Performance by Longleash trio
Recording by Chris Kincaid

score video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTRB0bQjQw&t=541s

PROGRAM NOTE
Pietà was written during the Spring and Summer of 2017 for Pala Garcia, John Popham and Renate Rohlfing for the Loretto Festival 2017.

Our father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
…

Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.

Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.
…

“…I’m tired now.
Sometimes I talk too much. That’s happiness.”
…

Give us this day our daily bread…

(Fragments from: Lord’s Prayer – English vernacular version, Another Weeping Woman – Wallace Stevens, Three Views of a Mother – John Ciardi)

Pietà (piano trio)

Video: https://youtu.be/obO7uqMYGLs

Performed by the Azure Quartet: Kj McDonald, Brenden Zak, Hannah Geisinger and Yifei Li

Spiral Sequences is a string quartet performed in two movements. The first, the shorter of the two, is frantic and pulse-driven, carried by momentum generated by spiraling 16th note patterns and repeated ostinatos. It presents fragments of a sequence-like pattern, one which is played in its complete form at the beginning of a longer, introspective second movement. The first movement presents an inward spiral, constantly tightening. The second works to unravel it.

Spiral Sequences - string quartet

For tenor saxophone and playback

Performed by Matthew Levy

Sum Of Its Parts (excerpt)

untethered
for horn quartet with prominent solo part

Recording from virtual premiere by hornist Kevin Newton (knewhorn.com) as part of the 2020 Composers Conference.

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Program Notes:

The title untethered is taken from a poem written by a dear friend Rev. Kim Wildszewski, with whom I worked closely during my tenure as an accompanist at the Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing. In May of 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Kim and her wife, Tara, suddenly lost their young son, Malcolm. The unbelievable tragedy of losing their child was amplified by the complications of the pandemic, as those of us who loved Malcolm were unable to gather or grieve together. 

It was shortly after this time that I was asked to write a horn piece for the 2020 Composers Conference. Without consciously realizing that I was doing so, I processed much of what I was feeling in the wake of Malcolm’s death through writing this piece. It was only at the very end of the compositional process, when I came to the title untethered, that I realized this piece was for Malcolm.  There are moments in the piece of near-emptiness and scarcity, and others that feel more like a reflection of Malcolm’s vibrant spirit: a joyous toddler who loved music.

untethered, for horn quartet

NEW NEW Download link (3/12): http://www.mediafire.com/?irhf0llfskv3590

untethered, for horn quartet

Erin Busch

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