Firelight is composition about the light and energy of a destructive inferno. Elements such as intense and accented rhythms are represented throughout the piece to create visual images of each stage that a fire generates. This piece was nominated as the winner of the high school category in the 2014 Missouri Composers Orchestra Project. 

Performed by the Columbia Civic Orchestra; Grant Bradshaw, conductor.

Firelight

Music by Nicholas Omiccioli
Performed by Alarm Will Sound
Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 26, 2014

[fuse]

To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the human mind is the ability to dream. As a kid, I was quite imaginative and my mind was always open to unlimited possibilities for creativity. "Visions and Fantasy" is written in reflection of those memories, or “visions” from my childhood.  I wanted to create the essence of imagination, and the state of dreaming, whether it takes place during the night or during the day. 

Commissioned by the Sheldon Arts Foundation and performed by Graham Woodland (violin) and Gyumi Rha (piano).

Visions and Fantasy

Wet Crimson on Chiricahua 
Tone Poem for Symphonic Orchestra
Illinois Symphony, Alastair Willis, conductor

May your trails be crooked, lonesome, dangerous, 
leading to the most amazing view.
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds, 
May your rivers flow without end, meandering
through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers 
into a dark primeval forest 
where tigers belch and monkeys howl, 
through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down 
into a desert of red rock, blue mesas,
domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, 
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm 
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, 
where deer walk across the white sand beaches, 
where storms come and go 
as lightning clangs upon the high crags, 
where something more beautiful and more full of wonder 
than your deepest dreams 
waits for you _ 
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls. 
-Edward Abbey

Wet Crimson on Chiricahua (Nashville Symphony)

Adrenaline is an intense and energetic work that features complex changes in rhythm and meter to establish a driving pulse that powers through the progression of each phrase. This work is based on the concept of adrenaline and what one feels when adrenaline is released.  Anger, fear, anxiety and excitement are all emotions that are represented in each section of the piece. The instrumentation is Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, Percussion and Piano.

The composition placed second in the International Young Composers Competition through Webster University in St. Louis, MO and was performed by members of the Perseid Quartet and other professional musicians from the St. Louis area. 

Adrenaline

In the Shadow of the Moon hails the approach of the solar eclipse. In writing this piece for the Eclipse Symphony project, I was given the prompt “something’s coming!”. Immediately both programmatic and musical ideas started forming in my mind. I began to wonder what ancient civilizations would have thought of the eclipse. Without any modern-day sciences to explain the unknown solar phenomena, panic and fear would have certainly gripped the people. Throughout the piece, I have represented their unease with a frantic flourish of notes that you will hear throughout the piece, played first by the woodwinds in the opening measures of the work. This is then followed by a visceral rhythmic ostinato in the piano and strings, representing a pounding heartbeat. However, even in the midst of their terror, certainly there would’ve been some realization of the awe-inspiring features of the eclipse. After the intensity of the first section, the instruments fade out and the tempo slows, but only slightly. A passionate cello solo (incorporating melodic intervals from the opening section) reflects on the approaching event, espousing the sheer beauty of being in the shadow of the moon. After a short interjection utilizing the fear motif, the cello renters with the impassioned melody, this time more with a more fully orchestrated accompaniment. This section leads directly into a recapitulation of the material from the opening of the piece, indicating a slow build to the end of the work. With ever-growing intensity in the music, the fear of the ancients rises, their heartbeats pounding faster and faster with the approach of the eclipse. With screaming woodwind figures, the raucous rhythmic heartbeat in the strings and piano, and roaring bass drum hits, the piece comes to a climactic close, signaling the arrival of the eclipse!

In the Shadow of the Moon

In 2016-17, four Mizzou composers were commissioned to write new works celebrating the August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. The pieces by Hans Bridger Heruth, Dustin Dunn, Doug Osmun, and Jake Smucker -- performed by the Mizzou New Music Ensemble -- are woven together into an Eclipse Symphony, which traces the eclipse from its arrival (Heruth's "In the Shadow of the Moon") to climactic peak (Osmun's "Convergences") to its final departure (Smucker's "But You Have So Much to Live For").

The four pieces were premiered first at the Bond Life Sciences Center at the University of Missouri in April 2017, then reprised at the St. Louis Science Center Planetarium in May 2017.

Hans Bridger Heruth - In The Shadow Of The Moon

The Columbia Civic Orchestra (CCO) and the Columbia Chamber Choir, in collaboration with the University of Missouri's Mizzou New Music Initiative, annually present The Missouri Composers Project. This concert of new music specifically for orchestra and chamber choir is generously funded by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. This playlist is compromised of selected works in recent years. For more information, please visit music.missouri.edu/mnmi/mocop.

MOCOP 2014

2015 - Student Orchestral: Hans Bridger Heruth - Impression on a Theme

"The Soul, Like the Moon" by Jake Runestad.  

Performed by the Lunar Ensemble. Lisa Perry, soprano. Gemma New, conductor.

Text by Lalla - 14th-century sufi/mystic poet from Kashmir.

Find out more:  http://jakerunestad.com/works/the-soul-like-the-moon

The Soul, Like the Moon (Voice & Chamber Ens.) (Excerpt)

Spirits of the Dead (2009) 10’ 
SATB, A & T solo, piano, string quintet, chimes

This haunting cantata is a setting of Edgar Allen Poe's "Spirits of the Dead".

World Premiere Performance Recording

New England Conservatory Chamber Singers
Erica J Washburn, conductor



Spirits of the Dead by Anthony Maglione

Performance by Alarm Will Sound.  Premiered in July of 2012 in the Mizzou International Summer Festival.  Was also selected to be performed by the St. Louis Symphony on a subscription concert in Jan. 2014.  Woohoo!

Ravish and Mayhem

HANS BRIDGER HERUTH (b. 1997) is an award-winning composer whose music has been praised as “lovely and delicate” and “impressively stylish” (The American Prize), and for having an “invigorating richness” (KC Metropolis). In addition, he is a conductor, pianist, singer, and violinist of distinction. A lifelong musician, Heruth was born in Kansas City, Missouri and began studying piano at the age of three and voice at the age of five, training as a boy soprano. He began studying violin at the age of nine, and started composing shortly after.
 
As a composer, his works have been performed by many different ensembles, most notably the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Wilmington Concert Opera, Nightingale Opera Theatre Company, (art) Song Lab, KC Vitas Chamber Choir, the Boulder Chorale, Vox Nova, the University Philharmonic and the University Singers of the University of Missouri, the Festival Singers of Florida, the Midwest Chamber Ensemble, Canticum Novum Mizzou, the Show-Me Opera Program, the Heartland Men’s Chorus, the Volker Brass Quintet, Deviant Septet, and many All-State Choir Ensembles. Heruth is also the inaugural composer-in-residence for the American-Prize-winning choral ensemble Vox Nova, and will serve as a composition fellow for the 2022 Cortona Sessions for New Music. In addition to these ensembles, his works have been performed by renowned solo and chamber musicians, including tenor Steven Tharp, baritone Darrell J. Jordan, baritone Patrick Graham, pianist Paola Savvidou, pianist Peter Henderson, violinist Eva Szekely, and chamber musicians from the St. Louis Symphony, including Jessica Cheng, Kyle Andre Lombard, and Bjorn Ranheim. 
 
Influenced by his wide range of performance experiences, Heruth’s oeuvre ranges from opera and orchestral works to intimate chamber music and art songs. His award-winning chamber opera, A Certain Madness, was premiered with great acclaim and to sold out houses – based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, critics raved “Sherlock Holmes has never sounded so good” (KBIA). It will receive its fifth production in July of 2022 with the Nightingale Opera Theatre.  His most recent projects include song cycles for some of his most frequent collaborators: Piano Lessons, with poetry by Billy Collins, for baritone Patrick Graham, and Verses Written in Her Book of Hours, commissioned by Catherine Sandstedt, soprano, as well as Wytchkraft for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Stephanie Childress. Heruth’s works have been performed all across the country in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Powell Hall, Abravanel Hall, the Folly Theatre, the Kauffman Center, the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries, and even in performance venues across Canada, Europe, and China. Heruth has received many accolades for his compositions, most notably as a winner of the 2019-2020 American Prize in Composition in both the opera and the vocal chamber music categories, and a finalist for the 2019-2020 American Prize in Composition in both the instrumental chamber and choral music categories, the 2017-2018 American Prize in Composition in both the choral music and the vocal chamber music categories, the 2015, 2016, and 2019 Sinquefield Prizes in Composition, and the 2016 and 2022 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award. Heruth is a member of ASCAP and is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing, MusicSpoke, and Heruth Publications. Heruth has studied composition with Stefan Freund, Ian David Coleman, Paul Seitz, and W. Thomas McKenney, and has also worked with Jake Heggie, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Ke Chia Chen, William Averitt, Yevgeniy Sharlat, David Liptak, and Don Freund.

Heruth is also in demand as a vocal coach and collaborative pianist. His repertoire as a collaborative pianist includes over 500 works for the voice, spanning all manner of genres from opera arias and art song to musical theatre works and cabaret songs. He has accompanied vocalists in many competitions, including at the national level, and regularly plays for singers in recitals, concerts, and masterclasses. Heruth has also been a collaborative pianist for the flagship choral ensemble at the University of Missouri, the University Singers, and also the Kansas City Chorale, the Show-Me Opera Program, Nightingale Opera Theatre Company, Ars Nova, the Bach Collegium Choir, and the Columbia Youth Choirs. Adept on a wide variety of keyboard instruments, he has additional collaborative experience playing the fortepiano, the harpsichord, and the organ. He was recently named a winner of the 2021-2022 Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music for his interpretations of the songs of John Duke, as well as some of Heruth’s own art songs. He has played for many renowned artists in recitals and performances, including Steven Tharp, tenor, Eva Szekely, violinist, Darrell J. Jordan, baritone, Lindsay Lang, soprano, and Eli Lara, cellist, as well as upcoming performances with Christina Adams, mezzo-soprano, and Patrick Graham, baritone.

As an extension of his orchestral experiences, Heruth is also a budding young conductor, and has made a number of appearances with various ensembles. He conducted Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with the Show-Me Opera Program. His engagements to conduct Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as well as another production of his chamber opera A Certain Madness were cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Heruth has also made appearances at the Mizzou International Composers Festival conducting the Mizzou New Music Ensemble, has conducted Vox Nova as part of the Odyssey Chamber Music Series, and is the former music director and conductor for the Exit-128 Chamber Orchestra. 

As a lyric baritone, Heruth is both a frequent chorister and recitalist. He has performed with the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, the Kantorei Choral Scholars, the Bach Collegium Choir, Ars Nova, and the University Singers of the University of Missouri. Heruth made his symphonic debut in 2013 as the winner of the Liberty Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists Competition. As an opera singer, Heruth has performed various roles such as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Basilio in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff, and Dr. Malatesta in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in scenes, and Bartolo in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Simon Stimson in Ned Rorem’s Our Town in full productions, all with the Show-Me Opera Program. He is also a strong advocate for new music, and has performed a great deal of works by living composers John Adams, Jake Heggie, and Tom Cipullo, notably creating the first recording of Cipullo’s song cycle “Excelsior” in the Fall of 2020. Heruth is a former student of Steven Tharp, and has participated in masterclasses and coachings with Grammy award-winning baritone Daniel Belcher and Russell Miller.

As a violinist, Heruth is a frequent performer as both a chamber and symphonic musician. He has performed with the Kansas City Symphony, the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, the Odyssey Chamber Orchestra, the Bach Collegium Orchestra, the Southside Philharmonic Orchestra, and the University Philharmonic at the University of Missouri. Heruth has also performed with the acclaimed American musical group The Piano Guys. He has worked with conductors such as Aram Demirjian, Kirk Trevor, Andre Thomas, Steven Amundson, Steven Davis, and Barry Ford. Heruth has studied violin with Eva Szekely, Tony Brandolino, Francesca Anderegg, and Charles Gray.

In the Shadow of the Moon

Hans Bridger Heruth

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