THE SWANK AND VILE from MUSICAL JUNK SCULPTURES Op. 102

ARISTOBOMBASTIC TRIPE DREAM by Gary Lloyd Noland (July 30th, 2025). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

ARISTOBOMBASTIC TRIPE DREAM

MIDNIGHT VACUUM CLEANING PHRENZY by Gary Lloyd Noland (July 30th, 2025). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

MIDNIGHT VACUUM CLEANING PHRENZY

FRANTICALLY STRIVING TO FEEL OPTIMISTIC by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

FRANTICALLY STRIVING TO FEEL  OPTIMISTIC

GAUNTLET JAUNT by Gary Lloyd Noland (August 6th, 2025). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

GAUNTLET JAUNT

VISPROINTIAMO No. 11 for piano, composed and performed by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

VISPROINTIAMO NO. 11 for piano

A HOST OF CONFLICTING AGENDAS by Gary Lloyd Noland. To read more about the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

A HOST OF CONFLICTING AGENDAS

PROMENADING PLUTOCRATIC MORONS by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

PROMENADING PLUTOCRATIC MORONS

AMBIENT MUSIC FOR NEUROTICS by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

AMBIENT MUSIC FOR NEUROTICS

DEI MADRIGAL for mixed choir by Gary Lloyd Noland (Sept. 18th, 2025). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

DEI MADRIGAL for mixed choir

F*CK THE SYSTEM! for mixed choir, two pianos, and objects that can be hit, thrown & banged by Gary Lloyd Noland (September 21st, 2025). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

F*CK THE SYSTEM! for mixed choir, two pianos, and objects that can be hit, thrown & banged

As of February, 2019 I have had the great pleasure and honor of setting a number of poems by Alexander Theroux (an author I have deeply admired for many years) for soprano and piano. Theroux has given me his blessing to set as many of his poems as I like from his Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics in 2015). I had initially scheduled a recital of eight of these new songs to be performed by soprano Hsin Yi Lin and pianist Asya Gulua on Saturday, April 11th, 2020 at Classic Pianos in Portland, Oregon. Unfortunately, I have had to postpone this recital due to the COVID-19 outbreak.This is a MIDI rendition of "Desert Space" Op. 113 (see poem below), which is best heard with headphones. The score that scrolls across the screen is not the final version; it is merely what I use at the moment for listening purposes. The completed version of the score of this song will eventually be available for downloading from my website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/ 
Enjoy!

Here is Alexander Theroux's poem "Desert Space":

I dreamt in my pain
you reckoned with mine
when my heart was broken in two

and hoped to see
as I looked for a sign
for what that happened you'd rue.

Who would deny
that's where you start
in hopes of remaining true?

But then again
if you had a heart
you'd be someone other than you.

Music by Gary Lloyd Noland, Op. 113
Poem by Alexander Theroux

Music copyright © 2020 by Gary Lloyd Noland
Text from Collected Poems copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux 
Permission to set this poem has been granted by the author.

NB: the score scrolled across the screen is a crude version of the piece meant for listening only. The completed score of the song will be made available for downloading from my website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

DESERT SPACE for soprano & piano Op. 113

THE SWANK AND VILE is the second in a set of nine MUSICAL JUNK SCULPTURES Op. 102. To read more about composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

THE SWANK AND VILE  from  MUSICAL JUNK SCULPTURES  Op. 102, No. 2.

This is the seventh of "24 Interludes" for piano Op. 71 performed by the composer. For more information on Gary Lloyd Noland, go to his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/
“...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE (review of 24 Postludes Op. 72)

STUPIDSIZE IT for piano Op. 71, No. 7

"Amerikan Bozo Dance" is the eighth movement of "String Quartet No. 2" (Op. 32, 1993) by Gary Lloyd Noland. It is the musical "punchline" of the movement that precedes it (titled "Polyester Fugue").  Performance by the Onyx String Quartet: Anna Presler, violin; Phyllis Kamrin, violin; Kurt Rohde, viola; Leighton Fong, cello. For more information on the composer, go to his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

AMERIKAN BOZO DANCE from STRING QUARTET NO. 2, Op. 32, No. 8

This is the fourth piece in a set of thirteen from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC by composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND (2006). It is available on CD from North Pacific Music. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

MY BABE'S GONE DOWN TO DO HER GLUE Op. 80, No. 4

Having attended a recital of musical portraits by Virgil Thomson in Boston back in the 1980s (with the composer present, whom I briefly met), I have decided to embark upon a similar pilgrimage.This piece is a delicately sculpted musical portrait of playwright David Hirson, composed and performed by Gary Lloyd Noland (December 19th, 2020). David Hirson is best known for his award-winning Broadway comedies, La Bête and Wrong Mountain. This is the second in a series of musical portraits by the composer. The first portrait, completed earlier this month (December, 2020) is of novelist, essayist and poet Alexander Theroux, which can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/gary-noland/portrait-of-novelist-essayist-poet-alexander-theroux-for-piano

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF PLAYWRIGHT DAVID HIRSON

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

DESERT SPACE for soprano & piano Op. 113

Gary Lloyd Noland, composer

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