Recorded in Bern, HKB
Luis Azcona, Feb 2021

Audio mixing: Beat Müller
Artwork: Barnett Newman

Transience for solo marimba - Jason Eckardt

Documentary about the work produced by Ensemble Musikfabrik (YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=_8cce8Z-Nkixqwgf&v=BFrIfk4Bl0s&feature=youtu.be

Turgut Erçetin, composer/interview
Carl Rosman, clarinet/interview
Aaron Cassidy, conductor

Hans Fahr, video/editing
Commissioned by Kunststiftung NRW and Ensemble Musikfabrik

image credit: Photograph by Félix Bonfils, 1875

"Thousand Dead Bodies Under My Bed, All Cloaked with the Breath of the Living"

Fated Nines - Jason Eckardt (Amorsima Trio)

“At Peace” is dedicated to the radical bass virtuoso, educator, and  civil rights activist Richard Davis, who always challenged the  boundaries of what was possible and where he belonged, both  musically and socially.  While improvisational based music is certainly more and more accepted in concert music settings now, it is still often considered as "the other", as opposed to thru composed classical music or song based musics.  As a lifelong student and practitioner of a few disparate musical traditions, I often find the separation between different musics that I love disappointing and frustrating.   Why can’t Arnold Schoenberg’s music be heard in concert alongside Charles Mingus’?  Why must Franz Joseph Haydn remain segregated from freely improvised music or Noh theater?  Why can’t the high  lonesome sound of Bill Monroe stand next to the grandeur of Duke  Ellington within the same work?   

As someone who loves so much music, I often feel pressure to conform to the boundaries or trends of a given style or genre, and feel like I'm not “supposed” to express everything I hear, or everything I want to say, if “doesn’t belong”.  Obviously many of these genre or stylistic limitations are conscious hundred(s) years old ways to segregate groups and classes of people, but remain a part of how institutions view styles of music.  Crazy, I know!  But as someone who has so much love in their heart for so many different musical histories, I really don’t care to separate the things that I love, and whether I planned on it or not, that is what is at the center of “At Peace”, for improvising trumpet and string quartet, written for Nate Wooley & Daedalus Quartet.  

This piece marries my love of the entire history of improvised music with my love of the classical tradition, taking far too many influences from in and outside of those histories to clearly identify to creatr something unlike anything I’ve written before.  So that’s pretty cool if you ask me!  Does it  mean it’s good?  Heck no!  But, it does mean that I can take all these things that I love, that I’ve been told to keep separate all of my life, and smush them together in one piece of music that feels like me, and that’s  something that makes me happy.  The bass playing and music of Richard Davis is something that constantly inspires me to be more of myself, no matter what, and with “At Peace”, I feel just a little bit more like myself.  Enjoy!

Daedalus Quartet + Nate Wooley - At Peace (2024)

The seemingly unconnected nature of words mingling with instrumental sounds lend themselves to an air of pretentious flourishes of superficiality, whose echoes of veracity and untruth reverberate in equal measure. Our realities and perceptions shaped by the expectations of what may be expressed, a palimpsest of all our cumulative experiences makes us question, anticipate, and judge the message or the art of the poet, their intention. Funnily enough in this absurd notion of how or what should the work of the composer be with the text, in all its tedium and criticism, they deftly try to fuse their and the poet’s figure in a bizarre pentimento to make every inquisitive notion both suggested and negated. To share their words and the poet’s music. Accepted and denied. North and south. Up and down.

Nada, poem by Julia de Burgos

Premiered at Elebash Hall, Graduate Center CUNY by:
Christopher Herbert
Josh Modney
Yezu Woo
Martine Thomas
Mariel Roberts

II. Nada, from reflejo cristalino, onírico, pétreo

“Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the Nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o’er her base, fell through the Nebeneinander ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark.”
-- James Joyce, Ulysses ("Proteus")

Taking its starting place from that excerpt of Stephen Dedalus’ stream of consciousness, "A very short space of time through very short times of space" is concerned with the development and reflections of musical materials in different sonic spaces that accumulate, rupture, and otherwise transform. I am most interested in volatile and fragile materials that are thus seemingly contradictory. These materials may oppose each other (dense versus sparse, dark versus bright, short versus sustained, etc.) but do not categorically conflict. Instead of seeking resolution, they strive for alchemical transcendence.

James Joyce's poetic prose in Ulysses embraces the inherent volatility of life and moves rapidly from the interior to the exterior, from the sacred to the profane, and from the masculine to the feminine, catching glimpses of everything possible between these extremes. Materials in the piece are, like Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts, mutable and constantly decontextualized, fragmented, and recombined.

This piece was composed for Flannau Duo in early 2024 and came to life through collaborative exploration with Jonathan and Kyle at various stages. I hope performers and listeners each find something surprising in this space of time.

Flannau Duo
Jonathan Hannau, prepared piano
Kyle Flens, percussion
World Premiere, 9.6.2024
Constellation Chicago

A very short space of time through very short times of space (2024, world premiere)

Three tracks off "Innervisions" - "Living for the City," "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing" and "Too High" - followed by "Contusion" off "Songs in the Key of Life."  

This track was recorded live, direct to digital multitrack. Mixed by Justin Schwartzbauer at Toefist Productions. Featuring our good friend Charles Fletcher on bass.

Stevie Wonder Medley - Living for the City - Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing - Too High - Contusion

A short composition composed for Kumaus Trio and Vito Žuraj's masterclass in Lappeenranta.

Performed by Kumaus Trio at Lappeenranta old city hall on 16.8.2025 by Lauri Pekkarinen, percussion, Helka Seppälä, Double bass and Janne Valkeajoki, accordion

Networks

Performance of my Piano Trio No. 2 at the Bled Contemporary Music Festival.

_________________________________________

Performed by: Juan Sebastián Ortega, violin; Liam Battle, cello; Bruna di Virgilio, piano; Niki Zohdi conducting.

Organiser: .abeceda Institute

Event: Bled Contemporary Music Week

Workshop: precept.concept.percept XII.

Mentors: Urban Megušar (performance), Alastair White (composition)

Recorded at: Bled Festival Hall, Slovenia

Audio by: Iztok Zupan

Video by: Branko Lenarčič, Evita Podobnikar

Piano Trio No. 2 "Webs"

Please, use headphones or good loudspeakers.

dead wasps in the jam-jar (iii) (2017–18)
for string quartet and sine waves

Commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris, with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, and the Proquartet Association.

Live recording at November Music
Quatuor Diotima (Franck Chevalier, Pierre Morlet, Constance Ronzatti,Yun Peng Zhao)

Fated Nines - Jason Eckardt (Amorsima Trio)

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