Joyful Laments

Suite No. 1 For Bass Trombone (live)

Variations On Line Segments (Biola New Music Ensemble)

Five Poems Of Beautiful Things

Love Poems To God

Wandering Companionless  Pale For Weariness

With an energetic and accelerating opening, By the Sweat of Your Brow explores what it means to work for something. The title is in reference to the passage in Genesis where God curses man saying, “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat your food until you return to the ground.” The piece explores that striving to do work and to make something beautiful despite the constant struggle against the natural order of things. The piece was a struggle to create. I felt that I was very often fighting against the material and against the music. The process of writing and the subject matter collided over the course of the composition. 
Musically this manifests in the orchestra in two ways. The orchestra rages against the set tempo, starting as half notes, then triplets, then 16ths, faster and faster in a sort of "wind up" until it has lost itself in a trill before another instrument group takes up the gauntlet. After the opening the strings go to work, sawing away in stubborn eighth notes until the main theme rises from the depths of the texture in big quarter note triplets, once more defying the set tempo in a heroic and sweeping tune. The piece visits many places including a calmer and less dense middle section that revisits the "wind up" gesture that compounds on itself building into the final push to the end. Here the triplet has become the strings' unyielding resolve before the rest of the orchestra finally rages against that resolve once more before crashing into the chaotic and beautiful end.

By The Sweat Of Your Brow - Reading

Dream Suite is a collaboration between three artists: a poet, a pianist, and a composer. I approached my dear friend Jessica to write some poetry for a four to six movement work for my other dear friend Corinne. The result is five short pieces that reflect Jessica’s beautiful poetry. The suite as a whole is meant to bring back memories of past joys but with a tinge of the surreal. An idyllic setting to lose oneself in for 15 minutes or so, so let your mind wander to whatever dream places you wish to go. 

I. small song 
let it smack of small things 
of hidden, hard to find things 
Of lonely things in the underneath 
 behind and unexpected 
let it sing of still silences 
 of peace in evening light 
Of early morning reverence 
 and autumn birds in flight 
I will watch the sun rise there  
and turn the floorboards golden brown 
Amidst such glory of wild-sweet ordinary 
 I should hardly make a sound. 

II. first voyage 
Wander the world then, wild one, small as you yet are 
swift and proud like the fox graceful strength of the sparrow 
Only do not despise our humility 
who have loved truth and never lies 
and contented ourselves with the wonders 
of a small and homely house. 

III. Lilies 
“In those days I slept in the attic, 
 School just one room,” she tells me,  
Eyes twinkling. “I was younger than you 
 Moving away from home, farm to city.” 
Contented there, blue eyes, braided white hair 
 Crocheting in her lap, blanket for a grandchild 
Grandma Rose next to her smiling in agreement, 
 glasses slipping down her nose, a thousand wrinkles 
 in one smile, filling mischievous face with life,
 telling stories of four sons –
 “I named them all after my boyfriends!” with a wink,  
“My husband never knew.” 
Two more, in the corner, arguing over a game of checkers  with 
visiting grandchildren come to see 
snow-white lilies of the field 
who neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.  
Yet did Solomon in his young splendor ever attain  glory such as one of these?

IV. Revelry 
Midsummer revels of long long ago  
When I was a lass and you were a lad 

I, youngest queen, and you, the young king –  
Remember the lift of bare feet in the grass?

Sunlight so golden we drank it in goblets  
Music like laughter and rose petal dresses 

Minstrels in cohort, on forest green seat,  
Sounding a strain as lifts merry and sweet 

Nothing quite careless as midsummer’s eve 
When the dryads and nyads would come as they pleased 

Ancient oak sentinels stretching to heaven  
And brilliant curtains of green shining leaves. 

Hunting deep myst’ries of love’s celebrations 
With feet that seemed winged for all they were fleet 

—The summer a tree sprung from tender black loam  
And grew to a symbol of all we had sworn 

No thief now could now rob us of treasure it seems—  
we have ever been rich for those distant sweet dreams. 

V. Indian Summer 
When wild geese arrive, 
bobbing brown heads, blinking black eyes  
bound southward in long lines
sweeping the azure sky 
rich regalia written all over 
sky and ground, bright-hued splashes of wealth 
wake from your worried dreams 
of stacked words and somber work 
let the sun teach you to sing
 in the last short days of its warmth.

Dream Suite

Many nights in high school, in the suburbs of Chicago, I found myself with nothing to do late at night but go for a drive. Going westward only led to more cornfields and therefore more solitude. I would turn on some music and drive. My imagination wandered and I thought about the possibility of driving through the whole night until dawn broke the deep blue of the horizon. This feeling of freedom and possibility, given by the simple beauty of a drivers license, is something that many people can resonate with. Who hasn’t imagined dropping everything for a whimsical adventure to parts unknown?

This is the emotion behind Midnight Road Trip. Using a combination of Jazz sonorities, pulsing textures, and liberal use of saxophones, the piece goes on a journey through the mind, cornfields, and perhaps even time. There is a coolness and airiness that wind instruments can achieve when paired with metallic percussion instruments, such as cymbals, hi-hat, and vibraphone. The piece exudes cool night air passing over the driver of a car going to unknown places. This is an imagined journey and one that goes wherever the listener’s mind chooses.

Midnight Road Trip

Jonah M. Gallagher (b. '93) is a Master's composition student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He has studied with Mason Bates, Robert Denham, Alex Lu, and Mike Watts. Receiving both national and international recognition, his music has been performed domestically in Detroit, L.A., Oakland, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as internationally in Seoul, South Korea and Vienna, Austria. Most recently the Oakland Symphony, under the direction of Michael Morgan, premiered his piece for string orchestra, Vocare. Morgan says about Gallagher’s music, “I find him a really compelling new voice capable of writing music of great virtuosity contrasting with a great American lyricism.”


His music has received several awards including the runner up in the Frank Robert Abell award for his string quartet, Wandering Companionless: Pale for Weariness and winner of the “Other Competition” at the Frost School of Music for the same piece. Gallagher’s music creates a musical narrative, communicating beauty and humanity in each piece. In addition to writing music, Jonah has a passion for woodworking, especially the crafting of hand carved tobacco pipes. He currently lives in Daly City, California with his wife Hannah.

J. M. Gallagher

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