for chamber ensemble, electronics, and lighting

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this piece is inspired by the devastating beauty of nacreous clouds. these clouds are both very rare and hauntingly beautiful, with luminous pastel colors streaking across the sky. 

despite their beauty, these clouds are irrevocably harmful to the atmosphere. while their beauty comes from the diffraction of light as it passes through tiny ice crystals in the air, their appearance acts as a catalyst for the reactions of toxic chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and contribute to the ozone hole in the antarctic. 

this piece is a meditation on the beauty and destruction of the world we’re making. 

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premiered by collective lovemusic at Paine Hall at Harvard University April 28, 2023

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performed by collective lovemusic:
Emiliano Gavito - bass flute
Adam Starkie - bass clarinet
Emily Yabe - viola
Christian Lozano - e-guitar

volatile horizon

volatile horizon (2023) | collective lovemusic

Étude - SORA (2024)
for 8 soloists

Credit: Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie 2023-24
Conducted by: Yannick Mayaud
Audio Engineer: Markus Güdel

premiered at Lucerne Festival
Photo Credit: © Lucerne Festival/Priska Ketterer

Étude SORA for 8 soloists

Bára Gísladóttir: Animals of your pasture (2021) performed by Å Collective

Recorded live on March 15th 2025 at the Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo, Norway) as part of the Ding-Dong-Eller-Dong-Ding Festival.

Photo: Anna Maggý

Bára Gísladóttir: Animals of your pasture (2021)

The music begins within a dimly lit room where a ritual is taking place. In a slow procession, a statue is being carried; its belly opens, a flock of birds fly out.
premiered by Riot Ensemble

flock of birds flying out of her belly

Sarah Nemtsov
black trees (2020) for orchestra – DSO Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Markus Poschner 

live recording from the concert at Ultraschall Festival Berlin, January 19th 2025

painting by Elisabeth Naomi Reuter "the moon is no door" (oil and oil chalks on mdf board 100x80cm, 2015)

black trees (2020) orchestra - excerpt

microfauna I

for low string trio and resonating snare and bass drums

(my grief is a compass)

we searched for a new world as the sky fell down around us.

even then, we admitted it was beautiful.

(i search for love in every world and i find it every time)

premiere:
april 24, 2025 by catinblack ensemble (Javad Javadzade, contrabass; Ema Grćman, cello; Sofia von Atzingen, viola) at harvard university’s paine hall

eroding sky; a new and brighter star | catinblack ensemble | 2025

A body of many bodies; a creature which--

[moans screeches sputters growls squeals howls]

--struggles to understand itself. 

This piece traces the mythic figure of the chimera as a body and a process becoming-with, a site of multiplicity and discovery; a body learning and relearning and unlearning its many selves.

premiere:
june 23, 2025 at the .abeceda contemporary music festival IV in bled, slovenia

for flute/alto flute, tenor sax, viola, accordion, prepared piano, prepared harp, & percussion

CHIMERA | .abeceda ensemble | 2025

for lower strings trio and stereo electronics
Performed by Catinblack Ensemble
Viola - Sofia von Atzingen
Cello - Ema Grčman
Double Bass - Javad Javadzade

ELASTIC(mother) - 2025

performed by Yarn/Wire at Paine Hall, Harvard University on February 28, 2025

Laura Barger – piano
Julia Den Boer – sampler & MIDI controller
Russell Greenberg – percussion
Dennis Sullivan – percussion

recording: Anthony DiBartolo
mix: Isaac Roth Blumfield

Program note:

In English, the word "dream" has a positive connotation, but there is a thin
boundary between a dream and a nightmare, and our experience of dreaming
rarely fits neatly into either category. In dreaming, a fluidity emerges between
bliss and dread, and one's desire to escape reality can collapse at any moment.
Familiar places, people, objects, animals might emerge, and as we dream we
know that it is both really them and really not them at the same time. Something
both illusory and deeply real is happening. While you listen, try to fall asleep.

The electronics for this work were prepared at the Südwestrundfunk Experimentalstudio in Freiburg, Germany through their Workstay program with assistance from Thomas Hummel, sound designer, with recordings performed by James Morley, cello, and Rebecca Lawrence, double bass


Like a dream I can' t wake up from | for Yarn/Wire & electronics (2024-25)

Wolfgang Mitterer - curtains 
(2017) written for airborne extended

Live Performance at ORF Innsbruck

Wolfgang Mitterer - curtains - LIVE

contact: isaac.blumfield@gmail.com

Isaac Roth Blumfield is a composer from Saint Paul, Minnesota, currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He writes experimental music for acoustic and electronic instruments which explores resonance, materiality, and memory through expanded sonic approaches towards instruments and objects. His music looks for the strange spaces between subjective and unconscious experience, exploring uncanny places between beauty, pain, and strangeness.
His music has been influenced through  through work with performers such as ensemble sonic space basel alumni, Schallfeld Ensemble, violinists Austin Wulliman and Chris Otto, line upon line percussion trio, Ensemble Modern, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, guitarist Francesco Palmieri and Jamie Monck, and Quartetto Maurice at programs such as the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, the Banff Centre for Creativity, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, New Music on the Point, Valencia International Performance Academy, Ticino Musica Festival and Freie Universität Berlin im Sommer.  
His music has been broadcast on Swiss Public Radio and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Fondation Nicati - De Luze, and the Hirschmann Stiftung. He graduated with his Bachelor's degree in composition at New England Conservatory in Boston and a Master's degree in composition at the Hochschule für Musik FHNW in Basel, Switzerland and is currently pursuing post graduate studies at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna. His primary teachers have included Stratis Minakakis, Timothy McCormack, Caspar Johannes Walter, Svetlana Maras, and Clara Iannotta. He is currently a PhD candidate at Harvard University, studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.

Like a dream I can' t wake up from | for Yarn/Wire & electronics (2024-25)

Isaac Roth Blumfield

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