"... does not remember the footprints of birds" is vaguely about remembrance, and oblivion. Funny enough, I wrote this piece last spring (pre-pandemic times!), and forgot nearly everything about my process of writing the piece. I do remember, though, that I worked with a few small modules of ideas that acted in accordance with some sort of logic. Revisiting the peace after more than a year, I feel like the piece has very much taken its own meanings, and that the logic that brought this piece to life it’s just a thing of the past. So I’ll share an excerpt from a poem that the title is based on. It’s from 문병, written by 박준 (Joon Park):

아무것에도
익숙해지지 않아야
울지 않을 수 있다

해서 수면은
새의 발자국을
기억하지 않는다

Huge thanks to Ji Su Jung who commissioned me to write this piece and played it so beautifully!

This piece was performed by Ji Su Jung and premiered in April 2021 on the New Music New Haven concert series.

...does not remember the footprints of birds (2020)

Usignolo

Solo cello piece.
Recorded by Veronika Voetmann
Performed by Éric-Maria Couturier

To my grandmother, Alice.

If there's a Heaven... (2022), for solo 'cello

Carolina Heredia, composer
Performed by Alarm Will Sound

Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 29, 2017

Notes from the composer:
In Spanish there are two verbs for the English verb “to be”, one is ser (to be) and the other one is estar (to be). The difference between the two is the quality of permanence: estar is a transitory state, an accidental element of being, while ser is permanent, ex. I am (ser) a human being, I am (estar) tired. The Spanish word esencia (essence) is descriptive of the ser verb form, the true nature of anything, not accidental or illusory (Merrian-Webster).

I find myself thinking about this a lot in times of change. Living in another country demands an immense effort for adaptation, in which one of the dangers -and almost unavoidable stage- is the feeling of losing oneself. Being at a distance with all the elements that made me myself: my culture, my family, my mother language, made me value all the small-things, those moments, places, persons that have now became lucid memories that I jealously treasure. And, aren’t we all just memories? Those instants that we chose to keep at the surface, and even the ones that remain deep inside, hidden, they shape our being, our feelings, our responses, they become our essence.

esencia

"Boogeyman" by Bluedot.
Released Friday July 13, 2018.

Boogeyman

Read by the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra. Conducted by Alan Buxbaum on July 15th, 2018.

Fractal Kennings

written as part of the 2018 Bowdoin International Music Festival in collaboration with Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Premiered in July 2018 by Susan Kang, flute, Erica Schwartz, viola, and Caroline Mellott, harp

Image: "Relief Head of Ashurnasirpal II," Assyrian, ca. 875-860 B.C.E., from Kalhu (Nimrud), Iraq, on display in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

debussy palimpsest (2018) for flute, viola, and harp

Premiere performance by
The Yale Philharmonia
Julian Pellicano, conductor
Woolsey Hall
New Haven, Connecticut
6 December 2018

Plastic Action for Orchestra and Noise

I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on ink wash painting. I think the most immediate thing that stood out to me is that, on some base level, this medium can be seen as a study of diffusion and envelope. There is an attack, sustain, decay, and release in each stroke. As ink is pulled, it loses density. In a way, this makes the final product a documented temporal experience. Careful articulations of color within a field of negative space create an organic blend and transition of static and kinetic energy with the existing surface and the deliberate additions to it. Once painted, it cannot be changed or erased. This makes the medium physically and mentally demanding process as well.

Technicalities aside, there are evocative implications within the philosophy of the technique. Although I have been unable to find a single and specific source for the theory, an explanation found on Wikipedia truly resonated with me and my compositional approach. Stating; The goal of ink and wash painting is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its spirit. To paint a horse, the ink wash painting artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. East Asian ink wash painting may be regarded as a form of expressionistic art that captures the unseen. In landscape painting, the scenes depicted are typically imaginary, or very loose adaptations of actual views, from which the artist may have been very distant.”

Lighter Shades, to me, plays out as a distant and happy tapestry of idealized memories: a Personal mythology of an imaginary landscape. Perhaps I was never there; I don’t remember anything anyone said or exactly what I saw, but I remember what it felt like. I hate to use the term “abstract expressionism” (or abstract impressionism), but nothing is concrete and yet there is still something to smile about. A clouded feeling of warmth and comfort. Foggy, but certainly not dark.

Garrison Gerard - Conductor
Alaina Clarice - Flute
Morgan Horning - Soprano
Ted Powell - Piano
Mia Detwiler - Violin
Michael Moore - Viola
Kourtney Newton - Cello

Lighter Shades

Live recording of Katherine Balch's 'Trio' from Bearthoven: New Works 2019 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.

Katherine Balch - Trio

Indigo

I like sounds.

Contact me at:
ernstrom.emil@gmail.com

Usignolo

Emil Ernström

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Nathan Wasner

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