Performed by Ku Chun-Hao and the composer at the Forum Music, Taipei on August 2, 2025

“Echoes from a Mountain” for soprano saxophone and live electronics is poetically inspired by
traditional Tibetan Buddhist ritual music – puja in Tibetan. In particular, the many different types
of timbral and microtonal trills as well as the use of many direct repetitions are meant to evoke the music that the Rgya-gling – a traditional Tibetan double-reed instrument – performs in this music. In addition, following this inspiration the work ends with a rhythmic and tone-based transcription of a Chinese reading of the Great Compassion Dhāraņī (大悲咒)played in the highest non-altissimo register of the soprano saxophone to evoke an image of shrieking vultures circling the flesh and bones of a desiccated body.

I composed “Echoes from a Mountain” for my good friend Chun-Hao Ku, who greatly helped me
better understand the mechanisms that go into performing the saxophone and the premiered the work in March 2025.

Jacob David Sudol
May 15, 2025
Kaohsiung, Taiwan 

Echoes from a Mountain (2025) for soprano saxophone and live electronics

Jacob David Sudol uses new technologies to create intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena, the inner nature of how we perceive sound, and novel connections between Eastern and Western musical cultures.  His music has been performed well over one and fifty hundred times by many prestigious ensembles and performers across the USA, Europe, and Asia.  In addition, Dr. Sudol is currently writing a chapter on his music for the upcoming Oxford University Press Handbook of Spectral Music.  
	
Dr. Sudol is currently an Associate Professor of Music Technology and Composition at Florida International University and was awarded a 2015-16 Fulbright Fellowship to teach and research in Taiwan.