet’s metaphor from this particular verse.  This piece also employs the use of music quotation, as the opening melodic material from America’s national anthem is echoed throughout as a warning to the masses.  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free also metaphorically alludes to a possible apocalyptic type scenario of our current environment, as this particular brass instrument subtly implies the trumpets from the Book of Revelation (though both the trombone and trumpet are part of the brass family).  

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free was recorded and mixed on May 7, 2020. The abstract video installation was finished on May 17, 2020, as it accompanies the surreal mood of the music composition.  It is comprised of actual news and media footages from various American cities during this current pandemic, and was recently awarded one of the top ten prizes from Mozaik’s Philanthropy’s “Future Art Awards” Competition for works created in response to COVID-19.

Your huddled masses yearning to be free

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.