Chamber Concerto (2022) in one movement 
for nine players and electronics

Live recording of the premiere at UC San Diego, May 2022

Michael Jones & Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang & Kyle Adam Blair, keyboards
Ilana Waniuk & Pauline Ng, violins
Alex Taylor, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

"Chamber Concerto" is a celebration of instruments and the musicians who play them. Although a certain emphasis is placed on the synthesizers of the ensemble—with their ever-shifting tuning and timbral identities often articulating the work’s form—this is not only a synthesizer concerto: ultimately, everyone has their say and comes to the fore as soloist. And, at the apex of the piece, the paradigm of soloist-versus- tutti is set aside altogether: here, the entire ensemble metaphorically breathes together, as if a single organism.

After having made a series of intensely focused, inward-facing works amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I see "Chamber Concerto" as a more gregarious type of piece that celebrates the multiplicity of its materials. Aspects of some of my earlier works make appearances here, sometimes in direct quotation, sometimes in more abstract ways.

"Chamber Concerto" unfolds in a single, continuous movement. Many may wish simply to listen and form their own impressions, but for those interested in a “guided tour” of the form, a rough outline follows:

1. A rhapsodic, microtonal synthesizer solo is joined by an atmospheric ensemble accompaniment. Gentle clouds of spatial audio briefly encircle the audience. The tempo quickens into a quasi-waltz, leading to...

2. A B-flat-minor outburst on the piano—an apparition of Rachmaninoff? Almost as soon as it appears, the music is again microtonally inflected by the synthesizer and winds its way back to the opening texture. Suddenly...

3. A brisk, playful toccata begins. Wooden and skin percussion instruments feature prominently, as do synthesized harpsichord and harp timbres. The toccata eventually topples into...

4. Another fast section, this one more impassioned in character. A hyper-expressive line is passed between the cello and viola, winding its way down in register while being interrupted by fast, aggressive gestures.

5. The ensemble eventually settles into a calmer mode. Spatial audio returns, as does the Rachmaninoff-esque material, now sounding like a faded memory. Up to this point in the piece, the cello’s lowest string (typically a C) has been tuned down to B-flat. This fact is now overtly revealed in a series of gently pulsing B-flat overtone chords. The “apotheosis” of the B-flat string having now been reached, the music progresses to...

6. A dreamlike “tuning interlude.” The ensemble and audience are constantly enveloped by spatialized sound as the cellist tunes the B-flat string back up to C. Immediately following this interlude...

7. The ensemble plays a long, calm meditation on falling perfect fifths. The synthesizers (now generating sine tones) and strings tune harmonies in just intonation. Bowed vibraphones continually outline the fifths cycle. A simple yet expressive viola solo grows out of the texture. Suddenly...

8. The music snaps out of its dream: the fast toccata material returns. After being the sole focus of attention for an extended passage, the toccata becomes something of a formal “hub,” enabling several other ideas from earlier in the piece to be revisited as well. The work concludes in a manner both playful and reflective.

Chamber Concerto

"Hard Knocks"
Composed 1999 by Adam Silverman. Arranged for wind ensemble in 2011 by the composer.
Performed April 20, 2015 by The Florida State University Wind Orchestra, Richard Clary conductor.

Hard Knocks (Florida State Wind Orchestra)

This is the beginning of the first movement of a three-movement work, 25:00 in all.  It's cast for a small orchestra, in the vein of the Prokofiev Violin Concerti.

Violin Concerto (First Movement, 3 - 00 Excerpt)

Plectra, performed by the Chicago Harp Quartet in Chicago, October 2016.

Chicago Harp Quartet

Plectra

Inspired by my love of seedy 70s crime-thrillers and corny 80s slashers, HEADPHONE SPLITTER tells the story of an unassuming Brooklyn bird-watcher named Matt Marks, his girlfriend Baby Schenkerian, and a serial murderer the press has dubbed "The Headphone Splitter" who Matt discovers is systematically murdering headphone-wearing residents across Brooklyn. Set around various Brooklyn landmarks, HEADPHONE SPLITTER is a love letter to my adopted home, expressed through a series of grisly killings around its lovely, expansive terrain.

Headphone Splitter Ch. 1 - The Marine Park Salt Marsh (demo)

Recorded by Lydian Quartet

I – NODE: Tuning Knot  00:00-03:22
II – Recently Found Fragments: Chant Loop  03:28-11:38
III – Striding Rituals: Nocturnal Gatherings for Mass Wooing  11:44-17:30
III.5 or 5.IV – Optional habits  17:43-18:40
IV – CODEX: I know I know this (…almost remembering…)  18:44-25:04
V – Turn the Corner: Post-Rapture Celebration  25:08-28:04
VI - NODE: Ex nihilo…In nihil [-for Mary Ruth-]  28:05-35:30

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past is dedicated to the Lydian String Quartet and was composed as part of their Composition Commission Award, which was made possible by the generosity and vision of Marjorie B. and Martin Cohn. It was composed in San Francisco and Cambridge and is 35 minutes long.

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past (2013-14/rev. 2017) for string quartet

Violin Concerto 2 1st Mvt

Recorded live at 2015 Underwood New Music Readings by the American Composers Orchestra (www.americancomposers.org).

This is an excerpt of "Rocketship," the second movement of "Two Variations on Ascent into the Empyrean" for full orchestra.

Two Variations On Ascent Into The Empyrean - Rocketship - 3 Min Excerpt

Shell and Wing (2018)

commissioned for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kevin Noe, Director by the American Composers Forum CONNECT Program.  

Instrumentation: solo soprano, flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, percussion, piano

Premiere:  July 6 & 7, 2018; Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble with Lindsay Kesselman, soprano and Kevin Noe, conductor; City Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA

About:

My sons, Izaak and Declan, have profoundly changed and shaped the way I see the world. I initially set out to write a collection of vignettes about them, about childhood—a way to capture the beautiful, tender, and often silly and hilarious moments of their lives, but, my plans suddenly shifted after yet another all too common incidence of violence against children at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. In response to this violence, I felt compelled to respond in some way—to respond to my fear of sending my sons out into this violent world. Shell and Wing emerged as a collaboration and a response to these parental impulses with my friend and fellow father, poet Robert Fanning. Robert’s response to our conversation—a poem in two stanzas—gave voice to the ambiguity, the conflict I feel as a parent—this profound longing to protect my children coupled with the knowledge that I must also let them go.

The first poem is in a parent’s voice—my voice—and the second poem is in a child’s voice—that of my sons. Musically, the first movement is a sort of fragmented lullaby interwoven with a distorted memory of Robert Schumann’s Träumerei(Dreaming/Reverie) from Kinderszenen(Scenes from Childhood). Schumann’s harmonies are pulled and stretched until they resemble only a distant echo of the original. The second movement begins with solo piano, distant and aching that transforms into a quiet, dream-like duet for the soprano and vibraphone. The child’s song grows and builds, underpinned by a chaconne—a repeated chord progression—and eventually becomes the same song heard in the first movement, the parent’s song.

Read about Robert Fanning’s experience collaborating on this piece: https://robertfanning.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/collaborative-efforts/

SHELL AND WING

by Robert Fanning

I. SHELL                                                             

I hold you, breath beneath my skin, a nest of flesh. No world can break
you here. Shadows feather the shell. If you fly, you’ll never go far.
I dream my body border and sky, my heart an aviary. In my sleep, you wake.
I hold you. Breathe a nest beneath my skin, flesh no world can break.
Now, the season’s errant and astray; coiled rage hisses to strike. Hate leaks
into vine and branch, river and vein. So, song in me, rise. May death take no air
I hold. You, my breath beneath. My skin a nest of flesh. No world can break
you. Here, shadow. Feather, never go. I’m a shell if you fly. Fly far.                                                         

II. WING

You dream you hold me in your nest of breath. Before they lifted me
from mingled blood, I rose, a song within your feathered sleep
for centuries. Your veined branches mapped my lidded eyes. A tree
you dream you hold. In your nest of breaths before me. They lifted me
from you to veil the sky. I flew through your death in learning to fly.
No world bears us. Though we slip our nets of wing and flesh, may love keep
you, this dream you hold in your nest of breath, before they lift me
from mingled blood. I wrote your song within. My feathered sleep.


© Copyright 2018 by Robert Fanning
International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

Shell And Wing

"Sonata for Saxophone and Piano" by Will Healy, performed by Connor James Mikula, alto saxophone, and Will Healy, piano. Commissioned by Novus New Music and Connor James Mikula, recorded and produced by Adam Abeshouse. 

I. Overture (0:00)
II. Sarabande (5:55)
III. Toccata (11:30)

This score is available for purchase at http://willhealymusic.com/merch/sonata-for-alto-saxophone-and-piano

Much of this piece was written at the Brush Creek Foundation, Saratoga Wyoming, October 2017.

Sonata for Saxophone and Piano

Carl Schimmel is a composer based in Iowa and Illinois.  Praised by The New York Times as “vivid and dramatic,” his recent music is dense with literary and musical references, often humorous, and combines intensity of expression with a structural rigor which is influenced in part by his mathematics background.  In weaving his musical narratives from poetry, art, and even unusual words, he strives to construct emotional and culturally complex sound worlds that excite the listener’s imagination.

Winner of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize, the Lee Ettelson Award, and the 2017 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Schimmel has received honors and awards from many organizations, including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, New Music USA, and ASCAP.  His works have been performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Merkin Hall in New York, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and at other venues throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.  He has received performances and commissions from the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, California EAR Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, North/South Consonance, Quintet Attacca, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, and many others.  A graduate of Duke University (Ph.D.), the Yale School of Music (M.M.), and Case Western Reserve University (B.A. Mathematics and Music), he is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.

Please visit http://www.carlschimmel.com.