Written for the Royal Danish Academy of Music's "Accordion Festival - The New World" (2021), performed by Arcangelo Pignatelli

Our breaths are what keep us alive. They take from the air around us and give back. Usually the phrase “catch my breath” refers to our own selves taking a pause, defined as “to wait and rest for a moment when you have been very active, so that you can begin to breathe more slowly” (Cambridge Dictionary). The saying “hold my breath” literally means stop breathing briefly, and figuratively means waiting on the edge of one’s seat for something, as in “I won’t hold my breath.”  But imagine if a breath could be caught and held in your hands…if it was something material, instead of being one with the air. Saying it to someone as opposed to applying it to yourself. Who would you say this to? What would this sensation feel like? How is it let go?

I connect breathing with time; both invisible, intangible yet inescapable, coming and going every moment. This piece is as an expression of breathing patterns, thinking about certain memories based on a graphic provided for the performer involving at times blurry dualities between still vs. moving, spoken vs. wordless, broken vs. healing, forgotten vs. relived, wrong vs. right, deafening vs. nothing, distant vs. suffocating, absent vs. present. The performer inhales and exhales the sound into the audience, with them, as if pushing them away and pulling them back in. But there is also another "audience": people in the performer's memories (especially if playing alone), and the sound qualities that memory would have...the nature of the breath in that memory. Connecting the physical and psychological, the accordion is the brain constantly sponging and absorbing life, with all the ever-oscillating neurological activity molding the mind ranging from emotions to logic. It’s about both the physicality of the body and accordion as well as the mentality fueling it. 

Physical breakage and repair are a definitive present moment that turns to past, dictated by real time. Mental breakage and repair, however, are ethereally connected between past and present, cycling back and forth more ambiguously in slow or fast motion, governed by our singular minds’ idiosyncratic perceptions; the eyes and ears through which we see, hear and process the world.

In this piece, there is always a common note bridging the left and right hands, either vertically or horizontally, in harmony or melody, representing this thread between two energies, passing breaths between each other. Often, the chord clusters grow bigger and add to what’s already there, carrying the past to the present to the future, constantly re-contextualizing the accumulation of emotional energy and memories, and playing with all the possible frameworks that could color a chord or note. In theory, to catch one’s breath, one has to meet halfway and pass it. The left and right hands become more than just functional components of the body; they are two living breathing bodies trying to connect with each other. They actively maintain their joint balance amidst sonic fragility that creates a kind of illusion of physical fragility, as if there is a possibility of suddenly falling through a floor, or beneath a high-wire, at any moment.

Cover art: Annie Nikunen

Catch My Breath And Hold It

On behalf of the community here at MusicalGrowth.com, I have personally created professionally mixed music for meditation that is available for FREE on YouTube (https://youtu.be/n7DU0zaOQB8) and SoundCloud. I hope you enjoy!

You can read up about this track here: http://musicalgrowth.com/free-guided-meditation-online-5-minutes-of-anti-stress

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FREE 5-min Meditation Music | "Birds Among The Waves"

A new experimental way of meditation: "musically guided meditation." No distractions of vocal narrators. Just the power of music. This particular video (https://youtu.be/zE0XZxz0TiM) plays a piece of music that gradually slows down so the listener is unaware of its influence.

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FREE 5min Guided Meditation | "Taking Time With Evolving Mist"

This track was improvised for the purpose of calming. Nearly every minute a new chord sounds to help a meditator relax every minute. 

Free music video here: https://youtu.be/3Waqxh_NjJ0

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Calming Sea |  Meditative Piano Solo (5min)

There are four distinct sounds in this calming piano solo: the acoustic piano, low strings, piano percussion sounds, and shimmering electronic pads. Listen to this for perfect background music while you focus or study. 

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Comment on the song and let me know if this helps you in any way!! I love making these peaceful piano songs and love it even more when it helps people :)

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FREE Relaxing Piano Music | "Turning The Compass"

Performed in NEC's Jordan Hall on September 24th, 2019 as part of the Tuesday Night New Music student composers series by:

Scott Chamberlin, soprano saxophone
Chuze Sun, alto saxophone
Lexie Aguilar, tenor saxophone
Morgan Smallwood, baritone saxophone

Hive Mind (2019) for saxophone quartet

Performed by:
Emily Sinclair (Voice)
Vanessa Ruotello (Cello)

Composed by Zade Dardari

Poem by E.E. Cummings
Recorded Virtually

what time is it?

Composed and mixed by Geoffery Munger
Performed and recorded by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra
Conducted by Zoltán Pad

III. SHOOTING STARS OVER CITY CARS

Recorded by: Unheard-of//Ensemble


Dromic is the corresponding adjective to dromos, which is defined by Dictionary.com as:

noun

Archaeology. a passageway into an ancient subterranean tomb.

a racetrack in ancient Greece.

 

Sometimes our senses sluggishly react to fast events. 

Is it because we are in an unhurried mood and slowly respond to anything? 

What happens when we are racing?

What is the threshold for calling something a surprise or an “I saw it coming” event?

Dromic Episodes - Diogo Carvalho

Baritone and piano
Dedicated to Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan
Poem by Debora Greger

The Invention Of Routine - Diogo Carvalho

Performed live in 2017 at OCCCA by Newgate Orchestra members. 
Sung by the composer.
Text by the composer.

An excerpt of the full 1-hour opera.

Reverie: Act II Scene III

“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”
― John Cage

Reverie: Act II Scene III

Chase Chandler

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Arvilla Hastings

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