Name: Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble by Carlos Bandera
Duration: 8 min 19 s
Description: Written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz

Cameron Cullen - flute
Alex Dergal - clarinet
Riana Heath - violin
Allen Liang - cello

Snow Fractals - for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello

Inclinations (2023) for 19 players

Conducted by Steve Schick, Jan 25 2023, Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, San Diego

Rose Lombardo, flutes
Teresa Diaz de Cossio, flutes
Carlos Felipe Rosas, oboes
Grace Talaski, clarinets
David Savage, bassoons
Darby Hinshaw, horn
Tricia Skye, horn
Rachel Allen, trumpet
Berk Schneider, trombone
Aaron McCalla, tuba
Camilo Zamudio, percussion
Tasha Smith Godinez, harp
Kate Hatmaker, violin
Myra Hinrichs, violin
Michael Molnau, viola
Andrew Waid, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Robbie Bui, cello
Matthew Henson, contrabass

Inclinations, for nineteen players

In Prayer takes its text from a moment of heightened drama in the Old Testament in which Miriam is suddenly struck with a fatal sickness. In desperation, Miriam’s brother Moses pleads to God with a humble, one-sentence prayer for healing, reciting the phrase, in Hebrew, “el na refa na la” (please God, heal her). I decided to set this text in three different ways in order to explore a myriad of approaches one might take to appeal to God at such an urgent moment. The outer movements (I. with devotion, III. with resolve) are more solemn and ritualistic, calling God forth with reverence and respect. The middle movement (II. with impatience), on the other hand, is agitated, frustrated, and cynical, riddled with desperation and disbelief.

In Prayer can be performed as a duo for singer (orig. mezzo) and violist, where the singer plays a scordatura guitar laid flat, and the violist plays a kick drum. In Prayer can also be performed as a quartet for singer, violist, guitarist, and percussionist. Contact aaron.i.levin@gmail.com for more information.

Elana Bell – voice
Brian Isaacs – viola
Matiss Cudars – guitar
Makana Medeiros – percussion

In Prayer: III. with resolve – for voice, viola, guitar, and percussion

Written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz

Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble

⇳̸̛̩̩͓͌̋͌͐̃́⇶̴̯̳̟͇̰̑̎̊̈́̌͘⇶̵̻͇͙̰̭̤̂̍͋̀̂̅̚ͅ↫̵̡̤͍̤͈͇̦̉́́̑͑̃↶̸̭͈̮̘̰̖̲̒↻̸̧̝̲̼͇̳͎͎̓̉͌̅͘  [DEMO]

Mason Moy - composition, conducting
Holly Knoch - violin 1
Simone Maura - violin 2
Nicki Chen - viola
Devin Burgenbauch - cello
Redfield Clipper - guitar
June Youngblood - upright bass
Jolee Gordon - voice & piano
Clay Zimmerman - drums
Jo Bagay - trumpet & flugelhorn
Seth Giles - trombone
Amanda Campos - flute, bass clarinet, & tenor sax
Brody Scott - alto & bari saxes

Double Feature -> Winds Interlude -> Chains of Suspicion

Three Dreams for tenor, piano, and string quartet

Commissioned by Miguel Zazueta

Performed by Miguel Zazueta (tenor), Kyle Adam Blair (piano), and Quartet Nouveau (Batya MacAdam-Somer, Missy Lukin, violins; Annabelle Terbetski, viola; Elizabeth Brown, cello)

Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, UC San Diego, 05.22.25

I. The Dream Keeper (Langston Hughes)
II. Sueño Despierto (José Martí)
III. In Tall Grass (Carl Sandburg) / Primero Sueño (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)


The Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 


Sueño despierto - José Martí

Yo sueño con los ojos
Abiertos, y de día
Y noche siempre sueño.
Y sobre las espumas
Del ancho mar revuelto,
Y por entre las crespas
Arenas del desierto,
Y del león pujante,
Monarca de mi pecho,
Montado alegremente
Sobre el sumiso cuello,
Un niño que me llama
Flotando siempre veo.

 
In Tall Grass - Carl Sandburg

Bees and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner—a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters.       

And I ask no better a winding sheet
                             (over the earth and under the sun.) 

Let the bees go honey-hunting with yellow blur of wings in the dome of my head, in the rumbling, singing arch of my skull.     

Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets? 

In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep.

 
from Primero Sueño - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Piramidal, funesta de la tierra
nacida sombra, al cielo encaminaba
de vanos obeliscos punta altiva,
escalar pretendiendo las estrellas;
si bien sus luces bellas
esemptas siempre, siempre rutilantes,
la tenebrosa guerra
que con negros vapores le intimaba
la vaporosa sombra fugitiva
burlaban tan distantes,
que su atezado ceño
al superior convexo aún no llegaba
del orbe de la diosa
que tres veces hermosa
con tres hermosos rostros ser ostenta;

quedando sólo dueño
del aire que empañaba
con el aliento denso que exhalaba.

Y en la quietud contenta […]

Three Dreams, for tenor, piano, and string quartet

Sirens - Alexa Rinn
October 25, 2025 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Sirens - Alexa Rinn

5 years - that's how long I've been working on various forms of this piece. "Escape" is about navigating a sea of distress and frightening intensity of all kinds, but hopefully always with the goal of some eventual resolution in mind. It's a work that evolved from experiments quilting together samples of all kinds - everything from reversed, processed and highly spliced opera, house, pop and country music to modern orchestral and electronic music that includes my own. All of these never quite recognizable samples combine into a nightmarish journey through a slew of intensely quiet, dramatic, occasionally even violent electronic sounds in highly dynamic space. But the nightmares do have an end: the last 5 minutes are the "sunrise", and they can be a work by itself. The ultimate resolution is the gentle, distant but very bright illumination - like an ascent into the spaceborne sunrise in the attached image, bringing us to a gentle, exhausted evaporation from the nightmare we are escaping from.

Begin at or around 11:30 for "sunrise".

escape (2025)

In Between for orchestra
Yale Philharmonia
Julian Pellicano, conductor
12/6/18, Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT

In Between

In Between (for orchestra)

Composed by Beat Furrer
Performed by Nina Dante and Dalia Chin

Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble

Carlos Bandera

Related tracks