In June of 2006, while watching the late afternoon fog roll in on the last day of a visit to San Francisco, I was reminded of György Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds, which was inspired by his stays in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 70s. I was eager to listen to Clocks and Clouds again when I returned to Chicago the next day, but arrived home to an inbox full of forwarded obituaries. Ligeti had passed away the day before. That chance association of San Francisco fog and the melancholy of loss became the starting point for my “San Francisco Night.” The title comes from a poem by the rather obscure French poet Paul Gilson, which begins:

Je crois qu’il n’a jamais fait plus noir que ce soir
où la sirène pleure au bord du monde en ruines
mais la merveille vaut le prix du désespoir….

The ensemble (flute, clarinet, horn, piccolo trumpet, percussion, piano, violin, and cello) is treated as a miniature orchestra (two instruments from each family of winds, brass, percussion, and strings) without a strong bass.  This chamber ensemble “without feet” allowed me to create intricately detailed, floating textures while maintaining clarity of line and shape. While the piece traverses a variety of musical materials and moods, they are bound together by similar falling contours or gestures that recall the spreading fog.

Throughout its composition, I was always spurred on by the knowledge that it would eventually be brought to life by the wonderful musicians of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and it is dedicated to the ensemble, Music Director David Milnes, and Executive Director Adam Frey. San Francisco Night was premiered by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players on 6 May 2008 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  The piece has subsequently been performed by Reynold Tharp with the Illinois Modern Ensemble in 2009 and by Joel Sachs and the New Juilliard Ensemble at MOMA in New York in 2010.

San Francisco Night (2008)

quintet for flute, percussion, piano, violin and cello

Flight Patterns

@b-summer-127647586 さんの 4分の19拍子祭 に初参加です。3年前にドラムとベースは作っていたのですが当時の能力では曲として形にならず https://soundcloud.com/sexytoadsandfrogsfriendcircle/cubenoy22-dont-get-him-mad を次に作ってこちらは完成できたのでSTAFFcircのアルバムで公開したあと、2024年になって再挑戦。19/4拍子もそうですがそれ以外にもドラムとアシッドベースのOstinatoなど、いろんな要素（癖）を取り込んだ曲となっています。

KORG MDE-XというVSTのMastering Limiterでちょっとだけ波形を整えて音圧を少し上げていますが、ほぼほぼMIDIの時点でマスタリングまでしてあります（試していませんが理論上ではReverb/Delayが使えるSC-88以降で可能）。

ミックスの面でもここ3年ぐらい色々悪戦苦闘して得られた知見を結集させて打ち込みました。令和最先端の音源を楽しんでいただければ幸いです。

動画はこちらからどうぞ:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=si4OmZOLe9Q

Are you getting lost in the Lab? Exit is here: 
https://soundcloud.com/ubiktune/chimeratio-escape-from-the-lab

Get Into The Lab!

for piano, cello & piano
Live performance at Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich on 3.5.15

Gérard Pesson – Ne pas oublier coq rouge dans jour craquelé

far and away (1998)

Recorded by Richard Uttley at BBC Maida Vale Studio 1, July 2015.

Dance Suite: i. Mazurka (excerpt)/ Richard Uttley

Illinois Modern Ensemble, Stephen Taylor, conductor.  8 February 2017.
Sonic Illinois Festival, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Cold Horizon, for chamber orchestra, grew out of a piece for vibraphone and piano entitled Cold, which I wrote in Paris in January 2001.  The basic musical ideas and icy, shimmering instrumental colors of Cold have been stretched out into a supple, continuously flowing, and dramatic form, and colored as if seen at twilight under a fading and distant light.  

In a sense, Cold Horizon explores resonance as a model or metaphor for developing musical gestures and forms.  Often resonance is used to create a sense of perspective, reminding us that music takes place not only in time but also in space. Musical lines that are slightly out of alignment shadow each other as they seem to echo in a reverberant space.  Similarly, rhythmic processes and subtle changes of orchestration create the illusion of musical gestures that approach or recede.  The opening of the piece, a quasi-Doppler effect, is one example.  Another typical idea is the filtering of complex harmonies into simple intervals, floating points of stability that form a thread of consonance woven across the span of the piece.  The use of quarter tones blurs the line between harmony and instrumental timbres to create a sense of depth and shadow against the well-tempered, “normal” pitches.

Cold Horizon has passed through a series of incarnations, beginning with an initial sketch premiered in 2002 by the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence under Sylvio Gualda at the Centre Acanthes contemporary music festival in France.  The complete piece was premiered in 2003 by the University of California, Berkeley Symphony conducted by David Milnes, followed by a revised and expanded version performed by the Minnesota Orchestra at their Composer Institute in 2006 with David Alan Miller.  I revised the piece one last time in early 2017 for this performance, making some minor adjustments to its pacing, clarifying the orchestration and several harmonic details, and pruning back some pretentious complexity in the notation.

Cold Horizon (2017 Version)

premiered 4/16 at Duncan Recital Hall - Houston, TX
conductor: Molly Turner
piano: Wesley Ducote

flute: Megan Torti
clarinet/bass clarinet: Justin Best
oboe: Julia Simpson
bassoon/contrabassoon: Kipras Mazeika
horn: David Tarté
trumpet: Ansel Norris
trombone: Caleb Knight
percussion: Erin Graham, Brandon Lim
violins: Francesca Bass, Likai He
viola: Sebastian Stefanović
cello: Jaeyoung Chong
bass: Jesse Fischer

Piano Concerto

Contrapuntal Forms (2019)

I. Fugue
II. Cantus Firmus - “O rubor sanguinis”
III. Canon

Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University

Recording:
October 10-11, 2019, Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, NJ
Andres Villalta, audio engineer
Latitude 49
Jani Parsons, keyboard
Chris Sies, percussion
Andy Hudson, clarinet
Andy Hall, sax
Tim Steeves, violin
Max Geissler, cello

For more info, visit: https://www.juriseomusic.com/contrapuntalforms

Contrapuntal Forms - II. Cantus Firmus

A project I worked on this summer - an A cappella version of the beautiful jazz standard In a Sentimental Mood by Duke Ellington. Video is on my YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O2WxOP6-H0

In a Sentimental Mood - A cappella

I am a composer based in Princeton, NJ, United States. Please visit my website for more information. Thanks for listening!

Contrapuntal Forms - II. Cantus Firmus

Juri Seo, composer