Commissioned and Performed by Fuse Quartet

Perihelion (Live)

Commissioned and Performed by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Young

Wraith Weight

Ice And Obsidian

Starving Sod

Sounds Of A Fading Daylight

Vermilion Glare - Composed for and premiered by Alarm Will Sound.

Vermilion Glare

The Disarray was inspired by the self-taught abstract and street photographer Olga Karlovac, more specifically her second photography book of the same name, as well her as self-portraits. Her work strikes me as dark and unsettlingly beautiful, and it instills in me a sense of inner turmoil that takes over the outside world. In this piece I aimed to simply capture the feeling of profound grief and inescapable desolation that I find in her photography.

The Disarray

The Violence of Air aims to capture the discomforts of flight anxiety as turbulence constantly interrupts any semblance of calmness.

The Violence of Air

Growing up playing electric guitar in Chicago, the Blues were my natural first musical stop. As I got older and fell in love with other genres and traditions, Blues fell by the wayside, at least until a few years ago. During the long overdue reckoning with America’s racist history following George Floyd’s murder, I decided to dig a little deeper into my own family’s history and lineage.

Blues originated in the early 1900s in the Mississippi Delta, and it eventually made its way north to Chicago (and I guess St. Louis too) during the great migration. All of my grandparents passed away before I was born, but my dad’s parents were born in the heart of the Delta, and both came to Chicago during the Migration. It was the realization that my musical roots in the Blues were more than just a geographic circumstance, but a cultural and hereditary tradition that goes deeper than I had previously realized. This piece explores the way in which Blues has subtly and subconsciously influenced my compositional voice while also experimenting with the sound of iconic blues riffs and licks.

Premiered by Hub New Music

Stagnation Blues

Yeji Kim, Claire Hebeisen - Violins
Josef Fischer - Viola
Olivia Rainoff - Cello

Elijah Daniel Smith

Pinned to spotlight

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