16 Bars

2022
title: Sojourner Truth (cartes de visite after 1864)
2 instruments (variable), 2 recordings
7–10 mins. (variable) 
part of Songs (Book 1)
Ning Yu (piano and sine tones), Andrew Stock and Sivan Silver-Swartz (recordings), live performance Chicago 2.4.23
mixed by David Bird and Andrew Stock

Untitled ("I sell the shadow to support the substance")

This percussion quartet combines standard percussion instruments like marimba and vibraphone with the sounds of objects like paper, a take-out container, a wire music stand, and tuned glass bottles. The title came to me from rock-climber Emily Harrington, who repeated "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" like a mantra during her record-setting climb of El Capitan. This phrase struck me as oddly musical and I wanted to capture a sense that within any larger sweep of time, there are an infinity of instants being articulated. In the quartet, sudden tempo changes in are often smoothed over with complex rhythms; polymetric mutterings in different instruments coalesce as their timbres blur together. I hope the quartet captures something of the slipperiness of time.

percussion: Jonathan Collazo, Gabriel Costache, John Ferrari, Daniel Matei
conductor: Scott Allen Miller
recording and sound engineering: Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie
Recorded at LeFrak Concert Hall, Queens College, CUNY. Special thanks to George Katehis and Jeff Nichols.

(NYT article on Emily Harrington: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/sports/emily-harrington-free-climb-yosemite.html )

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast (2022) for percussion quartet

2022
voice, ensemble, recordings
text (vowels in voice part): "you have no brother in the slave when you say, 'O my brother'" (Frank Wilderson citing "Arabic proverb," similar versions found also in Talmud, e.g. Bava Kamma, 88a)

University of Chicago New Music Ensemble
Weston Olencki, electronics
December 3, 2023

Untitled (empathy/the mark of Cain)

Splittings, for just intonation vibraphone and electronics, was written for percussionist Daniel Lewis and premiered at Constellation on the 2023 Frequency Series. Juxtaposing equal tempered sine tones and just intonation vibes, this piece plays with the uncanny, fusing the two tunings and transporting the listener to a saturated harmonic universe. 

This piece was recorded and mixed by David Bird at the 2024 CHIMEfest at UChicago.

Splittings - for just intonation vibraphone and electronics

Catfish Sky

King Of Being Human

Most poems go unread (2016)
performed by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble conducted by Tim Weiss on June 29th, 2016 at the Aspen Music Festival and School

for septet: flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello

Tim Weiss, conductor
Raoul Cho, flute
Juan Gabriel Olivares, clarinet
Tengku Irfan, piano
Hannah Weaver, Percussion
Soohee Min, violin
Andrew Stock, viola
Richard Narroway, cello

Score: https://issuu.com/edmundscottmiller/docs/miller_-most_poems-_11x14_full_scor

Program Note:
Written for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2016, Most poems is a concise work that employs rich sonorities and complex textures. As a short opening statement is repeated and extended, the listener is able to examine the idea ever more closely, like viewing a sculpture through numerous snapshots. The fractured glimpses grow longer as new musical layers appear, eventually disintegrating and giving way to a lush conclusion. The title of the work refers to the unfathomable amount of beauty that surrounds us every day, which most of us never notice, and none of us can appreciate in its entirety. But if we look and listen in earnest, perhaps we can embody some of that poetry and reflect it back into the world.

Most poems go unread (ACE, live 2016)

"Moment(s): Various/Concerted" (2016)is for 10 players and was written for the Omnibus Ensemble, especially for the "Omnibus Laboratorium: Peabody – Tashkent" and was premiered by Omnibus Ensemble in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on 12 March 2017.
http://www.omnibus-ensemble.asia/

Program Note:

Moment(s): Various/Concerted (2016) for ten players:
[nay (alto and soprano) – oboe – percussion (suspended cymbal, crotales) – chang (or santur), –tanbur – two violins – viola – cello – contrabass] 

The starting place for this work was a collaboration with the incredible Omnibus Ensemble, who combine Western instruments and style with the traditional music and instruments of Uzbekistan. Members of the ensemble guided me through an exploration of Shashmaqam, particularly the incredibly beautiful and precise ornaments indicative of the genre. The specificity to which these microtonal embellishments are executed inspired me to connect this music with the newer microtonal tradition of spectralism. By deriving the musical lines from Uzbek ornaments and the harmony from the overtone series, the pitch content ties together these two otherwise disparate musics while also establishing a historical relationship to the Uzbek instruments and to timbre more generally.
After a sonorous introduction to the sound-world, the main body of Moment(s): Various/Concerted presents short phrases constructed with contrasting sounds within the ensemble, often repeated two or more times to establish them as consolidated moments or ‘sound-objects.’ Throughout the piece, these musical ideas are developed with a focus on texture and timbre, always increasing in length and complexity.

Peruse the score here: https://issuu.com/edmundscottmiller/docs/miller_-_momentvariousconcerted_-_s

Moment(s): Various/Concerted (for the Omnibus Ensemble)

CREDITS

june 27th, 2020 @ online premiere (San Francisco CA)

performed by Del Sol String Quartet

This work was created under the aegis of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and premiered by Del Sol String Quartet in San Francisco, CA on June 27, 2020.

A CHAIR After NICERON 1638 [2019-20 ::: for Del Sol String Quartet]

boston/dc-based composer + performer (rested field)+ writer

A CHAIR After NICERON 1638 [2019-20 ::: for Del Sol String Quartet]

clifton johnson ingram

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