Sleep fall on us... is a duet from my opera Maren of Vardø (a work in progress). In this love duet Maren and Satan embrace before they fall sleep. The words are by librettist Royce Vavrek.

Live recording from New York City Opera VOX 2011, at Le Poisson Rouge

Sleep Fall on Us (Evening Furnace/Evening Beauty) aria by Myers/Vavrek

Metamorphosis is a dramatic violin concerto which juxtaposes and recombines three contrasting sound-worlds which synthesize and transform themselves throughout the musical narrative. Metamorphosis was premiered by violinist Yuki Numata under conductor David Gilbert with the Eastman Philharmonia at Eastman Theatre in May of 2002. The reduction for violin and piano was premiered at Symphony Space in 2007 by Yuki Numata and Ming-Hsiu Yen. The version for violin, string orchestra and piano was premiered at Le Poisson Rouge by the Wordless Music Orchestra under Ryan McAdams in 2008, again with Ms. Numata as the soloist. 

Live premiere recording by Yuki Numata, David Gilbert & the Eastman Philharmonia [2002]

Metamorphosis for violin and orchestra

A stay in Bali in 1976 marked a turning point in Claude Vivier's career. Most of the subsequent works were to show the influence of the atmosphere of this Pacific island, whose inhabitants call it the "Island of the Gods," or Pulau Dewata. Vivier said of this piece, "I wanted to write...a piece imbued with the spirit of Bali: its dances, its rhythms and, above all, an explosion of life, simple and candid." The original score does not indicate any instrumentation, rather, it is left to the performers to decide. This orchestration draws on the sounds of the Indonesian Gamelan, using a small percussion orchestra, including gongs, mallets and drums, to signify the Balinesian spirit to which Vivier alluded. It was commissioned by Jeffrey Milarsky for the Manhattan School of Music Percussion Ensemble in 2009.

Live premiere recording

Pulau Dewata by Claude Vivier/Jeff Myers

The Kulintang Suite for violin, piano and assistant is a set of pieces based on and inspired by kulintang gong melodies. All but the first melody are based on real kulintang pieces. Many of the original melodies are distorted, contracted and re-pitched for expressive reasons. In movements II, IV and VI, the assistant mutes and or stops the piano strings, turning the piano into a gong-like percussion instrument.The Kulintang SuiteYuki Numata, with composer Ming-Hsiu Yen on piano along with myself as the assistant at Ms.Numata's Master's Degree Recital at the University of Michigan in March of 2006.

Kulintang Suite for violin and piano with assistant, Mvt. IV "Tagunggo (healing ritual)"

Gestations abstracts the essence of speech and creates a colorful, textured narrative. It begins with an electronically stretched-out scream, followed by a layering of spoken dialogue (using readings from a computer program manual), and ends with a static harmony that fluctuates with the quality of human speech. Gestations was written in 2001 using the programs Cecilia and Ceres3.

Gestations (electronic media)

Organum-Tambura was written for the University of Michigan Symphonic Band. This piece is all about blurring the distictions between color, harmony and melody. Both organum (the practice of singing a parallel melody an interval above or below another given melody) and the tambura (Indian drone instrument) are evoked in this piece because these musical topics resonate with the idea that harmony, color and melody are on a continuum. The use of propulsive rhythms and overtone chords was in some ways influenced by many listenings of Georg Friedrich Haas's orchestra work natures mortes.

Live premiere recording

Organum-Tambura for large wind ensemble, Mvts. I-II

binalig was written for Timetable Percussion in 2011. It is scored for small gongs (or any similar graduated percussion with a definite pitch), any kind of drum, and drum set with an agung, or any large gong. The variable instrumentation allows the players to color the piece the way that they like, or to play the instrument that they would prefer to play. The ensemble vaguely resembles a Filipino kulintang ensemble, which usually features a soloistic gong set, a continuous drum beat, and a set of large gongs which play a bass pattern. The form of the piece is also similar to kulintang music, in that it uses short cyclical melodic motives. In my piece, these patterns develop and morph in different directions than conventional kulintang pieces, but nonetheless, the ethos of kulintang pervades the music throughout. In the kulintang repertoire, the "binalig" genre represents a modern or progressive approach to the performance and compositon of kulintang music.

Live recording by Timetable

binalig for percussion trio

Liberation was written for the Ann Arbor Symphony at the request of its conductor Arie Lipsky. This piece is a musical interpretation of M.C. Escher's lithograph Liberation, in which geometric shapes morph into birds. In my musical version, pulsating chords morph into bird song. 

Ann Arbor Symphony, live premiere recording.

Liberation for orchestra

The finale of my Requiem, this movement traces the final appearance of the angel of death. We hear a lamenting text "Ma Vie" (My Life) in French by Henri Michaux, followed by a climactic ending. Mezzo soprano Rachel Calloway and JACK Quartet premiered the Requiem at Trinity Church Wall Street March 12, 2015. 

Full texts are here: http://www.jeffmyersmusic.com/requiem_text.pdf

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www.jeffmyersmusic.com

Listen to more of my music on soundcloud:
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Requiem Mvt 9 Kyrie Eleison II - Ma Vie - Requiem Aeternam

This song from my Requiem uses texts from a lullaby in the Filipino Visayan dialect. The Requiem is dedicated to my late sister-in-law Lynda Garcia (1977-2010). In my opinion, sleep has a lot in common with death--the song can be interpreted as a kind of lullaby to a lost child.

Recorded live at Trinity Church NYC on March 12, 2015
Rachel Calloway, mezzo soprano
JACK Quartet

Live video of the entire concert is here
https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/vid...

www.jeffmyersmusic.com

Requiem Mvt 7 Pagtulog Na, Nene

after Escher for orchestra was written for Festival Acanthes and premiered by Jacques Mercier with the Orchestre National de Lorraine in 2006. The music is made of melodies and textures which, in different ways, do something illusive in the spirit of M.C.Escher. There are melodies which interlock in grid-like fashion, melodies which become stretched, chord progressions which keep ascending without getting higher, and colors which fade in and out. Some of these gradual changes span a few bars and other span the whole piece (such as the gradual introduction of more and more dissonance).

After Escher excerpt (finale)

Boy was written for mezzo Anna Laurenzo to sing in the 2019 Chicago songSlam competition.  Here is how it came to be:  I found this adorable poem by writer Jennifer de Guzman (called "Boy," of course) and I really wanted to set it  to music.  ​Jennifer and I go way back--way, way back--she was my classmate in 1st grade!  The poem is about a young boy, a child, and all the work a parent has to do just to keep up with him.  Any parent can easily relate to this verse: ​​

"You are not my tangle
to unsnarl, to work,
starting at the center
and then outward,
until a clean, smooth
length of thread is
in my hands
and I can wind it
through my finger"

After discovering the poem, I sent it to Anna as a prospective song for her own "Year of song" project in which she planned to learn a new song every week for 2019.  A few weeks later she found out about the song slam and suddenly we had a project!  Anna is good like that.

The song is a bit of a departure for me, being much more tonal and straightforward.  I wanted to take the earnest tone of the poem and apply it to my music--less experimentation and technical fuss and more of a basic approach to hit the emotional points squarely and effectively.  ​

*******

FULL POEM by Jennifer de Guzman

Boy
for my son

Problem child –
They may say
You’re a problem, child
You may think
You’re a problem, child.

But –
You are the edges of my temper
You are the loose ends of my attention
Bundled into four-foot-nothing of boy –
Into brown eyes,
Brown hair,
Long legs.
You are all the energy
I do not have,
The streak of activity
that whirls around me
as I sit,
Hands folded in my lap.

But –
You are not my tangle
to unsnarl, to work,
starting at the center
and then outward,
until a clean, smooth
length of thread is
in my hands
and I can wind it
through my fingers.

But instead –
I must learn 
To chase while you run
And to spread my arms wide,
To be ready –
when you have a moment
to be still –
to close them around you
and then –
Let you go again.

Boy for mezzo and piano

With lyrics by Royce Vavrek, E—-takes the abstract notion of the island as an individual and creates a personal narrative from that point of departure. E—-, the eponymous love interest is yearned for in the way that a distant homeland is imagined from a remote island. “I am an island in a lake in an island” sings the marooned baritone. He is stranded in a Dante-esque hell behind several moats. The island is both a haven and a trap, floating in a musical sea of drones and floating harmonies. Loadbang premiered the piece in 2015.

E---- (excerpt from premiere)

The music of Jeff Myers has been called “Striking…and harmonically rich” by the New York Times and “…brilliant and powerful…” by The Classical Voice of New England. Myers draws on preexisting musical works, styles and genres, as well as visual art and natural phenomena. Filipino kulintang music, works by M.C. Escher, overtone music, folk music and geographical narratives have been a source for inspiration. His operatic collaboration with writer and filmmaker Royce Vavrek yielded the one-act opera The Hunger Art, based on Kafka’s "The Hunger Artist" and the Adam and Eve story. Currently Myers is working on a new full length opera with Mr. Vavrek (Maren of Vardø) and a new one-act opera with writer Quincy Long (Buried Alive) As part of American Lyric Theater’s “Poe Project”.

His music has been played by Hilary Hahn on her international tour (encores project and forthcoming recording on Deutsche Grammaphon), ensembles such as L’Orchestre National de Lorraine, American Composers Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, members of New World Symphony, University of Michigan Symphony Band, American Lyric Theater, Center City Opera, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Transit, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the JACK Quartet. He has received awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI, as well as fellowships from the Aspen Festival, Tanglewood, Festival Acanthes, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and grants from institutions and private funds such as the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, Puffin Foundation, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust, the Anna Sosenko Trust, and The Fromm Foundation. His music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Kimmel Center, Darmstadt, Gaudeamus, Symphony Space, Arsenal, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Tenri Cultural Institute to name a few. Myers holds degrees from San José State University, the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He currently resides New York as a freelance composer.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Myers Composer

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