"Conjuncture" was performed at the soundSCAPE music festival July 15th, in Cesena, Italy. It was commissioned and performed by the Flux Quartet. 

The piece was inspired by Louis Althusser's work on the Russian Revolution, particularly the text "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," where Lenin recognizes the colonization of the third world as a specific political moment, unlike any other, because of its alliance with monopoly, financial capital. Althusser said Lenin recognized Imperialism under a specific historical conjuncture, by which there were differentiated levels to any society, converging  into a whole. Racial hierarchy, a new philosophy of the subject, and the entrance of 20th century world capitalism emerged. 

And the end of all this was a new form of crisis, world-wide, leading into more conjunctures that of climate change, (which harnesses the multiplicites of our lives into impending doom) and ever more. The "Symptom" of capitalism, for Marx and many others, was exactly its functioning. It ran by those that it exploited. The second movement hopes to portray that pain.

Conjuncture I. Levels II. Symptoms (2019)

Greetings—I'm a Philadelphia-based composer and music educator. My wide-ranging work draws from many different traditions—including jazz, M-Base, Afro-Latin, electronica, metal, hip-hop, early music, and new music—and integrates linear and cyclic concepts to weave hypnotic musical narratives.

My music has been performed, workshopped, and recorded by loadbang, Daedalus Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, confluss, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, Sae Hashimoto, Matt Sharrock, Ellery Trafford, and more. It has been premiered at such venues as the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Symphony Space, OPERA America, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Staller Center for the Arts, and the Italian Academy at Columbia University.

My work has been featured by Score Follower and has been selected for a wide variety of new music festivals and concert series both domestic and international, including the Yarn/Wire International Institute (New York), Longy’s Divergent Studio (Massachusetts), CLICK FEST (Ohio), Ears to the Earth (Kansas), the School for Improvisational Music Summer Intensive (New York), and the Young Composers Meeting (Netherlands).

I'm currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where I study composition with Natacha Diels. I hold an M.A. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University (2023), where I studied composition with Matthew Barnson, Perry Goldstein, and Daniel Weymouth and taught several semesters of undergraduate music theory. I received the Ackerman Prize for Excellence in Graduate Studies in recognition for my work at SBU. Prior to this, I received a B.A. in Music from Columbia University (2019), where I studied composition with George Lewis, Georg Haas, Zosha Di Castri, and Andy Milne; trumpet with Andy Kozar, Adam O’Farrill, and Amir ElSaffar; and music theory with Joseph Dubiel.

iphone 4/tascam experimentations
upside down backwards

Conjuncture I. Levels II. Symptoms (2019)

Dylan DelGiudice