Name: Pulsations I [2024] by Daniel Fawcett
Duration: 3 min 7 s
Description: First work in an experimental set of pieces for string quartet. This work was a finalist in the Music Madness 2024 live competition by Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle.

The composition was a co-winner of the TImothy McAllister Composition Competition. This was an amazing experience for me, I was able to write for an instrument I love, and to also work closely with one of our times greatest Saxophone Players. This is a live recording from Ganz Hall in Roosevelt Univ. in Chicago.

The composition was inspired by this quote, “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.” 
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

NebulousDesire

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]

First work in an experimental set of pieces for string quartet. This work was a finalist in the Music Madness 2024 live competition by Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle.

Pulsations I [2024]

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)

Georgia Mills - Piano
Kevin Zetina - Percussion
Jay Sorce - Electric Guitar
Cole Bartels - Trombone
Katherine Ambrester - Soprano
Daniel Fawcett - Live Electronics

"in it & out of" is a work commissioned by the 2018 Nief-Norf Summer Festival in Knoxville TN, premiered on June 22, 2018. "in it & out of" is a work based on text from Yaz Lancaster's poem "clocks". The text makes observations about various phenomena in the natural world, and the ways in which our relationships to them are influenced by the passage of time. Similarly, "in it & out of" is built primarily of four consecutive miniatures, one for each of the phenomena described in the text. The entire sequence miniatures is bookended by flash-forward and flash-back versions of itself, contextualizing each texture and its handling of the passage of time with that of the others, realizing the text’s observation of phenomena moving “in” and “out” of time.

in it & out of (Live at Nief-Norf)

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

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)

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.

Pulsations I [2024]

Daniel Fawcett

Related tracks