GOSPEL OF DYSFUNCTION and other works by composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND

A depiction of a Scottish celebration for the national saint's day, St. Andrew. All themes except the hymn tune St. Andrew are original but done in the style of traditional strathspeys, reels and jigs.

St. Andrew's Day Ceiligh

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs BOYZ AND GIRLZ, JUST GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON! by Gary Lloyd Noland (April 21st, 2024). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

BOYZ & GIRLZ, JUST GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON!

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs BOYZ & GIRLZ, JUST GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON! by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at:

The Nest of Flying Things: The Wasp (Vivace) 2024

For all of you naysayers on the value of AI as a compositional tool: When Joseph Haydn died in 1809, he left many unfinished works, a boon for AI enthusiasts. Here, Haydn's torso Sonata in D Major for Piano became my source of inspiration to employ AI and see if it was up to the task of completing at least one unfinished movement. Here are the results of the Adagio, where, for some unknown reason, Haydn abruptly discontinued the work at measure 69.

When AI CompleteD An Unfinished Haydn Sonata

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs NO WORRIES! EVERYTHING WILL BE JUST FINE! by Gary Lloyd Noland (June 8th, 2024). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

NO WORRIES! EVERYTHING WILL BE JUST FINE!

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs A FOGGY NOTION FOR ANYONE WHO NEEDS ONE by Gary Lloyd Noland (June 17th, 2024). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

A FOGGY NOTION FOR ANYONE WHO NEEDS ONE

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs STEPPING DOWN FROM A FRUITLESS ENDEAVOR ONCE AND FOR ALL by Gary Lloyd Noland (June 21st, 2024). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

STEPPING DOWN FROM A FRUITLESS ENDEAVOR ONCE AND FOR ALL

A Way Out Part 3

A Way Out Part 6

Soprano Nancy Wood and pianist Paul Safar perform I DARE NOT ASK A KISS (Op. 7) by Gary Lloyd Noland. Poem is "To Electra" by Robert Herrick (1591-1674).  This song may be performed with either piano or harpsichord accompaniment. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

I DARE NOT ASK A KISS for soprano & piano (Op. 7)

CLAPTRAPDASH from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC (Op. 80, No. 13) (newly revised version—Feb. 14, 2021). For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

CLAPTRAPDASH from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC (Op. 80, No. 13)

PARENTAL ADVISORY from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 9 (newly revised version—Feb. 16th, 2021). For more information on composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

PARENTAL ADVISORY from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 9

LIEBESSCHMERZ FUGE was begun in 1981 and underwent revisions on and off for 28 years until it was finally completed in 2009.  When the initial sections of this piece were shared at the piano by Noland in Leon Kirchner's composition seminar at Harvard in 1984 (when he was a second-year graduate student there at the time), it was vehemently discouraged—read:  suppressed ("censored" is the more apt term).  The composer later shared it with Earl Kim (another composer on the faculty), who was quick to dismiss it as a trifling "improvisation" (which it most assuredly wasn't!).  Later, in the course of his graduate studies at Harvard, Noland came close to being kicked out of the program on account of his propensity for writing music that was considered "unfashionable" by those in the front office (it was never expressed in such terms but wasn't all that difficult for the composer to read the writing on the walls).  By sheer force of will, Noland managed to stay on in the program (by the skin of his teeth) and receive his useless doctoral degree from that insane institution.  It is said that "neo-romanticism" is in fashion nowadays.  Noland was, quite possibly, the first "neo-romantic" composer of his generation, yet he continues to remain outside the radar of today's classical music mainstream.

LIEBESSCHMERZ FUGE for piano Op. 95 (2009)

GOSPEL OF DYSFUNCTION from MUSICAL JUNK SCULPTURES (Op. 102, No. 10) (Feb. 23, 2021). For more information on composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

GOSPEL OF DYSFUNCTION from MUSICAL JUNK SCULPTURES (Op. 102, No. 10)

GARY LLOYD NOLAND'S MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF FRENCH-ITALIAN MEZZO-SOPRANO LEA DESANDRE Op. 117, No. 8, performed by the FIFTH SELF ENSEMBLE, featuring pianist GARY LLOYD NOLAND, oboist DOLLY GRAY LANDON, French hornist LON GAYLORD DYLAN, ghuzengist DARNOLD OLLY YANG, and double-bassist ORLAN DOY GLANDLY. 

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, multi-layered comprovisation and is the eighth in a series of such musical portraits of artists, writers, and performers who emanate powerfully luminous auras in their work, which thus far includes portraits of the American novelist, essayist, and poet Alexander Theroux, American playwright David Hirson, South African composer/conductor Michael Rosenzweig, English Writer Will Self, French novelist, essayist, poet, actor, filmmaker, and singer Michel Houellebecq, American feminist academic and social critic Camille Paglia, and German operatic tenor and composer Daniel Behle.

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF FRENCH-ITALIAN MEZZO-SOPRANO LEA DESANDRE Op. 117, No. 8

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

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF FRENCH-ITALIAN MEZZO-SOPRANO LEA DESANDRE Op. 117, No. 8

Gary Lloyd Noland, composer

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