The Kid

Queen Of Chicago MASTER3

Three movement piece for piano/human breathing and doing other things. (c) 2013 Cassandra Kaczor

Performed by Jonathan Cook in November of 2013 after his commission of the work in 2012.

i. the rain
ii. the devil's playground
iii. your hands on me

on violence: i

My friend, poet and multimedia artist Samantha Schaefer has been sending me voice memos of vocal improvisations. I have taken these memos and reimagined them as fixed media works.

Sam's Song 1: Hi

Seth Pae, viola

secondhand smoke is based on a piece of prose I wrote in 2016. It is a story about someone accompanying a friend to buy cigarettes because she doesn’t want them to walk alone. At the end of the story, she is forgotten at the store. She lingers behind, following a trail of secondhand smoke, to make sure her friend gets home safely and then goes her own way, realizing that she is an afterthought.

I have tried to portray this image through the viola. The performer will play certain notes with extra bow pressure, causing other strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving a weak, empty drone effect, if the note that is played is perfectly in tune with the open string. In this way, the piece is both an exploration of a story but also a technical study.

secondhand smoke_Pae

secondhand smoke is based on a piece of prose I wrote in 2016. It is a story about someone realizing that she is an afterthought to a good friend.

I have tried to portray this image through the viola. The performer will play certain notes with extra bow pressure, causing other strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving a weak, empty drone effect, if the note that is played is perfectly in tune with the open string. In this way, the piece is both an exploration of a story but also a technical study.

secondhand smoke_Clarke

Piano solo written for (and performed by) Jonathan Hannau in 2016. This piece begins peacefully and becomes more and more agitated until its implosion and collapse.

unravel

This is a piece for singing and beatboxing violist written at the behest of my friend Katherine Clarke. 'Blues for Katherine' combines the technical requirements of a classical violist with the sound world of a fiddle player. Katherine skillfully accompanies her voice with viola, and flips the roles to accompany the viola with her voice in this challenging work.

This audio includes a brief spoken introduction to the track.

Blues For Katherine

Anyway

Many of my favorite songs are by male artists and they come off a little creepy at times (the late 90s through mid-2000s rock catalogue lacked a sort of PC filter), so I figured I would write a creepy song through a female lens because girls can be creeps too!

This demo is my first go at a straight ahead driving rock song. Many thanks to Jordan Jenkins (bass, mixing) and John Weston (guitars, mixing) for their creative contributions on this song!

Hit Me Up

This is a cover of an original song English Singer-Songwriter-Violist-Composer Katherine Clarke. Katherine has played my compositions for viola/singing violist in the past, and now I have the privilege of singing one of her songs! Be sure to follow her on Twitter at @kclarkeviola

Time Stops (by Katherine Clarke)

Here's my first try at an electronic song meant for clubbing. The only catch is...the party's gotta be inside your own house during Corona times. Enjoy!

I'm Still Wild

Animal

Cassandra Kaczor is a pianist-composer currently working in Chicago, Illinois. She has been formally trained in piano (18 years) and composition (5 years). She has had the pleasure of performing in well-known venues such as Severence Hall’s Reinberger Chamber Hall, in her native city of Cleveland, Ohio, the Academie International de Musique de Colombes in Colombes, France and Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

When she is not doing music-things, Kaczor enjoys practicing the martial art of Muay Thai, songwriting, long runs on Lake Michigan, ogling strangers' dogs while out walking, good drinks, good company, and chronically overthinking as much as possible.

Cassandra Kaczor

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