Organ [John A. Wolfe]
Recorded live at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, NY, May 9, 2013.

This miniature was performed on the large wonderful pipe organ found in LeFrak Concert Hall; most of the unusual half-stopped pipe effects (and the unique tuning of the Vox Humana and Zimbel stops) would not be possible on other organs.  Great credit goes to John Wolfe (https://soundcloud.com/john-a-wolfe) for making this rather simple piece into something suitably dark and strange.

Score: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-stasis_score.pdf

Stasis (Live, with John A. Wolfe)

Violin [Adrianna Mateo].

Written for violinist Adrianna Mateo (https://soundcloud.com/adriannamateo), We Have Less Time Than You Think deals with the fact that we humans do not really have long: on the smaller-scale, in terms of the things we attempt to immediately accomplish, and on relatively larger scales, in the time we can spend with each other, the duration of our individual existences, and the collective lifespan of the human race. One of the truer clichés, time passes in a blur, fluidly and easily escaping attempts to stop or slow its flow, with certain events standing out in hindsight as demarcations of structural points. In my own experience, the longer I have existed, the more the passage of time seems to speed up exponentially; I certainly feel like I have less time than I thought I did.  All of the electronic elements in this piece were generated using only violin and vocal samples.

This piece, performed by violinist Tian Boyang (田博阳), placed first in the 2013 Shanghai Electronic Music Week Call-for-Works competition.

Score: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-we_have_less_time_than_you_think_score_and_notes.pdf

We Have Less Time Than You Think (With Adrianna Mateo)

Alto Sax in E-flat [Anthony Izzo].

Anthony did a really wonderful job with this short sax miniature, recorded live in LeFrak Concert Hall on March 12th, 2012.

Incidentally, a number of the gestures here were cannibalized and developed further in the proggy soundtrack for my short film 'In the Darkness,' which you can watch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GsGjRQvKds

Score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-billows_score.pdf

Billows (Live, with Anthony Izzo)

This is the soundtrack for my short film "In The Darkness," performed with the fantastic ensemble Elevator Rose.  It's meant to be heard with the video, which you can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GsGjRQvKds

Film and music created by Howie Kenty

Soundtrack performed by Elevator Rose (http://elevatorrose.com, https://soundcloud.com/elevatorrose):
- Joseph Fee, Percussion
- Vasudevan Panicker, Piano
- Elzbieta Polak, Violin
- Frederick Trumpy, Drumset
- with Howie Kenty, Bass

Also check out our live premiere of the film as the opening act of the 2012 Music with a View Festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L639LbwZi7U

Soundtrack recorded at Queens College, Queens, NY
Recording, mixing, and editing by Howie Kenty

Special thanks to Live Projectionist Eric Hertenstein

All source footage is in the public domain, available online in the Prelinger Archives (http://archive.org/details/prelinger)

Full Instrumental Score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-in_the_darkness_full_score.pdf

In The Darkness (Soundtrack, with Elevator Rose)

A soundtrack summary of much of my contribution to the suite of music and sound for director Malin Palani's productions of Heiner Mueller's play Die Hamletmaschine, presented by the Xperimental Theatre Company at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (Nov 16-19, 2006) and by Twisted Roots at the Minnesota Fringe Festival (Aug 2-10, 2007).

Reviews were quite effusive: "...The lighting and sound designers deserve medals for providing brilliantly-conceived additional layers to the piece that make essential contributions, rather than just functioning as mood-enhancers, subservient and uninteresting padding to cover up staged inadequacies."
More reviews: https://web.archive.org/web/20131012152424/http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=162298

This complete soundtrack was presented at the International Computer Music Conference (Copenhagen, 2007).  Mvmt III, "Scherzo; Dance." received an Honorary Mention in the Digital Musics category at the Prix Ars Electronica international cyberarts competition (2008); "Astonishing poetic power" (Chen Qiangbin, CyberArts 2008 compendium).

Full program notes:
- http://hwarg.com/content/text/h_kenty-i_exhale_hamletmaschinemusik_program_notes.pdf

Mvmt III: "Scherzo; Dance."
- Score: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-scherzo_dance_score_parts_perf_notes.zip
- Performance Notes: http://hwarg.com/content/text/h_kenty-scherzo_dance_program_notes.pdf
- Max/MSP microtuner: http://hwarg.com/content/program/h_kenty-scherzo_dance_microtuner.mxb

I Exhale (Hamletmaschinemusik)

Tricycle is kind of a synthesis of many of my divergent musical interests, in (hopefully) thematically coherent album form!  It's an old one now, recorded with the generous support of a Matthews Scholarship while at Northeastern University, 2003.  Thanks to Lindy for the _____ Part 1 help!

I had the great fortune to work with pianist/keyboardist Vasudevan Panicker in arranging and performing most of this album live with his ensemble Elevator Rose (including Joe Fee, Ela Polak, and Fred Trumpy) at The Stone on December 28th, 2012.  There may be another round of that with the entire thing in the future!
http://vasupanicker.com/
http://elevatorrose.com/

Cycle (Tricycle 02)

THE HALLS WITHIN THE MIRROR
A solo mini-opera of internal struggle, childhood memories, and a tragic incident.

i. Present: Awakening
ii. Driving: First Memory
iii. Childhood: First Memory
iv. Driving: Second Memory
v. Childhood: Second Memory
vi. Present: Despair
vii. Driving: Third Memory
viii. Present: Waiting

Music and text composed by Howie Kenty.
For soprano Rebekah Norris.
Commissioned by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music’s International Electronic Music Week, 2015.
Footage courtesy of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
For more music, video, and information, visit http://hwarg.com.

- Shanghai Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDjXAQDbgvc
- Full Lyric Sheet: http://hwarg.com/content/text/h_kenty-the_halls_within_the_mirror_lyric_sheet.pdf
- Score: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-the_halls_within_the_mirror_score.pdf

The Halls Within The Mirror (Live, with Rebekah Norris)

This is the instrumental version of a soundscape created for Patrick Scheid's 2015 theatrical piece "Malte's Masks," performed September 25th, 2015, at Dixon Place Theater, New York.

The narrative + soundscape version (highly recommended!) can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/hwarg/something-stable-on-which-to-keep-a-steady-gaze-with-rilke-as-read-by-patrick-scheid

"Malte's Masks" is based on Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge," and concerns the nature of Time. This accompanying musical work blends new material, re-imaginings of some of my old material, and additional samples into a dreamy atmospheric meditation.

Something Stable on Which to Keep A Steady Gaze (Instrumental)

Recorded live at the Park Church Co-op, January 8th, 2017, with Lykos:
Kristin Leitterman, oboe/English horn (http://www.kristinleitterman.com/)
Mara Mayer, clarinet/bass clarinet (http://maramayermusic.com/)
Marilu Donovan, harp (http://www.mariludonovan.com/)
Maya Bennardo, violin (http://andplayduo.com/about/)

The causes of separation. The manners in which we fell. The directions we each took afterward. The Ways We Each Tumbled From The Precipice explores the concept of coming together versus moving apart. The instruments generally revolve around a central pitch point, sometimes reaching it and sometimes moving away from it, or reaching it, but not simultaneously. Rhythmically, the instruments sometimes progress through sections of phasing, beginning together, moving away from each other, and reuniting at a later point. The way the instruments interact also changes, with the ensemble often working in unity, then breaking into pairings that eventually dissolve and shift. The microtones (pitches closer to each other than found in the Western chromatic scale) can be initially somewhat jarring, but after one becomes accustomed to them, can be quite beguiling.

Full score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-the_ways_we_each_tumbled_from_the_precipice_full_score.pdf

Many thanks go to Nathan, Jasno, and Nick at the Park Church Co-op for their help in organizing and engineering the concert (http://www.parkchurchcoop.org/).

Lykos photo by Christina Vantzou (http://www.christinavantzou.com/).

The Ways We Each Tumbled From The Precipice (Live, with Lykos)

Recorded live at the Firehouse Space, September 9th, 2016, with Unheard-of//Ensemble (http://www.unheard-ofproject.com/):
Ford Fourqurean, clarinet
Lauren Posey, cello
Daniel Anastasio, piano

This piece originated with a sentence from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that has long captivated me, evoking huge pendulums tracing slow arcs, as well as dim, smoky lounges suffused with a languid, surreal, beautiful jazz. I find the sentence particularly musical, in the formal sense of its interesting syllabic rhythm and well-placed almost-rhymes, and in the evocative imagery and musical description. I decided to use this sentence as the piece's title, an inspiration for the music's character, and to ultimately determine the piece's sextuple formal structure:
1) He Liked
2) That Sort of
3) Dreamy, Dreaming Music
4) That Had
5) The Rhythm of
6) Long Things Swinging

The loose textual correlations in phrase length, phrase substance, and linguistic functionality between the first three sections and the second three sections were used to craft large-scale musical correspondences. As the piece evolves through different dreams and temporal areas, the pauses in the pendulums' arcs create regular instances of almost corporeal weight, which the performers are to embody with silent physical acknowledgments.

Full Score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-he_liked_that_sort_of_dreamy_dreaming_music_full_score.pdf

He Liked That Sort Of Dreamy, Dreaming Music That Had the Rhythm of Long Things Swinging

For his strange and hypnotic theatrical piece "Malte's Masks," my good friend Patrick Scheid asked me to create a soundscape to accompany him reading a section of Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" concerning a neighbor's struggles with the nature of Time.

Patrick is one of my very favorite readers; genuine, humorous, excited, clever, and carefully-paced, he brings texts alive in ways that make a listener hearken closely, like a skilled storyteller of yore. In creating the soundscape, I asked him to give me a demo recording of himself reading the Rilke passage. Because the reading was just a draft, recorded hastily on a phone, with a few slip-ups, I hadn't considered posting it publicly along with the music.

But re-listening to it recently, I'm struck by how much I enjoy the two together, and have decided to share it; the little occasional word fumbles and smiles you can hear in Patrick's voice actually made me enjoy it all the more, as if he's immediately there. Rilke's text is absolutely mesmerizing, and Patrick's reading draws out the wonders of wandering its bizarre, half story/half stream-of-consciousness trails.

I've tried to do the same with my sonic contributions, blending new material, re-imaginings of some of my old material, and additional samples into a dreamy atmospheric meditation.

"Malte's Masks" was performed on September 25th, 2015, at Dixon Place Theater, New York.

The soundscape instrumental version is available for listening and download here:
https://soundcloud.com/hwarg/something-stable-on-which-to-keep-a-steady-gaze

Something Stable On Which To Keep A Steady Gaze (with Rilke, as read by Patrick Scheid)

Filmmaker Mike Hannon asked me to score a video installation of his in which he shopped in simultaneous quintuplicate down five aisles of his local supermegagrocerymart. The garish colors and focus on consumption inspired me to create this soundscape collage from bits of old public domain audio and video soundtracks, my own field recordings, snippets of radio dialogue, instrumental recordings, and more. You can track certain sonic events that coordinate with the various iterations of each Mike's entrance, turnabout, and exit down the aisle, but it's also fun to just let the whole chaotic mélange wash over you.

Fun; real fun!

Performed at LeFrak Concert Hall at the Aaron Copland School of Music on November 15th, 2012, by Emily John (harp).

Here's an odd little miniature. The wonderful Emily John was a real pleasure to work with on this exploration in which I tried to get as chromatic on the harp as one can with few pedal changes. (Non-music-nerds, beware...) Using static pedal positions, this piece begins with two chromatic areas: A#, B, C, Db, and E, F, Gb, resulting in a pitch set (0123678) that seems to me almost blues-y, but functioning here in an entirely different manner. 

Score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-uninhabited_score.pdf

Uninhabited (Live, with Emily John)

SAT and chamber ensemble. Recorded at Stony Brook University, April 18, 2017.

Howie Kenty: music, lyrics, and conductor
Alison Rowe: soprano
Flannery Cunningham: alto
Joseph Sferra: tenor
Eric Schultz: clarinet
Raissa Fahlman: bass clarinet
Eric Lemmon: viola
Phuc Phan Do: cello
Gilberto Guajardo: bass

A Dark Train in a Dead Station portrays an elderly woman looking back on her life, thinking about things she regrets having done, and more tragically, regretting things she never did. But the question, now, is what to do with a late, unexpected opportunity...

LYRICS:
Two more weeks is a long time to wait. 
Two more weeks is a long time to wait.
Another ten months is a long time to wait. 
But now is impossible, impossible.

I’m only interludes and echoes...

Twelve years is a long time to wait.
Thirty six years is a long time to wait.
Eighty three years is a long time to wait.
Eighty three years is a long time to wait.

So when? So when? So when?

I regret things done, and undone.
I regret my caution.
I regret false dress worn for others.
I regret waiting, waiting...

But now there's a dark train at this dead station.
What when the doors finally open, and the visitor signals?
What's to be lost?
What is it to be lost, to be lost?

Eighty three years is a long time to wait.
(I'm only interludes and echoes…)
Eighty three years is a long time to wait.

Full score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-a_dark_train_in_a_dead_station_ensemble_version_full_score.pdf

A Dark Train in a Dead Station (Live)

Music and text by Howie Kenty. Performed by F-PLUS at Stony Brook University, April 3, 2018.
- Andrew Hudson: bass clarinet, vocals
- Josh Graham: vibraphone, vocals
- Kate Dreyfuss: violin, vocals

This piece was partially composed while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with funding assistance from the New York State and Graduate Student Employees Union Professional Development Program; great thanks goes to all institutions. The amazing F-PLUS gamely challenged and vanquished this beast, slashing their way triumphantly through dark and stormy rhythms, screeching lead lines, ominous arpeggios, and even sinister vocal harmonies, and really made the piece their own in ways that I really love. Such a pleasure working with these fine folks, can't wait for more in the future!

Horrorscene isn’t really fictional; it’s happening right now. What is your role? 

LYRICS:
A choice: which is your true head? 

Yes... sometimes monsters shriek outside,
but this call is coming from inside the house.

Run, fearful, to nostalgic times,
heedless of the slaughters past.
But what Horror’s been awoke within?
And how long before it turns to you?

Eviscerated, let’s consider:
Who walks about with crooked speech,
winks with his eyes, speaks with his feet?
Who’s always pointing his finger?
Who is it that's become the villain?
Who is it that’s become the killer?

Show us your true head.

Trio score here: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-horrorscene-trio_full_score-transposed-2018_03_07.pdf

Horrorscene (Live, with F-PLUS at Stony Brook)

Recorded with Ensemble Decipher: Joseph Bohigian, Chris Hadley, Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty, Chelsea Loew, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Ben Ramey

The hum of immediate concerns. Dinner. When? Hopes and plans. Something you’re awaiting. Loans. The future. Childhood. Traffic. Really? Strange memories. Appliances. How the toy broke. Fears and failings. Your arms. Persistent low-grade worries. Consideration of self. Dinner. Why? Consideration of others. The people of Mali. Who is a part of you? When you were silenced. Something you hope will never happen. The people of Iceland. Their lungs. Treatment of others. When were you true? When were you silent? When were you silent?

“When Were You Silent?” explores its subject matter in ways both humorous and affecting. It gives the performers the challenge of expressing personal experiences ranging from mundane to difficult, contributing many of their own phrases as directed by prompts. It can be performed by anybody willing to participate, using only a laptop with built-in speakers and the Max/MSP patch, and will be different with each performance and each group of performers.

Also check out "Why Can't I Ever Get What I Want? (When Were You Silent? v2.0)", a different iteration of the piece focusing more on our needs, desires, and complaints, with a noisier texture, recorded live with Imoni Cole-Palmer and Eric Hertenstein:
https://youtu.be/43dhESCG_Kk

When Were You Silent? (with Ensemble Decipher)

Watch the full video of the New Music Gathering performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyaXX76rjM

Howie Kenty: Vocals and electronics
Daniel Pate: Percussion
Recorded at the 2018 New Music Gathering, Boston, MA.

Let us use his own words to reveal a path that begins with deep insecurity, an insatiable need for validation, and an extreme sense of entitlement. Let us follow it through to the fear, intolerance, and violence that the speaker stokes in many of his followers. If we allow this division to continue, where does this narrative ultimately end?

The salient question for me is how to reveal the toxicity in this nature to those who don’t immediately recognize it; this power lies in inciting latent tendencies. When we each enter this type of exploration, what deep-rooted fears of Other might we find harbored within ourSelves, and crucially, how do we deal with them in our actual interactions?

This piece attempts these challenges by taking quotations as its only compositional seeds, adapting their contours, cadences, and words directly into pitches, rhythms, and text, implementing and re-arranging them to form the entirety of the work. While the audience’s challenge is reflection and considered action, the performer’s is simultaneously more difficult and potentially more alluring; they must possess themself entirely of this visceral, uninhibited id, becoming pure reactive malice, discord, and excitation, unencumbered by contemplation or morality. It’s a remarkably seductive path for everyone, regardless of philosophy.

Burdens of persuasion this tremendous are perhaps impossible for this piece; maybe another desperate scream of absurdity and horror is the only thing realized. Nevertheless, I believe it is a profound moral obligation for each of us to consider these questions and to act on our considerations, deliberately.

---

Everybody loves me everybody loves me.
I was with everybody. Everybody loved me. 
When I called them, they always treated me well.
I could have gotten anything from anybody.
I get along with everybody. People love me.
I’ve been very successful.
Everybody loves me.

You can do anything. When you’re a star, they let you do it.
You’re a star you’re a star.

A lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there.
We have some bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad people.

Some of them are such lying, disgusting people. I do hate them.
I’ll be honest: I would never kill them. I would never do that.
I get along with everybody. Everybody loved me.

I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue
and shoot somebody
and I wouldn’t lose any voters.

They let you do it.
Everybody loves me. People love me. 
I do hate them. Look at the way I’ve been treated lately.
Lying, disgusting people.
They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.
Like the world has never seen, everybody loves me!

You can do anything.  When you’re a star, they let you do it.

---

"Everybody Loves Me" is the first of a planned exploration encompassing three works. It was composed large while in residence at the Aaron Copland House, July – August, 2017. Great thanks go to the Copland House organization and the dauntless Daniel Pate.

---

Score:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-everybody_loves_me_score.pdf

Everybody Loves Me (Live)

Everybody Loves Me (Live, with Daniel Pate)

Performed by the Argento New Music Project at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 19, 2011.
- David Fulmer: Conductor
- Roberta Michel: Flute
- Arthur Sato: Oboe
- Vasko Dukovski: Clarinet
- William De Vos: Horn
- Gili Sharett: Bassoon

Lyrics:
I remember... we were we were together we were alone together were we alone?
I remember I remember thinking thinking... something wonderful had happened.
I can't remember, but I know... I know something I know something terrible happened.
My heart beats faster these days... I hear the signs clattering in the wind...
And I know something terrible has happened.

Notes:
Against a background of chance, things sometimes coalesce around an axis of unity; often there are several axes that intersect simultaneously. Sometimes these axes shift and things dissolve, but not always into something that is exactly unity's opposite. There is beauty in either state and at every point in between and beyond, and the extremities caused by such shifts are unquestionably some of the times when one feels the most intensely alive. And sometimes wonderful things still happen.

Clattering In The Wind (Live, with Argento New Music Project)

“A Choir of Sirens” explores and decomposes salient sonic features common to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg, refashioning them into something recognizable but intriguingly altered. The piece asks the listener to re-experience the cities' sonic environments, revealing familiar elements in a new light as surprisingly harmonious, discordant, or somewhere in between. Birds and people transform into strange wild creatures, rain attacks in spatters, passing drones boil into an encompassing swarm, and the traffic and sirens of both cities eventually meld into an uneasily beautiful and overwhelming HORN-GASM (!!!). Of course, sirens also act as warning signals of impending danger, and we fail to heed them at our own peril.

“A Choir of Sirens” was written for Phase 2 of The Wil(helms|liams)burg project, AKA W-Burg, a 2017/2018 cross-continental collaboration between composers in Hamburg, Germany, and Brooklyn, NY. The source recordings for this piece were gathered in 2017 in both locations, and it premiered at the 48h Wilhelmsburg/blurred edges festival in Hamburg on June 9, 2018.

More information on the project:
http://w-burg.com/

Festivals:
http://musikvondenelbinseln.de/48h
http://www.vamh.de/index.php?what=blurred_edges&year=2018&gig=3562

A Choir Of Sirens

Performed live by the ~Nois saxophone quartet at Stony Brook University, March 4, 2019.
- Brandon Quarles: Soprano Sax
- Hunter Bockes: Alto Sax
- Jordan Lulloff: Tenor Sax
- János Csontos: Baritone Sax

"I Don't Like Your Face" explores aspects of the fear that seems innate to all humans, to greater or lesser degrees in each of us. It's a fear of what we don't understand, and crucially, who we don't understand. When the way humans treat other humans is governed by this fear, the consequences can be devastating. Whether we succumb to it, and how we handle others who have succumbed to it, is up to us as individuals, according to our personal and societal abilities. The piece is structured as a dialogue of sorts between a primary character, played by the soprano sax player, and a kind of chorus, played by the rest of the quartet. As to whether any kind of permanent or at least present resolution to the effects of this fear is possible... I believe it's important to be watchful, and vocal when we see oppression.

I Don't Like Your Face (What's Strange in the World)(Live, with ~Nois)

Music and text by Howie Kenty. Performed by F-PLUS at Tetractys Presents, Austin, TX, February 2, 2019.
- Andrew Hudson: bass clarinet, vocals
- Josh Graham: vibraphone, vocals
- Kate Dreyfuss: violin, vocals

This piece was partially composed while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with funding assistance from the New York State and Graduate Student Employees Union Professional Development Program; great thanks goes to all institutions. The amazing F-PLUS gamely challenged and vanquished this beast, slashing their way triumphantly through dark and stormy rhythms, screeching lead lines, ominous arpeggios, and even sinister vocal harmonies, and really made the piece their own in ways that I really love. Such a pleasure working with these fine folks, can't wait for more in the future!

Horrorscene isn’t really fictional; it’s happening right now. What is your role? 

LYRICS:
A choice: which is your true head? 

Yes... sometimes monsters shriek outside,
but this call is coming from inside the house.

Run, fearful, to nostalgic times,
heedless of the slaughters past.
But what Horror’s been awoke within?
And how long before it turns to you?

Eviscerated, let’s consider:
Who walks about with crooked speech,
winks with his eyes, speaks with his feet?
Who’s always pointing his finger?
Who is it that's become the villain?
Who is it that’s become the killer?

Show us your true head.

Trio score here: http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-horrorscene-trio_full_score-transposed-2018_03_07.pdf

Horrorscene (Live, with F-PLUS at Tetractys)

You can help separated families here: https://www.raicestexas.org/

Kathleen Supové: Piano and voice
Howie Kenty: Electronics
Recorded at the Queens New Music Festival and at Badbox Studios, NYC, May 2019.

"What We’re Missing" is part of a set of works exploring the political situation under the 45th president of the United States, examining him and the people affected by his policies. It takes as its subject the separation of children from their families, primarily seeking asylum, at the Mexican/US border. The piece focuses on interactions within a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Texas in June 2018, captured in an audio recording, authenticated and released by the organization ProPublica. In the recording, heavy with sobbing, we hear dialogue between a border patrol agent, a consular worker, and a number of children. While many of the children are unidentified, six-year-old Salvadoran Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid stands out for her memorization of her aunt’s phone number and her perseverance in asking the workers to allow her to make contact. What We’re Missing uses this dialogue, translated from Spanish into English, condensed, and lightly edited, as its lyrical and musical source material. Transcriptions of the children’s sobbing inform many of the musical gestures.

While Alison was eventually able to make contact and reunite with her family, it doesn’t erase the deep trauma she and the other children have experienced. Nor is hers always the outcome for separated children; while approximately 2,800 children and families have been reunited, as of April 2019, there are still children separated from their families, numbering in the potential thousands. If the administration is allowed to continue its policies, they may remain so for several years.

Seeds for "What We're Missing" were generated while in residence at the Aaron Copland House, July through August, 2017, and it was finalized while in residence at the Oberpfälzer Kunstlerhaus, via the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in June and July of 2019. Great thanks go to the Copland House, the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, the VCCA, the Queens New Music Festival, and the amazing performer Kathleen Supové.

You can view another work in the series, "Everybody Loves Me," here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyaXX76rjM

-----

Papa, papa… Mama…
Oh, papa… Mama…

Well, we have an orchestra here, right?
What we're missing is a conductor.    

Papa…

Don't cry. Don’t cry.

This is her ID number.
Keep this number.
Don't lose it.

Where are you from? And you?
Where are your parents?
Don't cry.

Papa… Mama…

At least can I go with my aunt? I want her to come.
I want my aunt to come so she can take me to her house.
I have her number.

Where are you from?
Where are your parents?
Don't cry. Don't cry.

Are you going to call my aunt so she can pick me up?
I have her number memorized.

Papa… Mama…
I want to go, too! I want to go, too! 

Where is your mother?
Where are your parents?

Are you going to call my aunt so she can come pick me up?
So my mom can come as soon as possible.
With Papa… with Papa.

Where is the girl from El Salvador?
Do you have the number?

Yes. 3-4-7-2...

You're going to get there. You're going to get there.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

What We're Missing

What We're Missing (with Kathleen Supové)

After premiering this piece at the Aaron Copland School of Music on, Dec. 18th, 2012, the fabulous PUBLIQuartet (www.publiquartet.com/, @publiquartet) has added it to their frequently performed repertoire.  They performed this as one of three entry pieces in the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition, in which they were chosen as the New Music/New Places Ensemble and were awarded the Sylvia Ann Hewlett Adventurous Artist Prize. These folks are amazing monsters, and you can find their debut album, featuring this piece, here:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/publiquartet

Some brief words:

Frustration; interruption; the happy recklessness of youth; irritating repetition; obsessively turning over an idea well beyond what is useful or healthy; memories brought forth and altered; obnoxious and jarring juxtaposition; irritating repeinterruptionon; anger, misplaced and deserved; chaos and confusion; constructive and abusive dialogue; unfettered joy in the midst.

Score here:
http://hwarg.com/content/score/h_kenty-an_impetuous_old_friend_full_score.pdf

An Impetuous Old Friend (Live, with PUBLIQuartet)

Howie Kenty, AKA Hwarg, is a Brooklyn-based composer of electro-acoustic prog-rock clockwork artsoundmusic, sometimes using visual and theatrical elements. Throughout all of his creations runs the idea that the experience of a piece is more than just listening to the music; he strives for a wholeness of vision and an awareness of environment that attempts to fully draw the audience into his works.


Hwarg

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