Commissioned by Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival

Completed May 27, 2023
Premiered July 29, 2023 as part of Bang on a Can's Loud Weekend 2023 by Todd Reynolds (cond.), Claire Litwinowicz (vln.), Santiago Velo Quintairos (vla.), Elizabeth Kate (vc.), JP Bernabe (cb.), Abrielle Scott (fl.), Anne Pinkerton (ob.), Lucas Gianini (cl.), Will Pyle (sax), Maya Stone (bsn.), Betty Chen (pno.), and Ethan Strickland (perc.)

I love watching ensembles play. There’s always so much happening at any given moment: all this cuing and tuning and listening and watching. The complicated group dynamics going on can be dizzying to keep track of, and within larger chamber ensembles, there can be such an intricate web of communication that it feels like a miracle that pieces hold together at all. 

This kind of intimate group communication happens all the time in nature, and one of the most familiar is the flock. Flocks of birds have often been written about in a near-mythological manner - the massive patterns they form and their hypnotic motion have inspired studies and superstitions alike. They can grow to be tens of thousands strong, but despite all their apparent organization, flocks do not have a solitary leader. Instead, individuals hone in on the signals of their seven closest neighbors, and they move about together. Since each neighbor will have its own seven neighbors and so on, a signal from one end of the flock eventually ripples all the way to the other. 

Of a Feather is inspired by the whirling coordination of flocks. Gestures are imitated and scattered throughout the group a la flock communication, and much of the vocabulary of the piece is filled with rushing motion. The piece is mercurial and vibrant, moving rapidly through key areas while freely expanding and contracting its motifs. Ultimately, Of a Feather is a study in ensemble communication, treating its members equally as individuals and parts of a whole.

Many thanks to Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for commissioning the piece, and much gratitude to the fellows of the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival for realizing it.

Of a Feather, for chamber ensemble

Duolingo Version 2

Recorded by the Juilliard Orchestra in 2014; conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky.

Extraordinary Flora

for violin, cello, and piano.
Dualities (2013) is built around the idea of contrasts: the fast, lively primary theme and the slow, static secondary theme; the violin and cello playing against and with the piano; repeated musical ideas and changed/developed musical ideas.

Dualities for piano trio

Arcana

forest migrations (2024) for orchestra
by Paul Novak

Forests slowly move to new geographic areas across many generations in response to environmental threats such as climate change. These migrations demonstrate the power and versatility of the natural world, which we think is static but is truly always developing and adapting. However, the phrase “forest migration” to me also darkly alludes to the very different migration that trees undergo as forests around the world are destroyed. And I have been thinking about the great debt musicians owe to trees. So many of the instruments we play are constructed from wood, and in a certain sense the creation of these instruments seems, poignantly, like a third type of migration.

forest migrations explores different layers of time, with active layers of surface motion always buoyed by the slow movement of the forest. Much of the material of the piece is built from tightly interwoven canons which unravel patiently throughout the ensemble like the mycelium network of a forest. Throughout the piece, the wooden instruments of the orchestra resonate in their most fundamental ways, with music built from natural harmonics, open strings, and melodies of interlocked fifths. My aim was to create a sound world that is patient and resilient, like the natural world this piece pays homage to.

forest migrations ​was commissioned by American Composers Orchestra through the 2020 Underwood Commission. 

Recorded by Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Ulysses Derrien, conductor


forest migrations (2024) for chamber orchestra

Telos Consort performs "Dot Plot" by Cole Reyes

Thomas Giles, soprano saxophone
Kyle Landry, baritone saxophone
Charlotte Munn-Wood, violin
Thea Mesirow, cello
Huizi Zhang, piano

Recorded at Oktaven Audio; Ryan Streiber, recording engineer
Mixed by Mike Tierney
Video Edited by Kyle Landry

For more information, visit telosconsort.com

Dot Plot (performed by Telos Consort)

The text for the piece is taken from The Ruin, an Old English poem which depicts a fallen Roman city. The poem is part of the Exeter Book, a large collection of verses and riddles which dates from the 10th century. The only existing copy of the book was damaged in a fire, affecting what survives of The Ruin. In light of this, I only used extracts of the poem from which words have been lost. In a similar way, some of the musical material has been dismantled to reflect this.

A huge thanks to Orkest de Ereprijs, Wim Boerman, Ana Maria Lopes, Carolina Luís, Francisca Branco, Rob Vermeulen, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, Ed Bennett, Anna Korsun, Silvia Borzelli, Guus Janssen, Georgia Denham, Ryan Probert, Paul Zaba, Robert Crehan, Robin Morton, Celia Swart, Paolo Griffin, Dani Blanco Albert, Hugo Bell, Sam Milan, Joe Rhodes and Stephen Plummer.

Performed by Orkest de Ereprijs, Ana Maria Lopes, Carolina Luís, and Francisca Branco on the 1st of March 2019

Conducted by Rob Vermeulen

Ruin (2019)

"John Eason Stops Preaching," performed by C4 and conducted by Ben Arendsen.

John Eason Stops Preaching

"Ritual Dances" for Percussion Quartet
Performed by Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Ritual Dances

Casey Cangelosi, percussion
Video performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMBCd9PfuMA
Casey's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIw9gkSYmyj21uAd85Ydu8g
Casey's Website: https://www.caseycangelosi.com/

Hypernova (2020) for percussion solo and electronic playback was written for Casey Cangelosi.  In outer space, a hypernova is a type of stellar explosion which ejects material with unusually high kinetic energy, an order of magnitude higher than most supernovae.  The piece is centered on broad and expansive explosive gestures that give birth to sparkling and technically virtuosic phrases.  The soloist plays a small kit of vibratone, five tuned gongs, tamborim, hi-hat, and kick drum.  The accompanying electronic part is made entirely of acoustic hand-stopped or bowed piano samples that were recorded during and assembled as digital instruments.  There are four main types of these samples used throughout the piece:
 
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the pedal up.  The most agile tape parts are primarily made with these sound samples.
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the sustain pedal down.  Most low, resonant tones and some mid-range notes use these samples.
- Bowed piano, modified with post-production effects to give it an organ-like quality.
- Hand-muted, no-pedal piano samples with the envelope reversed to play backwards as a swell gesture.  You hear this sound at the very beginning of the piece.
 
Check out and follow along with the performance part: https://issuu.com/ericguinivan/docs/guinivan_hypernova_performance_part
 
Please contact the composer at https://www.ericguinivan.com if you are interested in purchasing a physical copy of the music for performance.

Duolingo Version 2

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