Kaamos

Maura Tuffy, soprano 
Anthony Ratinov, piano 

I. Song 

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life
mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
how I hate disease, it’s like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen
in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me


II. Today

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.
 

III. Lisztiana 

A ribbon is floating in the air, 
spring breeze, yellow white ribbon, 
tossing and catching on itself,
panting like a Maltese terrier.
Now it has discovered the earth’s 
warm cleavage and drifts slowly down.
Are you crying over what we lost 


IV. On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday
 
Quick! A last poem before I go
off my rocker. Oh Rachmaninoff!
Onset, Massachusetts. Is it the fig-newton
playing the horn? Thundering windows
of hell, will your tubes ever break
into powder? Oh my palace of oranges,
junk shop, staples, umber, basalt;
I’m a child again when I was really
miserable, a grope pizzicato. My pocket
of rhinestone, yoyo, carpenter’s pencil,
amethyst, hypo, campaign button,
is the room full of smoke? Shit
on the soup, let it burn.  So it’s back.
You’ll never be mentally sober.


V. Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

III. Lisztiana

Premiere performance by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Alain Trudel, conductor

As a composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff was a man out of time. While his contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Arnold Schoenberg were creating bold new works of Modernism and atonality, Rachmaninoff clung to the Romantic traditions of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Mussorgsky. When asked about his musical style compared to his contemporaries in an 1939 interview, he responded, "I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me."

a ghost wandering in a world grown alien was commissioned by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, who requested a work which explored 
nostalgia and responded to the work of Rachmaninoff. This piece imagines Rachmaninoff wandering in this alien musical landscape where he encounters manipulated and twisted quotes of some of his most beloved works, including the Second and Third Piano Concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, and the C# Minor Prelude, juxtaposed by quotes from Stravinsky and Schoenberg. 

a ghost wandering in a world grown alien was premiered by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra on May 13 and 14, 2022 in the Peristyle Theater in Toledo, OH. The commissioning of this work was supported by the Edward Schmidt Musical Arts Fund.

a ghost wandering in a world grown alien

Thomas Sanders, clarinet

image: Georges Braque, "Still Life with Metronome," 1909

Scrap-drift

by Miles Walter (2022)
Aspen Chamber Symphony (majority student orchestra; some faculty alongside), Nicholas McGegan, conductor
World premiere, rec. live July 8, 2022
Commissioned by Aspen Music Festival and School, Robert Spano, Music Director

This is the first movement of a work in progress, a two-movement symphony.

[NB Other than the closing movement, I very well might never write anything that sounds like this ever again... but it was a joy to write, and I somehow feel that the way the architecture unites in the latter half of the movement justifies the borrowings and anachronisms of the whole... but I do feel a bit self-conscious about this one, it's an odd pet project!]

[Walter] Symphony (2022), I. Broad, in flexible tempo

Recorded at the 2022 Aspen Music Festival as part of the composition and VocalARTS Collaboration

This is a setting of the poem November, by Sara Teasdale, from her collection Love Songs.

Soprano: Gabrielle Turgeon
Mezzo-soprano: Meg Brilleslyper
Piano: Manuel Arellano

The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.

Our love is dying like the grass,
And we who kissed grow coldly kind,
Half glad to see our old love pass
Like leaves along the wind.

your gaze is on my face: November

live performance by the Fidelio Trio at Ithaca College on February 26th, 2024

note | This past Fall I spent countless hours roaming the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks as their Musician-in-Residence. I took particular joy in listening to the changing soundscapes throughout the day, from colorful talkative birds to plump, overly comfortable rabbits chewing right by my feet. At dusk, the insects took over and I would make a point to join them each evening. Sometimes I would see shadows at the edge of my vision that would move with me.

Near the end of my residency I shared those experiences with other fellows, slightly jokingly. But they shared their own numerous experiences with shadows in the garden. It didn’t feel too surprising; gardens have their own memories and ghosts, especially, I’m sure, those with complicated legacies. I’m happy they felt comfortable enough to say hello.

shadow in the garden [2023] | Fidelio Trio

"I can't breathe." - Eric Garner, 43

Performed by the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club under the direction of Dr. Eugene Rogers

Recorded and Mastered by David Lau, The Brookwood Studio

Score available at MusicSpoke.com

Seven Last Words of the Unarmed - Mvmt. VII: Eric Garner, 43

A setting of Langston Hughes' poems, "Harlem" and "Dreams"

performed by the Atlanta Master Chorale under the direction of Dr. Eric Nelson

2016 Season Premiere: Dreamers of Dreams

Dreams: a recitative and aria for SATB chorus

Artwork: Odilon Redon, "Flower Clouds" (1903)

2. Wish?

"If you don't use it, you'll lose it." Many consider this oft-used saying to be true as it relates to physical fitness, artistic skills, and even mental fortitude. Given the ubiquitous divisiveness and turmoil in the world over the last few years, it seems that this adage may also have other applications. Maybe I am naive, but I think our current condition can be diagnosed as a severe deficiency in empathy - our world is lacking the strength to love. We haven't been using it, so we've lost it.

This dearth in empathy is so pervasive that is now the new norm. People pride themselves in their rigid opposition of even listening to someone of differing viewpoints in a spirit of openness. So I decided to write a piece that would help me, and hopefully others, rebuild the strength necessary to love deeply, genuinely, and passionately.

This piece is essentially a battle between selfishness and empathy - pride v. love - and because one is easier than the other, the victor is clear towards the end of the piece. It is important that the decision to perform the music that follows "the end" remains a choice for each individual member of the ensemble.

Asking orchestral musicians to put down their instruments and stand up and sing is risky. The act requires a certain vulnerability. It can be perceived as cheesy. It can elicit negative reactions. Only a few people may choose to do it, and therefore be lonely. It can be uncomfortable. But such is the love that is required to truly change our current circumstance.

========================
An Act of Resistance (Winner of the 2017 Hermitage Prize) 
Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra led by Wilson Ng
Recorded in Harris Concert Hall at the 2017 Aspen Music Festival and School

An Act Of Resistance (Second Reading)

Joel Thompson (b.1988) is an Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator, best known for the choral work, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which was premiered November 2015 by the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club and Dr. Eugene Rogers and won the 2018 American Prize for Choral Composition. His pieces have been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Master Chorale, Los Angeles Master Chorale, EXIGENCE, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Currently a student at the Yale School of Music, Thompson was also a 2017 post-graduate fellow in Arizona State University’s Ensemble Lab/Projecting All Voices Initiative and a composition fellow at the 2017 Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis and won the 2017 Hermitage Prize. Thompson taught at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta 2015-2017, and also served as Director of Choral Studies and Assistant Professor of Music at Andrew College 2013-2015. Thompson is a proud Emory alum, graduating with a B.A. in Music in 2010, and an M.M. in Choral Conducting in 2013.

Dreams: a recitative and aria for SATB chorus

Joel Thompson Music

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