Evan C. Paul and Jacob Walls, Nov. 19, 2013.
more at: jacobtylerwalls.com/thismusic
I. Prelude
II. Dance
III. Dirge
IV. Changüí en F

This music with all of you

jacobtylerwalls.com/piano-stretch
Karl Larson, piano
March 30, 2016
University of Pennyslvania

Piano Stretch

jacobtylerwalls.com/tachygenesis
PRISM Quartet
March 18, 2016
University of Pennyslvania

Tachygenesis

jacobtylerwalls.com/bad-flickers
Sound of Late, feat. Jeffrey Zeigler, cello
June 29, 2016
Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium

bad flickers

jacobtylerwalls.com/lurking-beyond-thought
TAK Ensemble
January 13, 2017
I/O Festival of New Music, Williams College

TEXT:
Yes, I want the last word which is also so primary that it gets tangled up with the unattainable part of the real. I'm still afraid to move away from logic because I fall into instinct and directness, and into the future: the invention of today is the only way to usher in the future. Then it's the future, and any hour is your allotted hour. So what's the harm of moving away from logic?
I deal in raw materials. I'm after whatever is lurking beyond thought.
...
It's like moments I had with you, when I would love you, moments I couldn't go past because I descended into their depths. It's a state of touching the surrounding energy and I shudder. Some mad, mad harmony. I know that my gaze must be that of a primitive person surrendered completely to the world, primitive like the gods who only allow the broad strokes of good and evil and don't want to know about good tangled up like hair in evil, evil that is good.

By Clarice Lispector, translated by Stefan Tobler, from AGUA VIVA, copyright ©1973 by the Heirs of Clarice Lispector, 
Translation copyright © 2012 by Stefan Tobler, Introduction copyright © 2012 by Benjamin Moser. 
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Lurking Beyond Thought

jacobtylerwalls.com/defeat-device
Bearthoven
November 16, 2016
Penn Composers Guild

In 2015 Volkswagen was caught fitting their vehicles with "defeat devices" in order to evade emissions tests. One email to engineers as litigation approached revealed an executive desperate for any plausible explanation for what was still taking place:
"Come up with the story, please!"

At the outset of this piece, a simple process of insertions quickly defeats the sense of upbeat and downbeat. Throughout the piece I'm interested in developing these mechanically interlocking materials so that they "target" other elements of the music for "defeat." I'm also interested in having these mechanical materials accrue lyricism in the way their elements assemble in new configurations. I want these mechanical materials to be entangled, desperately trying to come up with the story.

Defeat Device

Breath I (Lyric–Levitate–Exhale–Dissipate)

The works of Jacob Walls trace the vital impacts sonority and gesture make on each other. In music for chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, and solo instrument, fascinations with particular sounds yield a lyric of their own, and fragile flickers embedded in melody become more integral with each repetition.


Walls studied at Williams College (B.A.), the University of Oregon (M.M., M.A.), and and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). His music has been presented by SEAMUS, Bowerbird, and the Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra. Recent works include Frayed, for tenor saxophone and fixed media electronics, recorded by Matthew Levy on XAS Records, Lurking Beyond Thought, for mixed chamber ensemble and voice based on a text by Clarice Lispector, and Tachygenesis, for saxophone quartet. He lives in Philadelphia.

Jacob Walls

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