Three autumn portraits composed to poetry by my friend Tara Ericksen Smith - all with a bit of yearning and sleepiness built in


Autumn Portraits

Three dances from some incidental music for Romeo and Juliet, composed for Dianne Timmerman and the Butler University Department of Theatre - this music is sly, slightly sarcastic, and a bit jaded

Three Dances from "Romeo and Juliet"

Earthworks was commissioned and composed by Indianapolis dance company Dance Kaleidoscope to be part of a full evening set of modern dance pieces titled 'The Four Elements."  My portion was to be the 'earth' segment, composed using electronic means.  The separate pieces are by turns volcanic, massive, intimate, yearning, celebratory, humorous, quiet, dark, obdurate, and victorious.  A video of the danced production by Dance Kaleidoscope can be found on YouTube.

Earthworks

Moog modular synthesizer-based set pieces - fashioned after classic 1960's tape pieces, using simple editing techniques -- these pieces are available on the album "Sidewalk Music" from Ravello Records on both iTunes and Amazon.com

Retrogressions

Prague Interlude (Third Impression)

I was very fortunate to hear Karel Husa's music as an undergraduate student at Concordia College, when the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony played his most famous work, Music for Prague 1968.​  He was in residence at Concordia as a part of that concert weekend, and I was able to hear him speak about music, his life, and the politics of (then) Czechoslovakia.  His passion and fierce, dedicated craftsmanship made a great impression on me, and helped influence me to begin writing contemporary music in earnest.  Prague Interlude (Third Impression)​ is a percussion ensemble work, written as part of a Karel Husa festschrift project organized by the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers and designed like the third movement of Music for Prague: a percussion interlude through which the listener moves, awakening to the bells of the surrounding city/countryside.

Prague Interlude (Third Impression)

Postcards from Garfield Park

I.  Busking
II.  At Play Amidst the Fountains and Flowers
III.  Westward Late Afternoon (Garden Heat Blues)
IV.  Evening Games (with Busking Reprise)

performed live at the Night Annex Studio, Indianapolis by Jenna Page (piccolo, flute), Eric Salazar (clarinet, bass clarinet), Heidi Radtke (soprano and alto saxophones), and Kelly Swenson (bassoon, contrabasson)

Large public parks are one of the best places in cities and urban places throughout the world - regardless of which continent or country you are in, chances are pretty good that the planners of that city (if they’re smart) have set aside a good portion of land to become wonderful spaces for public use.  Indianapolis (and the surrounding communities) have several great public parks, but the one that was first established is Garfield Park, built in the late 19th century.  In researching a bit about this park, I loved coming across older postcards that focused on a wide variety of the park’s features, especially those of the Sunken Gardens.  When approached by Eric Salazar from Classical Music Indy to write a quartet for winds that was place-centric, he suggested we go tour around the park, looking for spots in which to film the quartet playing this piece.  While walking around I kept thinking of those older postcards, and how the park must have been used by fin de siècle Hoosiers – what sort of games would they play?  What sort of music would they hear?  How would children run around the gardens?  "Postcards from Garfield Park" imagines such a day, from late morning into early evening, in a four-movement work that borrows style and genre from ragtime and playful scherzi from early French modernists, as well as reimagining some slow blues (from under the shade of the Garden’s evergreens) for a hot and humid afternoon.

Thanks to Eric Salazar, Mitzi Westra, Heidi Radtke, Trina Gross, Douglas Spaniol, and Scott Joplin

Commissioned by Classical Music Indy and supported by the Indy Arts and Culture 
Restart & Resilience Fund: An Arts Council of Indianapolis program 
made possible by the Lilly Foundation

Postcards from Garfield Park

Five Modular Etudes

1. Reich, Riley & Townsend Mini Storage
2. Deckard's Vacation Modular
3. 2 Fast 2 Danz
4. (D) Press On (2)
5. Man Eye Zeke

Each of these modular synth studies were conceived to explore a small Eurorack system, as well as compose a set of short works that used as many of the modules as possible in one live setting at a time.

Each piece is recorded from a live performance with no overdubs, and then only modified with a 'house/ambient' reverb and some small mastering EQ.  All dynamics, motion, pitch and harmonic content were derived through CV or human knob-twisting, and all sounds (minus the recording of church bells) were made using this Eurorack system.

An interesting challenge!

Five Modular Etudes

Bassoonist Mark Ortwein approached me about five years ago with an idea for writing a piece where he could perform much like a rock guitar player would, sending his amplified bassoon through a number of effects stomp pedals.  Our original plans were for some kind of a solo piece which then morphed into this piece, upping the ante to include amplified CONTRABASSOON as well as adding a complete wind ensemble to accompany and play against the intrepid (mad) bassoonist.  This piece’s title includes some of my typical ‘punishment’ word play (of course) as well as aptly describes a number of musical elements featured throughout the work:  numerous clingy harmonic major/minor seconds in chords and diads, constant drumming, and myriad velcro-cling effects by the soloist all wrapped up in a kind of snarky, quasi-anxiously-stoned-avant-garde-acid-jazz aesthetic.  

Led by a virtuosic, neo-hep-kat bassoonist…. naturally.

commissioned by and composed for that mondo-awesome bassoonist, Mark Ortwein

live performance by Mark Ortwein and the University of Indianapolis Wind Ensemble, cond. by Jon Noworta

Ecstatic Cling

I.  O Virgo Ecclesia
II. Nunc Gaudeunt Materna Viscera Ecclesia
III. O Orzchis Ecclesia
IV. O Choruscans Lux Stellarum

for mezzo-soprano and piano

Mitzi Westra, mezzo-soprano
Greg Martin, piano

These antiphons (in Latin) are by mystic Hildegard of Bingen that were written and set to her on incomparable music for a dedication for a new church and were later gathered together in her Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. The first of these four antiphons speak a note of mourning and fear, for which sacrifice of Christ, and the marriage of the church and the Lamb will ultimately conquer their enemy and redeem the church. Each successive antiphon becomes more joyful and ecstatic. This setting sets its stage in mourning and anxiety, before moving through an embrace of that coming joy and eventual marriage. Initially, the first of this set was commissioned by soprano Karen Adair which I then transcribed for my wife Mitzi Westra – she then asked for the last three to be written to be included in an upcoming recording project. I have always enjoyed the work of this polymathic Christian mystic, and had wanted to interact with her through her writings for some time.

Four Antiphons of Hildegard of Bingen

During a concert by Butler University's JCA Composers Orchestra concert in the Eidson Duckwall Recital Hall, this ensemble was doing a piece where we had ca. 20 folks onstage, with piano, percussion, chairs, and stands, et al; we fit just fine, but the Indianapolis Fire Marshall made a surprise visit and nearly closed down the concert.  Needless to say, the Butler University Powers-That-Be handed down a new Decree stating that no more than nine persons (9) could appear onstage at one time (with instruments and stands).....

Nine onstage.......  but how many folks playing backstage to the metronomic woodblock........?

This is a bit of silly tweaking-of-the-nose piece that the JCAco revels in -

Revolution No. 9

Soup or Spreader
A pass-along game for purveyors of potage
For 3-7 Treble or alto instruments and single percussionist

This piece was commissioned by Dr. Christopher Gable for his new music ensemble Section 17 at the University of North Dakota - it is something of a game of tag, where each instrument chases others around, exchanging bits of music in a minimalist fashion - the instruments are not specified and so can fit many mixed chamber groups.  This performance is by the JCA Composers

Soup or Spreader

Wind Ensemble piece exhibiting some of my perceptions and portraits of power -- this work was commissioned by a consortium of eight wind ensembles from all over North America, and the piece was premiered by Robert Grechesky and the Butler Wind Ensemble

POWER PLAYS

Vanessa Porter, violin
Greg Martin, piano

Vanessa Porter is a violinist who has made her own way in the world of music, rather than only following the usual paths of a performer of concert music.  Consequently, through projects like her Green Dot Journeys and her National Parks commissions, she has forged a unique road as a performer, bringing her playing into a number of concert venues that are off the beaten path: into the homes of music aficionados, into the national parks, and other non-traditional venues.  I had the great privilege to help her with a composition contest for the Green Dot Journeys (named after the roads in Rand McNally maps that are considered very scenic), and I loved the entire process she undertook to make this project work.  As she began to plan her next composition project based on the National Parks of the United States, I hoped that I would be able to write a piece for her based on the park in my home state of Montana: Glacier National Park.

This sonata is a very accessible, single movement, thirteen-episode piece that uses as a framing device the beautiful scenic elements of the park that are close to, viewed from, or a short walk away from the marvelous roadway called the Going to the Sun highway, the only road in the park which crosses the park, west to east.  In a land of wonders, so many of which can only be seen by back country hiking, the amount of stunningly beautiful scenery that can be seen from this road is nearly overwhelming.  Each episode relates to various places along the highway, traveling from Lake McDonald in the west, and moving along the road to Lake St Mary in the east.  Along the way, the traveler rides next to McDonald Creek, by the trail of Cedars, past Heaven’s Peak, the Weeping Wall, up to the top of Logan Pass, past hidden treasures such as the Triple Falls, the Garden of the Gods, moving up and across the Continental Divide, down around Siyeh Bend, past St Mary Falls, Baring Creek, Sunrift Gorge, and then to St Mary’s Lake.  My hope is that the music reflects at least some of the beauty of this part of Montana with its clear, tumbling streams, cloud-crowned mountains, green forests, red and grey rocks, multi-colored meadows of flowers, and its calm, cold lakes.

During the composition of this piece, I was greatly assisted by viewing the photography of many folks, but I would like to single out and thank a friend of mine who regularly photographs the wonders of Glacier National Park, Mr. Blake Passmore.  You may view his photography at FineArt American: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/blake-passmore.html

Additionally, I was greatly assisted in my writing by a wonderful violinist colleague, Dr. Davis Brooks.  His suggestions and editing of the violin part made this piece better in every way.  Mille grazie, m’amici!

Commissioned by and composed for Vanessa Porter

Violin Sonata No. 2 (Going to the Sun)

October

That's How Autumn's Are

Crisp and Crisp

An acapella choral piece composed for the Montana Distract A Western Choral Festival - it is also dedicated to Virginia Vinal, my high school choir director.  The poem is about the passage of the river through the Bitterroot Valley

Bitterroot Homecoming

A canonic setting of part of the first chapter of John's Gospel

The Word Made Flesh

A chamber piece for mixed piano quartet - flute/alto flute, violin, violoncello, and piano.  This piece is an audio rendering of postmodern criticism - snarky, flippant, high brow, and speaking in an arcane language....

Arcana

Tango from Romeo and Juliet

Spinning Waltz from Romeo and Juliet

Meeting Dance from Romeo and Juliet

A suite of music from the ballet "The Willow Maiden," on a story by Ellen Denham, commissioned by the Butler University Ballet. This music was a chance to write orchestral pieces like the ones written by the French and Russian orchestral composers of the early 20th century.

Third Suite from "The Willow Maiden"

A one-player multi-percussion piece that is by turns ambient, meditative, turbulent, prayerful, and forceful -- an 'aftermath' of Paul the apostle's experience on the road to Damascus  - Commissioned by percussionist Marc Wooldridge

Road to Damascus

Of Wood & Bone

Metalworkz

Stomp

Earth Yearn

Core

Retrogressions III

Retrogressions II

Retrogressions I

The title tracks from the album "Sidewalk Music,"  in three movements: 1. LawnShow  2. SideShow 3. LateShow - these pieces are very environmental in construction, but the actual scenes they may portray are all artificial, and constructed through editing based on my own field recordings and other sound effects libraries.  Each of these scenes are also tweaked with some processed unrealistic sounds to give them a twist for the listener.  This is the first time that the three movements have been released as a continuous whole -- on the album they function like entr'actes or intermezzi.  "Sidewalk Music" is available from Ravello Records on iTunes or at Amazon.com

Sidewalk Music

I wanted to compose a piece for my electroacoustic CD "Sidewalk Music" that was played on an synthesizer but emulated a string orchestra, much like the older 1970's instruments such as the ARP String Ensemble did - I did so by combining a lot of those older instruments, playing the piece, overdubbing it, etc.  What resulted was a very 19th century, late romantic, "Verklarte Nacht" style piece - I then had a lot of fun playing this piece back in various settings and recording the result - this one is the "kitchen remix."

Where Two or More are Gathered

The ending music from the Butler University Theatre department's presentation of "The Lamentation Project;"  the music here was presented live in their black box space with the keyboard parts played via fixed media recordings, while a street urchin treble sang various parts of the Lamentations 5:21 text live, with reverb FX added.  The treble here is Simon Roberts.

Converte Nos, from "Lamentations"

A selection of pieces from various plays for which I've composed music and done sound designs - this music is all over the map - very much part of the background and minimalist (Metamorphosis), standard orchestral (Romeo and Juliet), weird piano (Turn of the Screw), and new age-esque (Lamentations Project)

Chalk Circle Reel from A Caucasian Chalk Circle

Composed after a study of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, the tone of this work relates to the translation of the verse (Ecc. 1:14) that goes something like this: "I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind."  The music is often sparse, hollow, plaintive, clangorous, outbursting, settling.....  commissioned by and composed for Erica Egolf

... a chasing after the wind

A more straight forward reading of this jazz ballad played by Gary Walters

Red Gravy (On the Side)

"Honk!" was composed for Kent Leslie, a mondo-awesome horn player, who, among other things, is the quintessential Alice Cooper and Jethro Tull fan.  So, it seemed fitting to write him a piece that uses some pop music elements, in this case, a kind of Tim Burton/Helena Bonham Carteresque bit of funk.  With ska and Henry Cowell bits mixed it.

Honk!

Over the last six years or so, I have re-embraced working with hardware modular synthesizers, especially those whose design reflects the work of West Coast synth pioneer Donald Buchla.  "No Margarine for Error" was written to be performed on a MakeNoise-based Eurorack system, using musíque concréte, tape, and granular techniques, along with sequenced loops and knob-twisting.

The whole of it can become quite silly.

The title refers to the knife's edge danger that all live performances contain, expressed in the near homophone-esque pun, a favorite device seen in other titles of pieces of mine such as "Sleight of Band," "Ecstatic Cling," and others.  this wordplay also extends to the subtitle "an olio in five parts;" olio is oil in Italian (and so is not margarine nor butter), but in theatre or vaudeville it refers to a collection of musical numbers as an encore.  In plain English it is a hodgepodge.  Spelled slightly differently, it is of course, another name for margarine.  Slick, ain't it!?

No Margarine for Error

Cecily Terhune, who plays on this recording, is an incredible saxophonist who has embraced a wide variety of music, including works for live electronics using guitar effects pedals.  We were finally able to collaborate on this piece, which employs delay, a digital whammy, reverb, a freeze pedal, an octave pedal and something really cool called the Rainbow Machine......

The piece reflects the search proposed by Jesus in the book of Matthew (7:7) "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." This music is yearning, restless, impatient, pushing forward and falling back - 

Commissioned by and composed for Cecily Terhune

ask, seek, knock

"A Liturgy of the Hours" is essentially a singular, personal musical impression of the liturgical hours -  a period of time defined by the individual hours of prayer and worship over the course of a day.  Typically, during the course of a day’s liturgy, the prayers begin at midnight, with Matins -- dawn begins with Lauds, moving through the morning and afternoon with Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and moving into the evening with Vespers and finally, Compline.  Each prayer is about three hours apart from each other, and depending on which church’s tradition you follow, will have a set of readings, hymns, psalms, and prayers which are read, sung, or prayed.  This sonata is loosely based on some of those readings. psalms, and prayers, with a verse or fragment of those hours listed below.  The individual movements contain some shared musical material between movements, but is unlike a typical violin sonata in that the violin is not always the principal instrumentalist – indeed, most of the time, the foregrounded music is an amalgamation of both instruments.  The musical language, while accessible, is contemporary to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and takes advantage of scordatura violin writing, modes of limited transposition, and inside the piano work popularized by Olivier Messiaen, George Crumb, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives and others.  This piece is not a straight programmatical work – rather, the work reflects the impressions made upon me while working on it, and when reading/praying the liturgical hours, I made similar connections between the texts below (taken from a single day’s breviary texts) and the music as it was being written.

It is here performed by the violin-piano duo "Ascending," by whom the piece was commissioned

A Liturgy of the Hours (Violin Sonata No. 1)

Preserve Me, O God is a piece that I promised to write for my wife shortly after hearing her sing as a soloist for the first time at the University of Minnesota.  It had a long gestation, and I wrote nearly ten other false starts before completing this piece.  I had asked her what her favorite sacred text was, and she replied that it was the sixteenth psalm.  She liked one translation of this text, and I liked another, and so eventually I went back to the original Hebrew and with a dozen English translations and Strong’s Bible Dictionary before me produced the paraphrase for this piece.  The Good News Bible lists this a “prayer of confidence,” and my setting of the text reflects that along with my reading that David is claiming the Lord for his own throughout (“You are MY Lord”). This psalm also enumerates a number of the excellent things that God has given the psalmist (as well as mentioning the less-than-excellent sorrows that come to those who chase after other ‘gods.’).  The text is set largely syllabically for the soloist, accompanied by contrapuntal backgrounds and a bit of pedal-based tintinnabulation underneath them, utilizing a modal, accessible musical language.  This seems to illustrate a kind of dialogue between soloist and quartet, somewhat like a congregation engaging in active, vocal participation with the preacher’s reading. This exaltation, while restrained, is both emotional and reverent.
 
composed for Mitzi Westra
performed by Mitzi Westra and the New Century String Quartet 
November 2016

Preserve Me, O God

"Bí Thusa mo shúile" was commissioned by amateur violinist Danny Frasure as a piece that he that would be able to play with his significant other, pianist Caitlin Foster.  He asked that the piece would include a number of different elements: based on the hymn “Be Thou My Vision,” be similar to how Charles Ives included hymn tunes in his violin sonatas, and the resulting piece would need to be short (less than four minutes) enough to be recorded on an Edison cylinder recording machine.

What!  Edison recording machine?  Okay, I’m in.

As a result of these requests, this piece became a simple, heartfelt piece, in which hints of the hymn surface during the first two sections of the work, and then is simply stated in the solo part for the last third.  Its emotional character moves from quietly reverent to joyous, underscoring the plea of the Irish hymn’s texts (translated by Eleanor Hull in 1912): 

“Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart, 
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art 
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, 
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”

commissioned by Danny Frasure and composed for Caitlin Foster and Danny Frasure

Bí Thusa mo shúile

Written in 2017, this work is for electric violin and real-time Logic-based effects.  The title include a bit of word-play and homáge to French electronic music pioneer Jean Michael Jarre, as well as the kind of inward looking self-investigation as described in Sylvia Plath's novel.  The music may be described as beautiful, but occasionally unsettling, and somewhat feline in some of its curiosity and reflection.

This live performance is by Davis Brooks, for whom the piece was composed, and recorded in Voxman Concert Hall at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.

Quatre Regards dans la Belle Jarre

This is the premiere of a song cycle I wrote for my wife Mitzi Westra.  It is a setting of Wallace Stevens' famous set of poems "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  She is the featured mezzo-soprano here, along with pianist Greg Martin

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

This is a chamber piece I composed for hornist Kent Leslie - he was a huge Alice Cooper fan, and so we thought it might be fun to take a title by that artist and do a work around its central premise - the piece is wild and crazy, and involves a bit of theatre..... (see if you can hear the ping pong balls......)

(sampled instrument mockup)

you drive ME nervous  (cello version)

This is the first of four pieces whose texts are by Hildegarde of Bingen.  this set was commissioned by soprano Karen Adair, and premiered by her.  This performance was lowered to medium voice range and performed by mezzo-soprano Mitzi Westra and pianist Greg Martin.

O Virgo Ecclesia From Four Hymns by Hildegarde

I am an eclectic composer who writes with a postmodern mischievousness: my pieces can be comedic/ironic, simple/complex, or humble/reverent. My recent projects have taken a turn toward turn towards the sweeter side, exploring a consonant adiatonicism.

FRANK FELICE, composer

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