Quiet Places-mvt 3

Daniel Derakhshan, composer and sound designer
Babak Kouhestani, violin

Flying In Water

HELP LEBANON: https://donate.irusa.org/campaign/577773/donate

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble feat. Nikki Einfeld (soprano) 
text by Gibran Khalil Gibran
soprano, piccolo, cello, piano 

score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/the-robin
video: https://youtu.be/nzxUPUXL_ws 

Gibran’s “The Robin” for me in 2020 represents a yearning for peace while in a state of isolation and anxiety. This feeling is also reflected in the singer’s situation. The piece, created with social-distancing measures in mind, is written such that the singer is not only physically isolated from her instrumentalist colleagues, but also musically. She has to sing, then wait for a reaction. During the pandemic, we want to gather together, but can’t.  In Gibran’s robin we find beauty, peace, and tranquility. The robin lives gracefully and in the moment. Imagining this robin as I composed has been a kind of balm. I hope it is for you, too.

Gibran, like my father, emigrated to the United States from Lebanon. My father grew up in Beirut, and I became especially motivated to work with Gibran’s poetry after Beirut’s devastating explosion, which compounded the numerous crises in that country. Half of performance royalties will be donated to relief efforts in Lebanon.

The Robin (2020)

Mennan Bërveniku, piano
Marko Trajkovski, vocal

The text is directly taken from "The Color Out of Space" By H. P. Lovecraft.

A dream from the strange days

Excerpt of live performance by Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra

Reverberations - excerpt

Paul Frehner, conductor

Paul Schulz-Courtemanche, alto flute, piccolo
Kevin Weiss, bass clarinet
Madeline Hall, electric guitar 
Megaria Halim, piano, keyboard
Zona Chen, violin
Rachel Miner, viola 
Jonathan Rowsell, tuba

Non-Directed Time aims to challenge listeners’ perception of passing time by gradually changing from ambiguity to clarity and vice versa. The material in my music repeats on large and small levels, which provides a familiar space and rhythm for the listener. Changes in repeating material affect the experience of passing time, in which time seems to expand and contract. Because the change is gradual and unpredictable, listeners may feel suspended in time—until a sudden realization or unexpected continuation happens. This suspension is a transformational process that embodies the philosophical concept of "pure becoming.”

Non-Directed Time

In my recent works, I have explored the ways in which narrative structure can be applied to musical form; for example, I have created music in which the formal sections and motivic interactions parallel those of the plot and characters of fairy tales.  In "Gate of Horn," I have attempted to apply this technique using the much more complex narrative structure of a modern poem.
Rather than portraying a series of events and interactions between characters, modern poetry often uses imagery and allusions to distill or express a concept or emotional state.  Although free verse poetry is structurally quite different from the typical forms of classical music (like the sonata or rondo, for example), I find that it can more closely approximate the experience of a musical fantasy – or, the experience of the dream state – in its sudden shifts, juxtapositions, and referential qualities.  In considering the unusual and unexpected form that my “tone poem” might take, I recalled philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s intriguing work "Upheavals of Thought," in which she discussed the many ways in which the musical experience is like dreaming.  She quotes the composer Paul Hindemith: “Dreams, memories, musical reactions – all three are made up of the same stuff.”  This seemed important to bear in mind, because I had decided – for reasons I will address below – that for this project I would choose a poem about dreams.
“The Gate of Horn,” by L.S. Asekoff, was first published in The New Yorker in 2008. The title of the poem is a reference to a scene in the Odyssey, in which Penelope declares that true dreams pass through a gate made of polished horn.  Asekoff’s poem is strikingly musical, and it is also replete with musical references: to Beethoven, to opera, and even to a quote by the composer Olivier Messiaen about the younger composer Pierre Boulez.  It also makes reference to a sonnet by Stéphane Mallarmé, whose dreamy poetry served as the text for my earliest song cycle.  Asekoff’s poem resembles the Mallarmé sonnet, too, in that ideas from the beginning of the poem recur at the end – this kind of circularity is a familiar technique in musical composition as well.  In fact, the recurrence of ideas (whether in poetry or in music) indicates the significance of those ideas to the theme of the work, and so it was important for me to identify recurring concepts in “The Gate of Horn” before I attempted to create a musical analog of Mr. Asekoff’s poem.  Water, Night, Light vs. Dark, Death, the Sacred – these are just a few of the many themes in the poem, each of which corresponds to one or more musical motives in my composition.  As in many of my other works, I have signified extra-musical concepts by using motives by other composers: Ligeti, Sciarrino, Boulez, Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart, Stravinsky….  This collage approach has the capacity to create a musical experience out of seemingly incongruous ideas – ideas that might trigger disparate memories and associations in the listener, perhaps as in a dream state.  The most significant quotations in the work are drawn from Anton Bruckner’s Mass No. 3 in F Minor, a work that Bruckner himself quotes in the slow movement of his own Symphony No. 2.  In quoting from parts of the Bruckner Mass, I attempted to make reference to the spiritual aspect of the climax of the poem, as well as to draw a connection to the final work on the concert program of the premiere performance.
The full text of L.S. Asekoff’s poem “The Gate of Horn” is provided on the following page.  Although my musical work closely parallels the structure generated by the recurring ideas in the poem, it is not necessary to experience the music as a derivation of the poem.  But, it may be illuminating.  The storm section of the first half, for example, will probably be clearly audible to listeners, as will the ecstatic references to heaven in the second half.

Read "The Gate of Horn" here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/09/15/the-gate-of-horn

Gate Of Horn, for orchestra

Written for Kurt Rohde's Farewell Tour.  Premiered in Davis, CA by Kurt Rohde and Jared Redmond in May, 2018.

Kurt Rohde

Hammer for Viola and Piano

Winter represents the coldest time during the year. Chilling wind, white snowy scene and freezing weather dominates throughout the season, including albedo, glaze ice, thunder-snow, gloriole and parhelia. Different scenes create uncertainty feelings and uncomfortable atmosphere. The tape part generates different types of sound representing the background of winter, which the delightful melody is on the violin solo part. A catchy five-note figure is emphasized many times throughout the piece, which describes the depression of difficulties walking through the snow.

Violin: Tang Choi Yi Joyce

Hau Yu Kin Anthony - Winter For Violin And Fixed Media (TANG CY Joyce)

This commission was made possible by the Steven R. Gerber Trust for the Fresh Inc Festival 2020.
Violin: Amalia Young
Viola: Tyler Pacheco
Cello: Herine Coetzee Koschak

Monomania is about an obsession for one thing, whichever this may be: something material, a dream, or a person. It’s about this thing growing in your thoughts, silently and slowly. You don’t realize what is happening and you don’t see it coming – until it’s too late. Until all your mind and will are bent over this ideal object, and until this relentless and insane desire of possessing it by all means crumbles your sanity. Dealing with the tricks of the mind is complex, and Monomania is about the impression of one’s obsessive mind, and how it sways from delusion to violence in the rush to clutch what it craves.

"Monomania" for string trio

Daniel Derakhshan, composer
Karan Salajegheh, piano

Zellige

Brazilian composer based in Ontario, Canada.

"Monomania" for string trio

Cadu Verdan

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