This piece was commissioned by the Texas Flute Society and individual donors Deborah Ragsdale, Ann Vinod, and Spencer Hartman for the 37th Annual Myrna W. Brown Competition. 

This piece explores the ideas of light and shadow and the interplay between them. The title comes from a passage by one of my favorite authors:

"In that moment [he] understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred in the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight."

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Live recording by Leslie Richmond, the competition winner.

Spoken by Sunlight

Title: dredge ii
Year: 2023
Performers: Hypercube
Art: the composer

dredge ii [alto sax, e. guitar, percussion, piano]

Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons.

Sound installation for Palestinian Prisoner's Day, April 18, 2024.

Sound installation and performance for
Palestinian Prisoners Day, April 17.

Every year, 500-700 children are arrested by the Israeli occupation forces.

Prisoners face harsh conditions, including torture, inadequate food, and crowded prison cells.

Medical assistance is either inadequate or completely absent, resulting in severe health damage and even death.

Palestinians can be held for months without a trial or evidence, in what is called administrative detention.

Currently, there are 9,000 Palestinian prisoners and 37 deaths since Oct.

This is all against international law.

For more information:

https://www.dci-palestine.org/
https://hamoked.org/
https://www.addameer.org/

Palestinian Prisoner's day April 18

1/4.  Set of songs squarely in the Sad Bastard tradition.  Built by handwriting pop song parts, having classically-trained instrumentalists record them, then turning the samples sideways.  Mixed and matched in real time with Ableton Live.

7 Garden Of Eden

Trilogy was one of the first songs by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer that I ever heard. The sound of the Moog really grabbed my attention, and I am very happy to cover this song now in honor of Keith and Greg.

The piano was played on the Amber Upright from Nord, on the Nord Piano 2 HA88. The lead synthesizers were played on the Moog Little Phatty. The organ was played on the Nord Electro 4D. The synth strings in the intro and synth horns were played on the Yamaha M06. The bass was played on a fretted Fender Jazz bass copy that has been modified for me. The drums were Session Drummer 3, Andy Johns Kit. The suspended cymbal rolls were from the Vienna Symphonic Library Percussion Collection. I did all the vocals using a Lewitt handheld condenser microphone.

Trilogy - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (cover)

del dolore e altre passioni, lamento I (2017)
for soprano and electronics

american premiere

NYCEMF - New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival
Abrons Art Center, Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan NYC. 
Wednesday, July 18, 2018, 8 PM

Eleonora Claps, soprano


about pain and other passions, lament I

The composition is inspired by a tape recorder belonging to the documentary sound collection of the first “ethnographic expedition” in Lucania (South Italy) performed by Ernesto de Martino in 1952 along with his collaborators Vittoria de Palma, Diego Carpitella (ethnomusicologist), Mario Venturoli and Franco Pinna.
The recording made at Ferrandina (MT) on October 11 of that year is a funeral dirge performed by a young local farm girl that allowed recording after exhausting negotiations, like de Martino tells us: « when we asked her to sing us a dirge to the microphone, she looked at us at first lost as if she found hard to understand, we realized she was afraid. After our best efforts she asked to be allowed to retire in a very small dark room, a kind of tools closet. and she prayed to close the door. We explained to her that her proposal was unacceptable because the microphone could not pick up the voice through the closed door. Finally, we reached a compromise, the young girl squatted in the dark of a corner of the closet, she handed her hand to the expedition’s collaborator, probably to get down from the black magic and started singing, while our technician through the door ajar put cautiously the hand holding the microphone ».
The most disconcerting thing that the dirge gives us, in addition to the inexpressible and boundless love for a brother, is the tremendous beauty breathing pure modesty that every time stops the dirge before it is elevated to actual sing.

del dolore e altre passioni, lamento I - NYCEMF 2018

Exhibited at Natalie L. Haslam Center at the University of Tennessee
Nief Norf Summer Festival 2019
Snippet recorded during exhibition 2019
For video go to: https://www.daniel-fawcett.com/watch

"Anamnesis is an ambient installation consisting of a 2 generative Max chordal patches, 1 fixed audio bass track and 2 wire based controllers built from recycled game controllers on wooden frames. Over a continuous bass track the 2 generative patches will play a repeating harmonic figures that overlap with one another. Changes in these figures can occur by pulling on the various strands of wire connected to the installation. Reflective in nature, this work deals with memory and renewal. For this reason, the work makes use of only recycled materials for both the physical components and the audio sources."

Anamnesis (Snippet) (gesture control installation, electronics) [2019]

Composed during my residence in Knoxville, TN (Nief Norf summer festival).

Bass Clarinet - Alexandra Hecker
Percussion I - Andy Holmes
Percussion II - Kevin O'Connor
Percussion III - Dustin Haigler

Performed and recorded at Natalie Haslam Music Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 2019

for video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJOO84dW9IQ

D - Formation (2019)

1: Soupir
2: Placet Futile
3: Surgi de la croupe et du bond
Sophie Thing Simonsen, soprano
Jesper Nordin, conductor
Mixed Ensemble
Recorded live at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, November 2011


Ravel: Trois poemes de Mallarme no 2  - Placet futile, Sophie Thing Simonsen

transcription of Max Richter's A Catalogue of Afternoons originally written for piano, but heard here on vibraphone

A Catalogue Of Afternoons (Max Richter)

Daniel Fawcett (b.1991) is a composer, sound artist, visual artist and instrument builder from the United States. He is a graduate of New York University’s Steinhardt School with a M.M. degree in music composition where he studied privately with Joan La Barbara and Morton Subotnick. Prior to this, he completed his B.M. studies at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts, studying with Stacy Garrop and Kyong Mee Choi.