Baby's first lofi! (It is genuinely a lot harder than I thought!)

lofi for chuck

A work for alto saxophone and piano, written for Dr. Timothy McAllister and Liz Ames for their 2022 album, Project Encore.

KID GLOVES

Olivier Messiaen - Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant-Jésus (slowed + reverb)

Premiere recording of GOD FORBID (2022) for the University of Michigan Museum of Art's You Are Here exhibition, premiered by four absolutely fabulous Michigan saxophonists — written to be paired with Louise Nevelson's "Black Excursion No. 13."

Almost all anecdotes around Louise Nevelson position her as "the most forceful," a juggernaut who aimed for the top and didn't let up until she arrived. God Forbid reflects the orderliness of Black Excursion No. 13 and the unrelenting artist behind the pristineness. The title references a Nevelson quote about her former in-laws, art "connoisseurs" who disliked Nevelson's artistic pursuits: "Within that circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven."

Maria Torres Melgares, soprano saxophone
Andrew MacRossie, alto saxophone 
Andrew Hosler, tenor saxophone
Alex Toth, baritone saxophone

GOD FORBID

String quartet composed and premiered at the New Music for a New Year Festival (at Michigan Tech University — January 2019.)

Premiered by the Superior String Alliance Quartet (Lauren Pulcipher and Dani Simandl, violins — Ria Hodgson, viola — Kelly Quesada, cello.)

1. Wishful Thinking

A song cycle written for both Ann Moss and Alex Nowakowski — two of my dearest friends and two incredible sopranos.  This recording is from Alex's performance with Vocal Arts DC in April 2019, with Rob Ainsley at the piano.

Anastasia Pennington-Flax's Foxes is sort of a reversal of the Wilkinson — saying that, when we have foxes in our lives that sully the comings and goings of what we do (here, our "vineyards,") that we should let the foxes ruin their own lives and not ours.  The woven in metaphor comes from Song of Songs 2:15, reading:

"Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom."

III. Foxes

A song cycle written for both Ann Moss and Alex Nowakowski — two of my dearest friends and two incredible sopranos.  This recording is from Alex's performance with Vocal Arts DC in April 2019, with Rob Ainsley at the piano.

Caki Wilkinson's Fox comes with a very different image of a fox — the inconstancy, the immaterialness of the hidden creature.  In it, the narrator (and we, to some extent) are the fox, and we revel in our desires and our denials, in how difficult to pin down we are.  (It feels very "I am large; I contain multitudes.")

II. Fox

A song cycle written for both Ann Moss and Alex Nowakowski — two of my dearest friends and two incredible sopranos.  This recording is from Alex's performance with Vocal Arts DC in April 2019, with Rob Ainsley at the piano.

Jane Hirshfield's Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field At Twilight is just that: an image of three elusive creatures (when it's rare enough to see just one,) all posed at the edge of a field, near a forest — but eventually casts those foxes, once they disappear back into the forest, as our hidden hurts, our flaws, our sins, all pulled tightly into us, hidden but all too real to us.

I. Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight

BUCKBOARD CHARLIE is a small love note to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: a place of immense beauty, kind people, and — like most places in North America — a difficult history.

Commissioned and premiered by Citywater (Sacramento, CA.)

Cathie Apple, flute
Milun Doskovic, clarinet
Jennifer Reason, piano
Ben Prima, percussion
Amy Lindsey, violin
Tim Stanley, cello

1. Dead River Falls

Michigan native — composer of operas, songs, dance works, and chamber works.

Griffin Candey

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