CLAPTRAPDASH and other works by GARY LLOYD NOLAND

Pianist JIHYE CHANG performs AETERNUM VALE Op. 93 (2008) by GARY LLOYD NOLAND. In memoriam DAVID FOSTER WALLACE. This was the world premiere performance on a Seventh Species concert in Portland, Oregon, June, 2013

AETERNUM VALE for piano Op. 93

ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 5 by GARY LLOYD NOLAND (2005). For more information on the composer, please visit his website: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 5

The world premiere of my KORNGOLDAROONIE for string trio Op. 94 (Portland, Oregon, March, 2011) was attended by Erich Wolfgang Korngold's granddaughter, who currently oversees the Korngold estate. This performance features Corinne Stillwell, violin;  Pamela Ryan, viola;  Dorien De León, cello. This piece was composed as a tribute to Korngold: Commissioned by Marzena for the Free Marz String Trio with funding support from the Baby LeRoy Memorial Trust.

KORNGOLDAROONIE for string trio Op. 94

PRELUDE IN E MINOR for harpsichord Op. 34 (1979, revised 1993). For more information on composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

PRELUDE IN E MINOR for harpsichord Op. 34

SEVENUPMANSHIP from 24 INTERLUDES for piano Op. 71, No. 11 performed by the composer. For more information on GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

SEVENUPMANSHIP for piano Op. 71, No. 11

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF CAMILLE PAGLIA Op. 107, No. 4

CAFÉ RITARDANDO Op. 89 is a comic book opera by GARY LLOYD NOLAND. Cast:  Jack Gabel, Guillermo Galindo, Paul Safar, Jeff Winslow, Nancy Wood, and the composer.  The live performance took place at Classic Pianos, Portland, Oregon in the spring of 2007. The recording was revised and edited by the composer on February 10, 2021.

CAFÉ RITARDANDO: A COMIC BOOK OPERA Op. 89 (2007)

QUEEN OF PHARTZ from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 14. For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

QUEEN OF PHARTZ from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 14

PIMPLE POLKA from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 12 (newly revised version from Feb. 12, 2021). For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

PIMPLE POLKA from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 12

GREMLIN GAMBADOS from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 11 (newly revised version from Feb. 12th, 2021). To learn more about composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

GREMLIN GAMBADOS from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 11

Pianist Paul Safar performs LOCOBRATIONS Op. 65 by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

LOCOBRATIONS for piano Op. 65

NERDFOX RAG for piano Op. 23 (1978, revised 1992). For more information on composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: https://composergarynoland.godaddysites.com/

NERDFOX RAG for piano Op. 23

DISINCENTIVE from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 10 (newly revised version—Feb. 14th, 2021)by GARY LLOYD NOLAND. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at:

SADISINCENTIVE from ROYAL OILWORKS MUSIC Op. 80, No. 10

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

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF GERMAN OPERATIC TENOR AND COMPOSER DANIEL BEHLE Op. 117, No. 7. Composed and performed by Gary Lloyd Noland. 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 is a delicately sculpted, multi-layered comprovisation for piano and is the seventh in a series of such musical portraits. Thus far I have composed portraits of artists, writers, and performers who emanate powerfully luminous auras in their work, including 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, and American feminist academic and social critic Camille Paglia.

MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF GERMAN OPERATIC TENOR AND COMPOSER DANIEL BEHLE Op. 117, No. 7

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

CLAPTRAPDASH and other works by GARY LLOYD NOLAND

Gary Lloyd Noland, composer