Performed by Sarah Saviet
Recording by Christian Cummings

Program Notes:
The title of this piece references multiple things. First, it is a pun on “the blackest black”—a proprietary pigment that is licensed solely for use by contentious artist Anish Kapoor. Second, it is a reference to a previous piece of mine titled Ochres and Bones whose title refers to the earliest sources of pigments for painting. Both pieces dabble in painterly metaphors as descriptions of timbre and musical form. In this piece, I continue exploring gradations of bow technique and finger technique to draw out clear, wispy timbres from the violin. At the same time, it still maintains connections to history through its classical form, a theme and variations, and the use of a violin as its medium just as high tech pigment like the blackest black always have some connection to ochres and bones of historical artistic practices.

Clearest Clear

“You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.” 
- William Burroughs

John Secunde - electric guitar

It's always imaginary

Performed by Avanti! Chamber Orchestra
For Savellyspaja International Composition Masterclass 

Program Note: 
Although I am a certified classical music lover myself, I cannot escape the numerous other nefarious ways that classical music has been weaponized in modern society from deterring homeless people to symbolizing white supremacy to manipulating people through propaganda. How do we, as a community of musicians and music lovers, engage with the fraught social position that our artform maintains within society despite our emotional connections to the medium? The piece contains various quotations from standard repertoire which have been mangled and rearranged into a mess of intertwined meanings and symbols similar to the cultural conundrums that plague classical music institutions today.

Backsliding

Yuki Futami Trio new album "Moonlight Serenade" will be released in August 2015. 

Members:
Yuki Futami on piano 
Jeff Dingler on bass 
Micheal Winnicki on drums

Mastering Michio Kobayashi
Studio 
Special Thanks Yuko Kobayashi

This CD is produced by green label.


1 Embraceable You (George Gershwin)

Violins: KJ McDonald, Mitsuru Yonezaki
Viola: Hannah Geisinger
Cello: Philip Sheegog

Premiered on the 5th Juilliard Composers' Concert, March 27 2017, Morse Hall 8pm

Broil is the first out of a series of short, culinary related movements for string quartet. Despite not being able to cook really well, I am greatly inspired by the sonic possibilities that different food preparation methods bring. To broil refers to the exposure of food to direct heat, and the persistent, tight interlocking rhythmic groove with timbre and registral contrasts between all instruments seek to enhance the intense process. The piece has a clear form – it begins with the primary theme by the viola which is expanded upon throughout the piece, before a secondary lyrical theme appears. After sudden punctuations, the music returns to a cohesive force, signifying the end of the broil. As to whether the eventual product is edible is entirely up to your imagination

I. Broil For String Quartet (2017) (Studio Recording)

I'll Teach You To Levitate (2017, 7 min.)
for solo cello

I'll Teach You To Levitate

I'll Teach You To Levitate - for solo cello

Matthew Lipman- Viola 
Chelsea Wang- Piano

Benjamin Scheer: Compositions

In Silhouette

Trails of Creativity
---
Recital at the Esplanade, 2nd August 2014.
Brahms on Schumann
Godowsky on Schubert
Sigfrid Karg-Elert
---
Hans Gál

Trails of Creativity

Leopold Godowsky: Passacaglia, cadenza and fugue on a theme from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony

Schnappchenjagd

Performed by Orchestra of the Music Makers
11th Jan 2019 - Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore
Conducted by Seow Yibin

OMM Goes to the Movies 3

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Cover Art: (2019) by Jonathan Lim
Instagram: whereartjon
Email: jon.lim@live.com

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Childhood was tedium and bore, so whenever a pasar malam rolled into our estate, unfurling its train of colors, smells, and sounds, I would be whipped into delirious, arm-pulling, muah-chee frenzy: it is these memories that inspired this composition.

While listening to this overture, I invite you to conjure a cinematic sequence: on a hot tropical night, beneath a blood moon, a bazaar shimmers into existence. A young boy darts through the crowd, consuming the market in all its glory, before having his breath taken away by the sight of a beautiful girl (represented by the melody of P. Ramlee’s Getaran Jiwa). However, their new friendship is threatened by an ominous turn that might tear them asunder. A familiar tune – at least to all conscripted Singaporeans – arises. Will darkness take root, or will their friendship triumph?

Welcome to The Night Bazaar!

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This work is dedicated to my father.

The Night Bazaar (Concert Overture)

Jonathan Shin

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