Performed by Oberlin Conservatory Contemporary Music Ensemble
Timothy Weiss, conductor

Jonathan Yuan, flute
Jonathan Kronheimer, oboe
Alex Abreu, clarinet 
Max Ball, violin
Aaron Lieberman, cello

Check out the score preview! https://jakeberran.com/musicpages/sm.html

Notes:
I originally envisioned this suite as a sort of instrumental drama piece with the clarinet being the first person. As the movements progress, it morphs roughly from a solo/accompaniment layout to a more unified ensemble. I wanted to paint a picture of my own experience of moving to a new place in the middle of this global pandemic and our collective, generally difficult experience of isolation and conflict. But it will be over someday, and I hope that we will ultimately end up with a kinder, more equitable world—in parallel, the piece is a long shift from exclusion to inclusion represented by dissonance between the clarinet and others to consonance. 

In the first movement, the clarinet laments over a unsupportive, mocking, or otherwise unpredictable accompaniment. The first three notes form a motive used throughout the entire work (often with the second interval adjusted), an ambiguous sequence of notes that can signify both crying out and triumphant joy. The clarinet tries to ground itself, but feels lost in a sea of unfamiliar timbres. 

The second movement is essentially one big fight, with the introduction returning later to ground the form. Other than that, the sections, in order, have everyone in an internal conflict, one-on-one skirmishes, and two-against-two fights leading up to a tense climax, with the clarinet sometimes participating and sometimes feeling lost in the chaos. Contrary motion is used in almost every phrase. 

In the third movement, the very first melody is identical to that from the first movement, and in general, the instruments other than the clarinet form slow, beautiful harmonies that get louder until the clarinet gets fed up with their apparent beauty and yells out, beginning a slow process of connection.

The fourth movement may not sound so nice and warm on the surface, but instead of pretty-sounding consonance, I wanted to represent connection through vulnerability and humor. The clarinet connects with the flute by imitating its solo theme in a different meter after an overdramatic "falling spiral," and the players play big obnoxious chords as a joke. The woodwinds also cycle around the same three note chord and play in fifths at the beginning and end respectively, foreshadowing some of the symbolism in the final movement. 

In the final movement, the number five is used metrically, in intervals, and other ways to represent unity among the five characters. Some passages also lack a foreground/background hierarchy. The ending is a flashback of the initial chords from each movement followed by a brighter recall of the accelerating rhythmic motive from the first movement as the clarinet combines the two main melodic motives in an optimistic closing gesture.

COVID Suite - 1. Monologue

Hi! I'm Jake Berran (b. 2002), a composer from Minnesota currently studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. I believe that music has a magical, captivating power to say what is hard to articulate with other forms of expression. To that end, I love making each new creative process a completely different path through the vast expanse of human emotion and thought, resulting in a unique, multifaceted style. I enjoy writing for any instrumentation but feel most at home with piano, percussion, concert band, and choir. My current compositional interests include exploring humor, juxtaposing aesthetically incongruent material, working with various forms of text, and using electronics in enticing ways.