"Thrills and Trills!" (March), by Scott Watson (Grade 2.5, Alfred Publications). Please visit www.scottwatsonmusic.com to learn more.

When it comes to trills, why should the woodwinds have all the fun? Not so with Thrills and Trills! This circus-style march is a rambunctious, thrill-a-minute crowd-pleaser where trills are the main event and every player in band gets into the act. This Grade 2 Alfred Challenger Series march sound like a 3!

Thrills And Trills!

i. sun-splashed highway
ii. in the color-room

Recorded live at Griswold Hall, Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore MD
October 30, 2021

Performed by Talea Ensemble
James Baker, Conductor 

Barry Crawford, Flute
Rane Moore, Clarinet
Stephen Gosling, Piano
Matthew Gold, Percussion
Leah Asher, Violin
Christopher Gross, Cello

sun-splash color-room

A recording from Duxbury Wind Ensemble at the Exchange Concert 1/15.

About the piece:

This piece is truly an experiment that I conducted to see if I could blend two seemingly opposite styles of music together: wind band music and heavy metal (progressive metal, to be specific). The music starts with low winds playing the main “riff”, which features a unique rhythmic drive and and serves as an unmistakably progressive introduction. As the work develops further, more and more aspects of rock begin to appear. The clearest hint is the snare and ride cymbal groove that starts in the second half of the song, and that’s also where the music starts to get crazy with the time changes. There’s even some moments with polymetric patterns that are a clear hail to progressive metal. And finally, the piece concludes with a wailing clarinet solo over the main riff of the song. There’s plenty of pitch bending and all sorts of shredding to properly emulate a metal guitar solo. An Experiment for Winds and Percussion makes it clear just how well the musical elements of rock and metal can translate to the wind band tradition.

I’d call this experiment a success.


Enjoy!

~Jake

An Experiment for Winds and Percussion (2014)

Please visit www.scottwatsonmusic.com to learn more, or www.jwpepper.com to purchase.

Secret Agent Sugar Plum

This work was inspired by Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, my former teacher Carlos
Sanchez-Gutierrez, and the latter’s reverence for this document and Klee’s work in general. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy wrote an eloquent introduction to the 1960 edition of the Sketchbook, where she describes Klee’s unique style as "pictorial composition that uses the identifiable natural shape as mediary." This piece for solo 37-reed sheng uses the sketchbook as inspiration for not only the musical motifs but additionally the way in which certain passages are notated. 

"Mediaries" was partially written during my time as an artist-in-residence at the Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina. It was written for Li-Chin Li as part of the Seed 2024 Virtual Composition Academy. The accompanying picture is from Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook.

Mediaries, for 37-reed sheng (2024)

I've had this "almost done" for way too long and at this point I hate it so I'm washing my hands of it.

If you've gotten this far, check out what jubilee is, inre: debt.

jubilee

"Vibrance (in tribute to 'Errorzone')", commissioned and premiered by Amanda Forest (https://www.amandaforestclarinet.com/) as a part of "Solus - An Unaccompanied Clarinet Recital", Crescent Fort Rouge United Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 

Generously sponsored by Groundswell Wpg (http://gswell.ca/)

"Vibrance" was written in response to and was influenced by the album "Errorzone" by Boston-based hardcore band Vein. The work is specifically inspired by the textural and gestural development throughout the record, rather than directly quoting any actual material found in the album's songs.

Huge thanks to the incredible Amanda Forest for commissioning and taking on this intense piece of work, and I am very grateful for her commitment to performing exciting music by young composers!

Vibrance (premiere performance)

For Solo Bass Flute
Performed by Helen Bledsoe 23.06.2018

Commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik
First performed 19 November 2016 by Helen Bledsoe at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

Bite (2016)

Completed November 6, 2019

Special Distinction for the 2022 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize

Flute: Stephanie Ray
Oboe: Sam York
Clarinets: Lara Mitofsky Neuss
Bassoon: Joy Guidry
French Horn: Alexander Ian Oon
Trumpet: Jia Yi Lee
Trombone: Joey Becker
Drum set: Colin Crandal
Vibraphone: Sejeong Pyo
Piano: Jonathan Shin
Violin I: Claire Hebeisen
Violin II: Audrey Maxner
Viola: Amy Tan
Violoncello: Irene Han
Double Bass: Patrick Raynard
Mix/master: Bobby Ge

Metastable states, in physics, are only locally stable - that is to say that a slight disturbance to a metastable system would leave it largely unscathed, but that a sufficiently large disturbance would send the system hurtling toward its stablest state. 

Consider a ball sitting in a ditch on a large hill. A soft kick might jostle the ball without dislodging it, but a hard enough kick would take it out of the ditch and all the way down the hill. Such a ball in a ditch, then, is in a metastable state. 

These ideas of jostling, kicks, and ostensible stability dominate Metastable State. Driven by an unsure drum set freewheeling through double- and triple-time rhythms, the piece contains a number of small, cellular ideas - a three-note motif introduced by the trumpet, a running sixteenth-note ostinato in the strings, a Dorian-inflected chord progression (i-IV), a gliss-filled bass line searching for resolution. Marked by constant time signature changes and competing rhythmic figures, the piece searches constantly for metrical stability, occasionally landing in crevices of regularity, only to be kicked out again and again. 

Metastable State was initially inspired by the astonishingly virtuosic and spunky sounds of Snarky Puppy and Hiromi, who both filled my listening playlists back in my physics lab days.

Random Stuff

Metastable State, for sinfonietta

Soundtrack I wrote for Lionel R. Jeffries' upcoming short film, Waterwick: Prologue.

the bridge at dusk

Composer of contemporary music. Heavily influenced by prog metal. 

www.jocmusic.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkD_BiP9kW3pagkOrAzIC9Q

An Experiment for Winds and Percussion (2014)

Jake O'Connor

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Jill Noerenberg

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