Morceau pour Sill is a concerto for solo bassoon and septet: clarinet, horn, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. It takes its name from its first soloist, Brendon Sill—fantastic musician and friend. Through countless meetings scattered across months I sought Brendon’s guidance for how to best write for the bassoon. We tested out contrasting musical ideas, experimented with playing techniques, and determined together where improvements were necessary. A few times I wrote something nearly impossible, but Brendon could always play it! I am forever grateful for his willingness to try new things and fearlessness of challenge.

The opening movement, Zigzags in Watercolor Harmonies, is based on a lyrical melody that first appears in the bassoon. It is long and winding with large leaps and inward spirals that create a sense of yearning. Alongside the bassoon melody is an ethereal sustain by the septet, an ever-changing chord of blurred harmonies. From the septet, instruments emerge with their own variations on the melody, engaging with the bassoon as secondary soloists. Everything builds towards an expansive climax, but then collapses into agitation. Like a rogue snake charmer, the bassoon twists and tangles the melody, distorting it into unpredictable, theatrical gestures. The septet joins with biting interjections that grow into fiery counterpoint. At its peak, the music transforms into the earlier anticipated climax, complete with soaring melodic lines and rich harmonies. As things settle and relax, the melody is last played in its entirety by a solo horn, the rest of the ensemble gradually disappearing into air and silence.  

The shortest of the three movements, ROAR! is an extensive cadenza for the bassoon. The music is rough and visceral, the bassoon snarling in its lowest register and performing wild acrobatics. With ominous drones and dissonant outbursts, the septet responds to the bassoon, marking an ensemble dialogue of conflict: bassoon versus septet. The heated dynamic between the two sides takes its inspiration from a mafia-type board game of secret identities. Eventually, the conflict turns to an aggressive sprint that leads directly to the finale of the work. 

Fireworks, Fanfares, and Shenanigans could be described as a certified smorgasbord, incorporating jazz, Mario Kart, Stravinsky, and more! It begins bright and explosive with virtuosic solos for the clarinet, trumpet, and cello. Not to be outdone, the bassoon enters and begins a conversational duo with the double bass. In this movement, all the instruments become equal protagonists, playing together in a variety of duets, trios, and quartets. In these groupings, the bassoon functions like the host of a party, checking in and conversing with each guest. At this musical gathering there are rambunctious dances, groovy musings, celebratory flourishes, and cameo appearances of earlier melodies and motifs. Jam-packed with nearly everything but the kitchen sink, Fireworks, Fanfares, and Shenanigans provides a rousing, kaleidoscopic close to Morceau pour Sill.

Morceau Pour Sill (2020) I. Zigzags in Watercolor Harmonies

from "Altromondo" for piano four-hands & assorted items (2018): 

II - jetsam

Genevieve Lee & Aron Kallay, pianists

Debussy's "La cathédrale engloutie" looms in the background here as the basis for a musical shape. this music does not follow the form or the language of the Debussy - that has been jettisoned. rather, it relies on ideas of the music being large, slow, rising sinking - features of "La cathédrale engloutie" that are embedded at every level of the musical fabric. what results here is an arc form that quickly turns in on itself once it reaches a static apex.

from "Altromondo" for piano four-hands & assorted items (2018): II - Jetsam

Live Performance by the University of Chicago New Music Ensemble; Barbara Schubert, conductor
Emma Hospelhorn, flute(s)
Zachary Goode, clarinet(s)
Myra Hinrichs, violin
Chris Wild, cello
John Corkill, percussion
Daniel Pesca, piano

February 4, 2018
Fulton Recital Hall

Program Note:
Into the empty sky encompasses many of the themes and ideas that are important to my work as a composer: stillness, vanishing, epiphanies, momentary flickers of warmth or intensity, and different modes of singing. The piece is cast in three large sections, each beginning with a cold, brittle texture in the upper register. From this common starting point, the three sections proceed to trace different paths in their unfolding. The first features a long, winding melody in the alto flute and clarinet with interjections from the marimba. The second is more rhythmically active, with an obsessive insistence on short, uneven descents. The third stretches these descending gestures into expansive phrases of strained lyricism, with a melody divided between all the members of the ensemble. Over the course of the piece, an oscillating two-note motive rises from the middle register to join the repeated icy refrain in the upper register.

Into the empty sky (2017)

Written for and premiered by by Sara Dailey (mezzo-soprano) and Julia Bentley (piano) on July 1st, 2022.  Poem by Li-Young Lee

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY9hYh4bzlc

THE WORD FROM HIS SONG
(Text in parentheses indicate lines not set to music)

The sparrow on my rooftop shouts
All roads be blessed!

His voice is a ring
for the finger of the beloved.

(And he wouldn't work any harder at his song
if all the world prized it,

nor temper what sounds like ardor
if a public thought him wrong.)

He says singing redeems the body's loneliness.
Flying fixes the heart to the sky's wheel.

Salt cures the spirit.
Light is a fractal script.

Imagination is branched, flowering,
and each fans the buds himself.

He says every atom is burning.
Hunger mends the kingdom by rending,

marrying voices and wings.
(Singing builds a throne for hearing,

sets up a swing
between our night and our day.)

It's all song, he says, all singing,
the body's seat and number, the mind's pleats,
time's hem.

The voice is a sighted brink.
Its mission is to sort the world.

(The tongue is a mortal flower.
The dew at last. The guests arrive.)

The child learns his name,
a virgin bell.

And even that iron note
is God awake in two worlds.

God seeks a destiny in all things fired
in the kiln of the sun or the mind.

That's the word from his song.

The Word From His Song

Corona Morphs by Vivian Fung - US premiere with American Modern Ensemble

"I hope this finds you well"
for orchestra 
(2022)

Commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony as part of the First Music program.

2.2.2.2, 4.2.3.1, timp+3 perc, piano, strings

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected humanity in numerous ways; the physical, physiological, mental, psychological, and emotional tolls that the pandemic has created and exacerbated have become great sources of stress and anxiety for many, including myself. While sources of global, substantial, and sustainable healing are difficult to find, I always remind myself and the people in my life
that empathy always endures; we were and are never alone in experiencing the affliction that the pandemic and other calamities inflicted on each of us. I hope this finds you well is a work for orchestra based on a newfound practice in empathy and solace I began shortly after the pandemic ensued; I started composing texts and e-mails to friends, colleagues, mentors, and family with the phrase “I hope this finds you well.” It was (and is) the hope that this phrase, while merely an idiom, would provide some compassion to its reader in a time of tumult. In turn, I hope that this music provides some compassion to its listener in any given time of tumult.

Premiered on 11.20.2022
Carnegie Hall, New York, NY.
New York Youth Symphony
Michael Repper, conductor

This recording is a NYYS rehearsal recording at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York, NY. It is NOT the premiere recording in Carnegie Hall

"I hope this finds you well" for orchestra - (2022)

Wanderlust

World premiere of Chrystal Blue Persuasion by Chan Ka Nin for the Caliban Quartet of bassoonists

Kathy McLean (off frame to left), Michael Sweeney, Nadina Mackie, Fraser Jackson, bassoons and Chan Ka Nin, composer

Crystal Blue Persuasion by Chan Ka Nin

Familiar landscapes
Program notes

Toward the end of summer 2018, I was practicing the Haydn Mass in B-Flat "Harmoniemesse" one evening in preparation for a Maui, HI trip with the Cornell Chamber Singers. The whole fifty-minute piece is in B-flat (with an occasional modulation to G-minor) and it’s incredible how Haydn extracts so much variation out of such a limited pitch space. I was practicing this one line repeatedly with the piano to achieve proper tuning with the other vocal lines and this piece sort of materialized on the keyboard. It began as a three-note melody, then a harmony, and then a texture (a frequent trajectory in my compositional process). While my friends were in the living room playing Mario Kart, I improvised this piece in its entirety twice within that evening practice session—they can be heard hoopin’ and hollerin’ on one of the recordings I made. 

Even in these first stages, the piece’s four-parts took shape. I thought of them in the following ways:  Visitation – Contemplation – Re-visitation – Reflection (coda). I decided to go with the rather sterile “Part One, Part Two, etc.” in the end because it’s quite nice sometimes when music is left open to take on new meanings. Regardless, Familiar landscapes (2019) feels alive to me and comes from these visceral images in my mind. The first section is bright, intense, and some of the ideas in Part Two are foreshadowed here. Or perhaps it’s the other way around? The opening ideas are revealed again in Part Three, but in the lower register and with the addition of the omnipresent “G.” It retains a sense of familiarity for me. This third part continually swells towards the end until releasing into a rather brief final section. Part Four is just remnants of Part Three. It uses the overtones and combination tones I heard appear in the third section to create a thick polyphonic texture. It begins somewhat slowly, gets quieter, then faster and somehow more intense until it disappears into the final measure.

The most important aspect of this piece to me is that it comes from a place of joy. I hereby dedicate it to that feeling. God knows many of us write music out of depressing states (I certainly have). It was nice to change it up. Familiar landscapes was written with Ryan MacEvoy McCullough (pianist), the Silver Wind Symphony, and James Spinazzola (conductor). The piece lasts approximately 12 and a half minutes.

Familiar landscapes

JONATHAN CZINER Resonant Bells

"Persephone" (2019) for orchestra
by Patrick Holcomb

Indiana University Concert Orchestra
David Dzubay, conductor

Recorded November 19-20, 2019
Musical Arts Center, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

"Persephone" © 2019 by N. Patrick Holcomb. All rights reserved.

Program Note:

Persephone (2019) is a reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Persephone, the goddess who was abducted by Hades and subsequently forced to spend a portion of each year with him in the underworld. The work was born out of my attempt to imagine Persephone seeing her reflection in each of the six rivers visible from the underworld on her annual journey into Hades.

The piece begins on the shore of the Oceanus, the river-sea that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Persephone (represented here by the alto flute and the bassoon) cries out in anguish as she awaits her return to the underworld for the coming months. The towering but distant voice of her mother, the powerful goddess Demeter (represented here by the oboe and the bass clarinet), echoes Persephone’s distress back to her. As the goddesses’ voices become increasingly hysterical, Hades (represented here by the horn and the trombone) emerges from the earth, seizing Persephone and taking her in his chariot over the Oceanus and into the underworld. As they fly over the Acheron, the river of pain that marks the entrance of the underworld, Persephone sees the reflections of her and her captor distorted by the ripples caused by the oars of the ferryman Charon. The Phlegethon, the river of fire, is patrolled on both sides by centaurs who prevent the shades of the wicked from escaping the water; Persephone’s reflection stands alongside the ghosts imprisoned in the river. She sees her face contorted by rage in the turbulent waters of the Styx, the river of hatred that wraps around the underworld seven times. The dead who do not receive a proper burial spend eternity on the banks of the Cocytus, the river of wailing; similarly trapped, Persephone sees her reflection mingled with these ghosts and hears her voice echoed in their cries. The Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, passes by the cave of the sleep god Hypnos; in this river, Persephone watches herself surrender to sleep, accepting that she can do nothing to change her fate.

Persephone (2019) for orchestra

Chris Neiner (b. 1994) is a Cleveland-based composer of contemporary classical music with colorful harmony, diverse influences, and engaging energy. Neiner’s style derives from his passion to foster collaborative works with instrumentalists. His recent collaborations include Playtime, a new work for horn, violin, and piano, commissioned by a consortium of collegiate horn professors across the United States; and Serenade for the Ghosts, a phantasmic fantasy for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by Musical Upcoming Stars in the Classics. His work has been praised by Cleveland Classical for "incorporating the zazzy colors of the current new music dialect," and "pleasant shocks and melting cadences." Currently, Neiner serves as a composition faculty and composer-in-residence at the Aurora School of Music in Aurora, Ohio.
       
The music of Chris Neiner has appeared on programs by the Grammy award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Sinfonia, American Modern Ensemble, Boston New Music Initiative, Cochran Chamber Commissioning Project, Copper Street Brass Quintet, Red Hedgehog Trio, loadbang, Minnesota Symphonic Winds, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, Rocky Ridge Music Center, Sewanee Summer Music Festival, faculty of the MacPhail Center for Music, and more.
       
Beyond his collaborative work as a composer, Neiner is a producer and coordinator for several music events. In 2019, he served as the associate director, composer-in-residence, and conductor for Music in the Circle, a summer concert series facilitating collaboration between international artists and students, faculty, and alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Other projects include Leora’s Reverie, a concert to benefit the One Voice Foundation by American-Israeli songwriter Katia Bolotin, and New Music for Horn, a multidisciplinary project that facilitated music making between hornists, composers, conductors, and recording artists studying at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
       
Neiner has also gained a reputation as a highly sought-out arranger and copyist, working with organizations such as Reimagining Opera for Kids, the Vietnamese American Society for Creative Arts and Music (VASCAM), the Cleveland Institute of Music, and internationally recognized composer and trumpeter Anthony Plog.
       
Neiner completed a master's degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Keith Fitch. Previously, he studied composition and horn performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with composers Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, P. Q. Phan, Don Freund, and hornist Richard Seraphinoff. He is an alumnus of the Mostly Modern Festival, New Music on the Point Festival, RED NOTE New Music Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium.

Morceau Pour Sill (2020) I. Zigzags in Watercolor Harmonies

Chris Neiner

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