found percussion - Christian Smith
piano - Jade Conlee
performed at Hallwalls, Buffalo NY, 4-25-17

"Torpid Smoke" (2015-) is a piece written for Christian Smith as a 'sister piece' to "I did not see it to the end..." (2011) which he premiered when we were both studying at Oberlin Conservatory. Both works use the nearly incidental sounds of found percussion instruments to evoke the nighttime atmosphere of a Berlin apartment as captured in a short story by Vladimir Nabokov, also called "Torpid Smoke" (1935). The strange percussion sounds dance about a more constrained piano part - derived from typing patterns - meant to evoke the dreamy work of Nabokov's young poet protagonist. From this banal soundscape, composer and performers work together to conjure the emergence of subconscious ramblings and inspiration, as the poet in Nabokov's story finds "breathing... revolving verse" in the "vision of blue smoke clinging to dead leaves on a wet roof."

The text which the pianist "types" is as follows: "On his way out of the dining room he noticed his father turn his whole torso in his chair to face the wall clock, as if it had said something – but there the door I was closing closed, and I did not see that bit to the end. I did not see it to the end, I had other things on my mind yet that too, and the distant seas of a moment ago, and my sister’s flushed little face, and the indistinct rumble on the circular rim of the transparent night – everything, somehow or other helped to form what now had at last taken shape.”

Torpid Smoke (Buffalo 2017 Edits)

Libro di fiammelle e ombre (2017)
for six solo voices

incorporating madrigals by Jacques Arcadelt

EXAUDI / James Weeks

Libro di fiammelle e ombre

I want every gun we have to fire on that man

Squarepushers (for vocal quintet)

Live recording of a performance with Amy Wood and Jamie McVinnie given at St Mary-at-Hill, London on 23 March 2018, recorded by John Croft (http://chiaro-audio.uk). 
I am singing 1st soprano (solo verse 1:48-3:10).

FRANCOIS COUPERIN Motet pour le jour de Pâques

Performed by members of ELISION Ensemble:
Daryl Buckley, Kathryn Schulmeister, Carl Rosman, Joshua Hyde, Ben Marks

Mixed and mastered by Justin Smith at Mammoth Studios

Score Follow: https://youtu.be/nDz2xMKlID8

ℬooks II III VI VII XI XVII XXIV XXIX XLI

J.S.Bach: Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott

Presence

Composer, vocalist, director, and pedagogue. Currently based in Buffalo NY.

Torpid Smoke (Buffalo 2017 Edits)

Jessie Downs

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