JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE PHOTO MONTAGE, Op. 130

Soprano Hayley Boggs and pianist Maryna Buksha perform "Dropping Fleas Into a Glass of Water." Poem by Alexander Theroux; music by Gary Lloyd Noland, Op. 112.

Here is Alexander Theroux's poem "Dropping Fleas into a Glass of Water":

Wet fleas are three-fourths dead.
The way they despair is, oddly,
by activity. I find the way sunshine
illuminates their last agonies
by adding irony to pain the way
when desperately we try to pray
in struggling to save ourselves
our imprecations quickly take on
disbelief so used we are to God's
suffocating silence as we drown.
Their minuscule bagpipe bodies
brown and tiny as tobacco flakes
with snouts like Bosch's horns
as crazily they scissorleg and
thrash, bite for air, eat water
the way leaves gulp red light,
experience with each abdominal
exertion in the champagne night
of frying, sizzling bubbles
the dreadful fact that jumping
does not work, just as prayer reaching
for a similar height does not
in our despair. As to beseeching,
kicking, thrashing, madly humping
fleas in water likewise is our lot.

For VP Richard Cheney
and all monsters everywhere who advocate
and delight in torture.

Music copyright © 2019 by Gary Lloyd Noland
Text from Collected Poems copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux 
Permission to set this poem has been granted by the author.

For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

DROPPING FLEAS INTO A GLASS OF WATER for soprano & piano; poem by Alexander Theroux

PEOPLE'S PARK CONCERTO for piano & electronics by Gary Lloyd Noland; Gary Lloyd Noland, piano (May 17th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

PEOPLE'S PARK CONCERTO for piano & electronics, Op. 145; Gary Lloyd Noland, piano

BEHIND ALL RESPECTABLE FAÇADES ARE FOUND VAST REPOSITORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE FILTH by Gary Lloyd Noland (May 22nd, 2023). Performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

Behind All Façades are Found Vast Repositories of Unspeakable Filth

BEHIND ALL RESPECTABLE FAÇADES ARE FOUND VAST REPOSITORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE FILTH

Soprano Hayley Boggs and pianist Victor Hugo Morales perform composer Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Heinrich Heine's poem "Aus meinen Tränen Sprießen" from his FOUR HEINE LIEDER, Op. 19, No. 1. For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

AUS MEINEN TRÄNEN SPRIESSEN from FOUR HEINE LIEDER, Op. 19, No. 1

Pianists Gary Lloyd Noland and Terry Wergeland perform JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE PHOTO MONTAGE for piano & electronics, Op. 130 by Gary Lloyd Noland. This performance took place at Room 75 Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, Portland Oregon, Decemeber 4th, 2022. This work is dedicated to Belgian pianist Lukas Huisman.
For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE PHOTO MONTAGE for piano & electronics, Op. 130

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

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

DROPPING FLEAS INTO A GLASS OF WATER for soprano & piano; poem by Alexander Theroux

Gary Lloyd Noland, composer

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