I can imagine abuelo at the stove cooking with pride and love for us

How to Wake Latin Bodies

Performed May 9,  2022. 
Yelin Wang, clarinet
Daniel Castellanos, piano

I'm proud to share with you my first recorded composition in nearly two years since the pandemic lockdown! This piece originally was requested by and written for my good friend and conductor Pavlos Kordis, right before the start of the pandemic. It's about the delicious meals my abuelos have cooked for me since childhood. My abuela has unfortunately forgotten how to cook many of her iconic recipes due to her Alzheimer’s, but my abuelo can still cook a few of his signature meals. One of them is his “revoltillo,” a breakfast meal that is essentially eggs scrambled with potatoes and veggies, served either with or on a roll. The piece evokes the sounds of simmering food, as well as the nostalgic and bittersweet feelings I have towards these meals that I know I won’t be able to enjoy forever.

image: "monday breakfast," motiejus gailagas

revoltillo

Premiered on 6/8/2022 at New Music On The Point 2022
Performed by Alex Sopp
Audio Engineer: Brian Riordan
Video by Emmanuel Berrido
 #nmop22

Words In Sealed for flute solo, Jiaying Katy Li, performed by Alex Sopp

gravity dances (2023) for clarinet, trombone, piano, percussion, violin, cello, and bass

i. stumbling dance
ii. sinking dance
iii. hurtling dance

Performed June 2023 at the Norfolk New Music Workshop
Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble
Ning Zhang, clarinet 
Yuki Mori, trombone
Makana Medeiros, percussion
Liam Wooding, piano
 Lauren Conroy, violin
Thomas Hung, cello
Alyssa Peterson, double bass
Lisa Moore, conductor

Thumbnail: "Falling Apart" by Sarah Schonert

gravity dances (2023) for septet

Timestretched to the length of the longest recording. Now available for download / vinyl: https://heyexit.bandcamp.com/album/every-recording-of-gymnopedie-1

buy the vinyl

Every Recording of Gymnopedie 1

John Dowland was a contemporary of Shakespeare. Here his original arrangement for lute and voice alternates and mingles with this John's touches 400 years later. Drawn to this song since hearing Alfred Deller’s recording as a teen, I'm grateful to the Mendocino Music Festival for letting me scratch this and other old itches in its 2011 Village Concert series.

If My Complaint Could Passions Move

John Gilmore - If my complaints could passions move (c. John Dowland)

blimunda songs is a set of 4 miniatures for pierrot ensemble. While each of these pieces evokes a different mood and character, they are also unified by subtle recurring details: gestures and harmonies that reemerge in each movement, fragments of melodic material that persistently reappear. Although this is not a programmatic work by any means, the title references José Saramago’s novel Baltasar and Blimunda, which contrasts harsh realism with wonder and suffering with humor. I attempted to capture these juxtapositions in the four movements of this piece. The first movement places long sustained chords side by side with quick descending gestures; the second is a dance-like scherzo; the third uses fragmented constellations of sound against breathy backdrop; and the fourth literally and figuratively echoes the first three movements.

blimunda songs: II.

innova 823

http://www.innova.mu/albums/dylan-mattingly/stream-stars

01 Atlas of Somewhere on the Way to Howland Island  I. Radial Liftoff Music for Amelia Earhart

performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Marc Desmons

June 25, 2019 @ Maison de la Radio Studio 105, Paris, France

cover art by Jackie Andrews

Thunderhead - for orchestra

'needless to say'
for string quartet - 2017

performed by the New Fromm Chamber Players
Chi Li, violin I
Xiaofan Liu, violin II
Sam Pedersen, viola
Sonia Mantell, cello

Tanglewood Music Center, Seiji Ozawa Hall
7.28.19

let the mind’s ear stray,
tremor’s realm. needless to say -
don’t say anything

2019-07-28 1000AM CD1

needless to say - string quartet - Tanglewood New Fromm Chamber Players - (2019)

/something emerges from thin air, collects, disperses into space/

Conducted by Gregory Ristow, written for and performed by the Oberlin College Choir
Soloists: Risa Beddie, Clara Dahmer, Isabel Breakey, Mae Harrell, Cora Lopez, Matthew Santos

Performed October 17, 2019

Joy (variation on Allegri's Miserere)

composer, pianist, tenor 
Bard B.Mus. '18
Mannes MM '23
for inquiries email daniel.s.castellanos@icloud.com

revoltillo

Daniel Santiago Castellanos

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