performed by Jack Yarbrough, pianist

premiered at Composers Conference 2021

July 27, 2021
Seully Hall, Boston Conservatory, Boston, MA

The Departure of Time [Jack Yarbrough]

performed by:

Barry Crawford, flute
Benjamin Fingland, clarinet
Christopher Oldfather, piano
Matthew Gold, percussion
Sunhae Anna Lim, violin
Chris Gross, cello

premiered at Composers Conference 2021

July 27, 2021
Slosberg Concert Hall, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Recorded by Anthony DiBartolo

the eternal feeling

recorded at The Church of Christ at Dartmouth College
October 22, 2021
Hanover, NH

Jack Langdon, organ

enth, for organ

first edition premiered by Yarn/Wire on June 20, 2021
Ridgewood, Queens, NY

revised version premiered by Yarn/Wire on April 23, 2023
NUNC! 5 at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

pianos: Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer
percussion: Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto

It's All Real, for two piano, two percussion

for speaker, bells, and organ

Robert Keene, speaker
Henry Danaher, organist

The Bell Choir of The Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

recorded in Hanover, New Hampshire
March 17, 2022

meditation: psalm 23

Karen Kim, violin
Chris Gross, cello
David Friend, piano

recorded and mixed by Gleb Kanasevich
LeFrak Hall, Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College
Queens, NY

1.10.23

Many thanks to Adrian Morejon, Tori Cheah, and Talea Ensemble.

burnt canvas, for piano trio

premiered by Miroslav Beinhauer on April 28, 2023
MicroFest Prague 2023, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, CZ

performed on the 36tet August Förster harmonium, originally built for the performance of Alois Hába's "Six compositions for sixth-tone harmonium."

the harvest manual, for 1/6-tone harmonium

recorded september 4, 2023
chicago, il

crumar mojo classic

first

premiered by Schallfeld Ensemble at Klangspuren Schwaz 2023
directed by Pierre-Andre Valade

neon moon, for sextet

crumar mojo classic
behringer super fuzz

7.16.24 - Chicago
www.jacklangdon.info

digital tonewheel organ solo w/ fuzz pedal, 7.16.24

Organ: James E Bobb
Rec: 4/25/15 assisted by Laina Bennett
Boe Chapel, St. Olaf College

"Light Within" is a short concert work for organ written during the Fall of 2014 in Northfield, MN. The piece is effectively an advanced level organ work, as well as the original sketches for a band piece, which will have its premiere performance in Dec. of 2015. The piece explores the ideas of transcendence and unification, and functionally can be used as a prelude to a church service without stepping over explicit theological bounds, but can also be used in secular contexts. The piece is an homage to the great transcendent force which unites all people through the miracle of life. It is effectively a love song.

Specific thanks goes to Prof. Jamie Bobb for being an unequivocal champion of the piece, giving several performances around the upper Midwest.

Light Within (for organ)

Director: Jon Washburn
Performed by Vancouver Chamber Choir
Premiere: April 24, 2015 [Ryerson United Church Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada]

The Gloria from my Missa Brevis was written during December of 2014 in Madison, WI. I deliberately chose to set the Gloria text in a more solemn manner. Instead of the pulse-driven, rhythmic Gloria settings that came to be standard-fare in the 20th century, I kept the tempo slow and meditative so that the harmonic content would illuminate the text in a new manner.

This piece is the 2nd place winner of the 2015 Vancouver Chamber Choir Young Composers' Competition.

Thanks to director Jon Washburn and the Vancouver Chamber Choir for putting their spirit into this performance.


Gloria (from Missa Brevis)[Vancouver Chamber Choir]

short improvisations for the Ojibwe wooden flute (bibigwan)
flute by Dennis "DG" Hatch

Travels to the House of Invention, for string quartet (version two, sampled-instrument version)

June 23, 2016 Louise Shonk Kelly Recital Hall
The Dublin School, Dublin, NH

Mivos Quartet
Lauren Cauley, Violin I
Hanna Hurwitz, Violin II
Victor Lowrie, Viola
Mariel Roberts, Cello

This work for string quartet was written for The Walden School's Creative Musicians Retreat of 2016. I wrote this piece specifically for Mivos Quartet: one of the leading new music ensembles in America.

"interiority" is a term that expresses the capacity for architectural, filmic, literary, and musical spaces to "rule out the exterior." Repetitive music has the capacity to greatly achieve this phenomenon because it places the onus of perception on the interior states of the listener. This piece is a shallower attempt at inducing a musical experience that rises out of subtle shifts in repetitive material.

interiority for string quartet [Mivos Quartet]

Aug. 2016 Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Kansas City, MO
KC VITAs Chamber Choir, Dir. Jackson Thomas

This setting of The Serenity Prayer is an acapella setting of Reinhold Niebuhr's famous text.

Winner of the 2016 KC VITAs Chamber Choir Call for Scores
*Used with permission: KC VITAs 2016

The Serenity Prayer for mixed choir [KC VITAs Chamber Choir]

Nov. 29, 2016 Urness Recital Hall
St. Olaf College Northfield, MN

Cello: Willem Mudde
Trombone: Adam Lee Sanders
Electronics: Jack Langdon

1.a is a study for a larger work to be premiered in spring 2017 titled "taking time."

This work is dedicated in friendship to Willem Mudde and Adam Lee Sanders.

1.a for cello, trombone, and live electronics

"cataract" - Jack Langdon (b.1994)
Directed by Timothy Mahr
Performed by The St. Olaf Band
Apr. 9, 2017 - Skogland Auditorium, St. Olaf College

cataract for large concert band is an exploration of the formal devices utilized in the visual art of Bridget Riley, specifically in reference to her work Cataract 3. Her art often employs the serial repetition of monochromatic lines to create optical illusions and sensations of movement for the viewer. My piece uses subtle internal variations through extended repetitions to create an environment conducive to temporal confusion and sonic immersion.

I have always been interested in how music has this capacity to bring listeners and musicians to a state of timelessness, while simultaneously relying entirely on the passage of time to give it identity and expression. I use unusual orchestration and sounds atypical to the concert band to heighten the necessity for active listening and to encourage a type of "sonic acuity" only encountered when listening to sounds unfamiliar. Just as Bridget Riley uses her art to explore the ways in which the eye works to create compositional sense of a work of art, I use this music to explore the ways in which we encounter the intersection of sound articulated intentionally in time, and the ways we attempt to engage with the nature of time itself in the act of listening.

This piece is dedicated to The St. Olaf Band and Dr. Mahr, in gratitude for their constant support and grounding during my four years on the hill.

cataract for large concert band [The St. Olaf Band]

"division" - Jack Langdon (b.1994)
Performed by Tristan Frank, Steven Garcia, Jack Langdon, and Jamie Koffler
May 8, 2017 - Urness Recital Hall

division is a work which explores temporal perception in highly repetitive music. Through subtle alterations in musical material over extended repetitions, I hope to achieve an uncluttered and individualistic experience of time.

division for 2 tpts, celesta, sine tones, and amplified found objects

performed by The St. Olaf Percussion Ensemble
for 8 performers and fixed media

April 26, 2018
Urness Recital Hall, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

This work is an audio presentation on "inspirational music-making and radical entrepreneurship" which are two things that I largely dislike so the work is supposed to be a bit funny, I suppose.

The work has no globally unifying notation or a score in the traditional sense, rather, the 8 performers all are given sonic signs which are present in the fixed media (audio score) which trigger an action to occur in performance.

The work uses traditional percussion instruments as well as lamps.

Photography by: Steven Garcia
Used w/ permission by St. Olaf College Media 2018

yeah uh hmm, for 8 performers and audio score

performed by: Sara Constant (piccolo, flute)- http://saraconstant.ca/

premiere: June 28, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

This piece is largely built upon various field recordings that Sara and I took with the goal of representing public and private spaces which we frequent on a regular basis. I have always cherished photography (and more recently field recording) as a means of documenting valuable times and places—with the hope that it will assist me in recalling and more deeply appreciating them after the fact. However, these never tend to satisfy their intention—rather appearing as something that is at once less and more real than the initial experience that I am attempting to save. I cherish the distanced perspective to reflect, but miss the quality of the initial experience—regardless of its significance. Creating a musical work with this underlying dynamic present allows for an interesting condition: the ability to aesthetically appreciate this echo of reality while contributing a new structure to engage the subjective factors of this perhaps distant memory. In this instance of composition and performance, we find new angles to engage with the distance of this initial act of documentation.

Thanks to Sara for her expertise, enthusiasm, and work, SPLICE Institute 2019 for facilitating this collaboration, Elainie Lillios for artistic guidance, Carter Rice for live sound, and Christopher Biggs for making the recording!

photo: Stephen Hennessey

here (5): a hyperdocumentation, for flute and fixed media [Sara Constant]

premiere: March 5, 2020, The Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover, NH
performed by: Jack Langdon

endless light is an instrument comprised of wood and metal activated by an improvised score of vibrations. Parts of the instrument include organ pipes (wooden gedackt), part of an industrial shelf, metal dowels, and discarded speaker parts. This work grew from an essay titled fragments on organs which investigates the organ as a transhistorical musical instrument and speculates on its role in the future of musical production. endless light is a deconstruction of the organ, reactivated through sympathetic vibrations, historical reference, and sonic ritual.

https://www.jacklangdon.info/endless-light

endless light, for kinetic sound objects, fixed media, and live electronics

performed by Ensemble Dal Niente
flutes: Constance Volk
piano: Mable Kwan
guitar: Jesse Langen
cello: Chris Wild

conducted by Hannah Barnes

This work was composed during June 2020 amidst the tumult and conflict that this summer will undoubtedly become remembered for. I started writing this piece while quarantined in Chicago, in near total isolation, but finished the majority of the material while on the road between Chicago and Missoula,
Montana. Spending time in campgrounds and attempting to remain isolated during my travels, I fixated on the mysteries of change and conflict that unite our time to the times of generations past, and which undeniably will unite us with generations in the future. For much of my young life, I felt that nothing was happening at a great detriment to all—passively watching the world happen as if it were a film in a movie theater. Now I feel as if something is happening.

This piece is a poetic occurrence of my reflections on change, stasis, interior/exterior, autonomy/heteronomy, nostalgia, and utopia. It is not methodological nor is it particularly conceptual. It is not attempting to demonstrate anything other than itself.

Sincerest gratitude to Ensemble Dal Niente and DePaul University for facilitating the creation and performance of this work.

something is happening, for quartet [Ensemble Dal Niente]

performed by: sebastian stefanovic, viola
premiere: 8/8/20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmxwPh7rRew

This work was composed as a part of the 2020 Virtual Composers Conference, and grew out of conversations which Sebastian and I had during the collaboration process. I-90 is a piece written for viola and fixed media which utilizes field recordings taken at various locations along interstate 90 between Missoula, MT and Chicago, IL. The materials of the piece are related to the sensory and affective qualities which traveling over vast expanses in space evoke, particularly through car travel - a mode of travel which culturally predominates in the United States. I owe a debt of gratitude to Sebastian, Linda Catlin Smith, Kurt Rohde, and Amadeus Regucera, who all helped guide the formation of this piece.

I-90, for viola and fixed media [Sebastian Stefanovic]

score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/162N_znFWxwkCGwTHiEau3ElHIFwR73wu/view?usp=sharing

performed by: Trio SÆITENWIND
   jonas tschanz, tenor saxophone
   karolina öhman, cello
   olivia steimel, accordion
premiere: 7/7/20, remusik.org 2020 composition course and the 7th St. Petersburg New Music Festival

“dissolved through the fields” for Trio SÆITENWIND was written during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic while quarantined in Chicago. The inspiration for this short work comes from an oblique reference to a wildlife area near my childhood home in Leeds, Wisconsin. The sound material utilized is brittle and delicate, with expanses of stasis interspersed by moments of nostalgic warmth and movement. This work is, in a way, temporally incomplete, like a complete canvas which has been divided to a particular, isolated segment. The formal relationships between disparate material is loose and abstract, with only shadows of similarity unifying gestures across time. The pace of musical development is glacial, with moments of punctuated equilibrium facilitating the emergence of new textures.

dissolved through the fields, for tenor saxophone, cello, and accordion

Jack Langdon (b. 1994, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) is an experimental composer, filmmaker, and writer. His work investigates incompleteness, indifference, mimesis, stagnation, and material brevity. He is currently devising systematic approaches to non-harmony.

As a performer, his mediums are the pipe organ and the Ojibwe wooden flute (bibigwan). The subjects of his films are the landscape, the built environment, memory, and the transmission of these things through people. His writings investigate philosophy of music and political economy of contemporary cultural production.

Jack has written works for ensembles Yarn/Wire, Schallfeld Ensemble, Fonema Consort, Ensemble Dal Niente, Talea Ensemble, Prague Quiet Music Collective, Southland Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Trio SÆITENWIND. His orchestral works have been performed by the Minnesota Sinfonia and St. Olaf Orchestra. He has created work together with musicians Jeff Kimmel, Olivia Shortt, Anthony Vine, Webb Crawford, Taylor Ho Bynum, Kelley Sheehan, and Weston Olencki. His work has been supported and presented by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Fromm Foundation, The Awesome Foundation, and the Prague City Gallery.

His recordings have been released by IMPREC, Sawyer Editions, Dinzu Artefacts, and Lobby Art Records. His written work has been published by Sound American, Cacophony, and Shred Magazine. He runs an independent record label and music journal called Empty Stage and runs a blog called Challenging Music.

He is a PhD student in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Saint Olaf College. He was a Graduate Fellow at the Alice Kaplan Center for the Public Humanities in 2024 and 2025. 

Jack grew up in the unincorporated community of Keyeser, Wisconsin. He is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Jack Langdon

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