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

second

first

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

neon moon, for sextet

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)

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]

Apr. 7, 2018 Studio Z
St. Paul, MN

Alto Flute: Yoshi Weinberg [RenegadeEnsemble]

This work, sometimes/not without 1 for alto flute, is a work which explores the multiple streams of material interactions that occur when playing the flute. The variety of bodily/mechanical processes which coalesce in the production of sound on the flute are pitted against each other to create a situation where novel sonic materials arise from the contingent interactions of multiple parameters. This piece synthesizes prior explorations of mine into the nature of repetition with a current interest in the choreographic possibilities of performing an instrument.

I dedicate this work to Joshua Weinberg. It would truly not have come into being without our years of friendship and music-making together.

This work was composed as part of Minneapolis-based RenegadeEnsemble's 2018 composer/curator in residence program.

sometimes/not without 1 for alto flute [Yoshi Weinberg]

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: Jack Langdon (e. gtr), Adam Lee Sanders (e. bass), and Graeme Shields (organ)

premiere: October 16, 2018, First Lutheran Church, Greenlight New Music Festival, Duluth, MN

This is the third work in a series which explores the ways in which sound and space are shaped by each other—in this case, bringing the recorded
spaces of working class life through the fixed media into the resonant and contemplative space which pipe organs typically exist. The aesthetic
difference posed by the contrasting field recordings with the pipe organ are mediated by the presence of the electric guitar and bass—instruments
whose relationship to popular music further augments and complicates the symbolic space of this work. This piece takes its poetic origins from the multifarious, contradictory experiences of being a worker in the 21st century—utilizing repetition, stagnation, sudden gestures, harsh noise, and gentle
sonorities to create a prosaic beauty of proletarian expression.

here (3): sound images of the worker, part one - for e. gtr, e. bass, organ, and fixed media

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]

performed by: Graeme Shields (organ)- www.vitalorganproject.com/
premiere: Aug. 2, 2019, Second Reformed Church, Kalamazoo, MI

I. Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland
II. Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her
III. In dir ist Freude
IV. Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein
V. Alle Menschen müssen sterben

This work spans 25 minutes and is split into five sections, each referencing the title of some of the Lutheran hymns which are included in Bach's original collection. Despite this, it is not of my interest to pay overt homage to Bach, nor was it my interest to “update” these historical materials into some contemporary aesthetic context—but is an attempt to arrange some sound artifacts in an interesting, puzzling way. It is my hope that through the material’s internal tension and difference, they compel a listener to operate these fragments in a manner where a new subjective logic of the piece arises. I often use certain sonic iconography that is interrelated to my other works, and this is especially true of this piece. There is a puzzle that I am assembling to eventually create something that has these relationships to a larger world—perhaps existing yet-unformed somewhere exterior to my work. Thanks to Graeme for his tireless dedication to this piece.

Orgelbüchlein, for organ and fixed media [Graeme Shields]

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]

Jack Langdon (b.1994) is a musician, video artist, and writer.

He creates work that heightens our attention towards commonplace sounds, images, and narratives—reassembling things we take for granted into strange, elusive constructions. His works are stark and expansive, drawing inspiration from the landscape and folk modernisms of the American Midwest. As a musician, Jack performs on a variety of keyboard and string instruments as well as composes concert music. His films focus on landscape, the built environment, and people, and he writes on the political economy of cultural production.

His concert music has been presented and supported by Klangspuren Schwaz, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Composers Conference, the Fromm Foundation, Northwestern University, New Music Mosaic, Williams College, Microfest Prague, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, reMusik, and MISE-EN_PLACE, and has been performed by Yarn/Wire, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Miroslav Beinhauer, Current Resonance, Talea Ensemble, Jack Yarbrough, Ensemble Dal Niente, Trio SÆITENWIND, Yoshi Weinberg, Southland Ensemble, Graeme Shields, Sara Constant, RenegadeEnsemble, Minnesota Sinfonia, The St. Olaf Band, and The St. Olaf Lyric Theater. He has recorded alongside Anthony Vine, Weston Olencki, Kelley Sheehan, Webb Crawford, and Taylor Ho Bynum. His recordings have been released by Sawyer Editions and Lobby Art Records. His written work has been published by Sound American, Cacophony, and Shred Magazine.

Jack was raised in Keyeser, Wisconsin and currently lives in Chicago, Illinois. He belongs to the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and is of German, English, French, and Ojibwe descent.

Jack Langdon

Popular tracks