“You Might Have Mentioned How the Doorknobs Worked” is a poem by Jennifer Boyden, my high school English teacher. She lived in a house with crystal doorknobs that transmitted radio frequencies, so voices with no clear source would follow her and her family around their house. The voices drove them mad; they eventually started sleeping on their lawn every night. Despite being gaslit by her home, Boyden describes the intangible voices as if they were the voices of angels. She characterizes her family’s search for the voices as a spiritual journey. By combining 15th-century Franco-Flemish composition techniques, Gregorian chant, tone rows, and microtonality, I create the effect of finding G-d in speaking doorknobs. My biggest source of inspiration for this piece was the mathematical spirituality of Missa Prolationum by Ockeghem, which is a compilation of mensuration canons (songs where the voices sing the same part but at different speeds).

Here is a link to the score:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19D0zQXiZhxMFJ8okoE0rG7A2TgASzWpM/view?usp=sharing

Gavin Goodrich is a composer and concert pianist whose works synthesize pure mathematics, Vipassana Meditation, and visual arts. Born in an Alaskan fishing community, he taught himself piano, composition, and mathematics from YouTube videos before receiving a scholarship to study mathematics and music at Columbia University, where he is in his final year. He is a New York-based composer with recent commissions including writing for the International Contemporary Ensemble and Ekmeles. Under the advisement of Dr. Joseph Dubiel, his senior theses concern systematizing 15th-century Franco-Flemish polyphonic music into the realm of microtonality and using Schenkerian Techniques in non-tonal music spaces. Gavin also has a passion for teaching. Apart from individual tutoring, he designed curricula and taught math and music at Spring Street International School, as well as created and led a yearly Symposium for Peruvian high school girls with special emphasis on Ancient Greek and Indian theatre. In his spare time, Gavin enjoys solving higher dimensional Rubik’s Cubes and is currently internationally ranked for solving both 4 and 5 dimensional puzzles.

You Might Have Mentioned How The Doorknobs Worked

...of the earth

I wrote this piece on September 1st, 2022, the day after my mom died. After a summer of caregiving and a day of death logistics, I sat down at a piano for the first time in weeks, and, for the second time in my life, I wrote a piece without stopping. No writer's block, no reflecting; I wrote the piece in less time than it took to play it. After pausing my music career to take care of my mother on a remote island for three months, the piece fell out of me as soon as I had space away from doctors, nurses, and family members. A large part of my identity became caring for my mother, parenting my teenage brother, and helping my grandparents through the death of their only daughter. The day my mom died, I lost a large part of my identity. This piece is about the realization that I will be treading in grief for the rest of my life.

I think The Day After My Mom Died is my best piece, but many people don’t find it engaging. Most musicians like I Am A Strange Flute the best (it’s for flute and electronics), and most pianists like Phase Trio. The Day After My Mom Died is the first piece I wrote without thinking of the audience, making it one of the closest to my heart.

The Day After My Mom Died

Written for Alarm Will Sound, amplified sinfonietta and live keyboard sampler for the electronics.

Hasta que no pueda (2023)

composed by Christian Ryan (2012, rev. 2021)
(version for viola & piano)

Alycia Wilder, viola
Christian Ryan, piano

performed live, May 13
@ St. Anthony's Cathedral, Detroit MI
for Other Tones 003

Other Tones (live)

First Viola Study (live, OT003)

@yessimusic live at The Grove on Friday night.

Campout Mix Series: Yessi

Sorriso dela - Erasmo Carlos 
Saudosismo- Gal Costa 
Nana - Sam Gendel
Credo- Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges
Lady Luna- Nora Orlandi
Dust to Dust-Coud One
All day music - War
Acting like a lover -Woo
CD- Sam Gendel
2 Groove - Pratley
Venus in Cancer- Robbie Basho
A Scots tune- Ronn McFarlane
Whip my Taudie- David Taylor
Life Like This- Kurt Vile
Estranged- Double virgo
Who Sees you- My bloody valentine
Porcelain- Ozean
Quarantined- Atlas Sound
Rachel Cut - Dean Blunt
Splashy-Double Virgo
Fifty-fifty Clown (BBC Session) - Cocteau Twins 
Ray- klein

big hat big problems 13º

THIS AUDIO RECORDING IS ARCHIVAL AND UNPUBLISHED. 

World premiere performed live on August 18, 2022 by Timothy McAllister (alto saxophone) and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra.

Scores - Recordings

For Wadada Leo Smith (Adagio)

LADY MARGARET ODE (ft. Brian Nasty)

A soupy blend of experimental sounds from New York's Eartheater.

For more information and tracklist head here: http://www.factmag.com/2018/10/31/fact-mix-678-eartheater/

The Day After My Mom Died

Gavin Sol Goodrich

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