Music, lyrics, vocals: Amelia Wellers
Production, mix and bass: Kyle Joseph
Drums: Bennett Eiferman
Mastering: Ryan Schwabe

WALLFLOWER

Hold Me Closer Give Me Space

Download on bandcamp! https://yaddayadda.bandcamp.com/track/has-to-be

Has To Be

This piece unites the English-language Psalm 23 with Latin words of the Requiem Mass (“Requiem aeternam”). Through its combination of disparate texts, including a psalm with liturgical prevalence across different faiths, the piece aims to highlight the universality of the experience of loss and celebration of the journey of life.

Recorded by the Choir of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square and conducted by David Hurd (November 5, 2023).

For more information:
https://www.emmakdaniels.com/23rd-psalm

23rd Psalm

Cover of "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" from La La Land by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul

Audition (The Fools Who Dream)

Karen Siegel conducts C4 in a performance of Seawall, by Jamie Klenetsky Fay.

Composer: Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Conductor: Karen Siegel

Soprano
Rebecca Ehren
Noele Flowers
Christina Kay
Melissa Wozniak

Alto
Maya Ben-Meir
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Erin Halpin
Jane Lawson
Beth Marker
Leonore Nelson

Tenor
Ben Arendsen
Nate Barnett
Mario Gullo
Joseph Prestamo
Casey Rule
Richard Tucker
Grant Yosenick

Bass
Daniel Andor-Ardó
Hayes Biggs
Brian Mountford
Perry Townsend
David See

Composed November 2016, Recorded March 18, 2017
Church of Saint Luke in the Fields, New York, NY

Audio Recording
Noriko Okabe

Collaborations

Jamie Klenetsky Fay: Seawall

Crazy Race - Benji Daniels Quartet

Don't Panic! 60 Seconds for Piano

Brooklyn, October 5, 1941

This week's exercise was to record something, then transliterate it, translate it, and interpret it.

I improvised a piano melody (the first thing you hear), then set to work.  First, to translate it, I sent it to a toy piano synth and mercilessly quantized it onto the beat.  I ended up with a funky cluster samba at times, which is quite ok with me.

Then, to transliterate it, I ran it through Ableton's "Scale" plugin to invert the intervals from the original (all C's remained C's, all D's became B's...I think, I didn't really look too closely at what I was doing).  For both of these, I added some random pitch variation to represent translation errors, noise, and/or artifacts.  

Finally, to interpret it, I sped it up and made it two octaves higher, then told Ableton to change that to MIDI and play it on a synth.  The new melody follows the contours of the original melody (perhaps).

I just came back from a retreat where we performed a lot of Pauline Oliveros, and I think I am in a meditative mood, so the piece unfolds pretty slowly and sparsely.  The opening gestures come back sporadically, as a faint memory, to glue everything together.

More on this 286th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Found in Translation: Make three versions of something from different distances — at:

https://disquiet.com/0286/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0286-found-in-translation/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Flickr member Hannah, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/6HUQyt

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

trans(literate, late), reinterpret [disquiet0286]

What You Are was commissioned by The Women’s Voices Chorus of North Carolina. 
The piece was premiered on January 31, 2009 in the Duke Chapel in Durham, NC with Allan Friedman conducting.
The words are by Mark Strand.

WVC of NC What You Are Live in Duke Chapel

Snowfall

[REDACTED]

Winner of the 2017 Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition, Directed by Dr. Jeffrey Douma

Performance by the Yale Glee Club, conducted by David McNeil

Available for purchase at https://musicspoke.com/

Program Notes:

In the Spring of 2013, I was blessed to sing Benjamin Britten’s "War Requiem" as a member of the University of Kentucky Chorale.  Though I had heard the work before, Dr. Johnson invited his graduate conducting students into a detailed study to prepare for the performance.  This was when Wilfred Owen’s poem "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" first captured my attention.  I found myself bothered by his alternate ending and wanting to shout, “But that’s not how the story goes!”
 
As rehearsals continued, I returned to that text, eventually realizing that it depicts the way the story often plays out in real life.  Owen was reflecting on the ironically titled “War to End All Wars,” while Britten chose the text as commentary on that particular war’s sequel.  He composed the "War Requiem" in the midst of the Cold War, shortly after the armistice in the Korean War, and at the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam.  Obviously, “the Ram of Pride” was still alive and well, despite sacrificing “half the seed” of far too many continents.

Owen’s warning invaded my psyche, and I wanted others to wrestle with its questions.  Knowing firsthand the challenges of performing the "War Requiem", I decided to write something a choir could sing without two orchestras, three soloists, and a boychoir—preferably something that also presented the original tale as a contrast.  The plan crystalized over the summer of 2016, and after some fantastic feedback from my dear friend (and Triad founder) David Harris, the final version took shape on a quiet, peaceful, sun-kissed morning while on holiday in St. Maarten.  

The parable presents a relentlessly confrontational choice:  humility vs pride; life vs. death; peace vs. war.  Though one may see it as a rebuke of national hubris, these concepts resonate most vibrantly for me when held up to the daily decisions of life.  In our habits of commerce, travel, communication, and the like, may we move consistently toward humility, life, and peace.

Image:  enGRAVEd II, taken by Julian David Bryson at the Vietnam War Memorial, March 16, 2009.

A Parable Of Choices

Emma is a conductor, composer, and singer based in New York City. She is the Music Director of Philomusica Concert Choir, a 40-voice, auditioned choral ensemble, and a founding member of Triad: Boston’s Choral Collective, an organization made up of singers, composers, and conductors who share artistic responsibility and perform new music. Today, she sings, conducts, and composes with C4: the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective in NYC, the choir after which Triad was modeled. She also teaches private piano and voice lessons and sings soprano in the choir at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square. Emma has most recently served as Choral Instructor at King School in Stamford, CT as well as Pre-K-8 Music Instructor at Horizons, Norwalk Community College, assistant conductor of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Children’s Chorus for its 2020 production of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, and conductor at Chicago Sinai Congregation.

Emma’s compositions have been performed by Triad: Boston’s Choral Collective, Westminster Chapel Choir, Tufts Chamber Singers, and other college, synagogue, and church choirs from Boston to Los Angeles. As a vocalist, she has performed both solo and ensemble work in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including with St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Wilton, CT, Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs, and Hans Zimmer Live US Tour. She grew up singing with the Chicago Children’s Choir (now Uniting Voices Chicago), an organization born out of the Civil Rights Movement, dedicated to creating a better world through connecting singers of different backgrounds and experiences to create music. This worldview has shaped her as a musician today.

Emma holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Tufts University in Medford, MA.

23rd Psalm

Emma K Daniels

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