Such a sensitive composition and performance. Thank you, Joseph.

Every year for Christmas, my grandmother brings home a fresh bouquet of Poinsettias to display around the house. The Poinsettia flower has always been a symbol of the Christmas season in my household. Native to Mexico, the plant is called Flor de la Noche Buena (Flower of the Holy Night) due to its resemblance to the star of Bethlehem. Thus, it represented a symbol of hope. However, in 2014, The Poinsettia would come to represent destruction as the nickname for the second most destructive wildfire in San Diego, CA starting at Poinsettia Lane and burning over 400 acres of land over the course of 3 days. A year later, an article describing the scene held the inscription that served for the catalyst of this piece, “Sound rises from the ashes of the Poinsettia fire.”

Ashes to Poinsettias tells a narrative to evoke the idea of a single Poinsettia flower outlasting the destruction of the Poinsettia fire. It musically juxtaposes this narrative by using grandiose moments intermixed within a thematic development that encompasses the idea of hope amid destruction.

Ashes To Poinsettias

Untinctur'd by Art

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which were monitored by our Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

Cassini: Saturn Radio Emissions #1

Dan Stepner, violin
Donald Berman, piano

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Night Flocks Of Angels Trumpet

Three Basho Haiku
for SATB choir
by Lisa Neher

Choral Pieces Recording Session April 2011

I. Harvest Moon for SATB choir by Lisa Neher

Music by Matthew Browne
Performed by Alarm Will Sound
Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 30, 2016

"Writers' Room" aims to evoke the atmosphere of a room full of talented, driven, and sometimes stubborn television writers who are trying to come up with some good material for their next show, which has a very quickly approaching deadline.

The piece, depicting this chaos, is constantly brainstorming, workshopping, revising, squabbling, and panicking. Much like some the more dysfunctional, wild, and entertaining writers' rooms.

Writers' Room

Out now on all platforms at: https://fanlink.to/thesea

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The Sea

What Color Is the Dawn?

Text by Klara Wojtkowska (2010, used with permission of the author)
Music by Jordan Kuspa (2018)

Commissioned by the Choral Arts Initiative, Newport Beach, CA
Brandon Elliott, director

Performed 15 June 2018, at the inaugural PREMIERE|Project Festival at 
St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, CA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What color is the dawn?  

Before the sky turns pink and blue, 
when the first cutouts of shadows of trees emerge from the darkness, 
on a background of ... What?  

This blank in-between, a clearing of color before the new ones roll in? …  

A rest?
A moment.

The earth and the sky separate sadly, divide into their roles, acknowledge differences, part ways.
They see each other for the first time by the light of the sun and realize – we are different.
Later to be united, melded once more by night, which erases the dividing horizon.  
Or is it a moment of indecision on the part of the sky?  

The sun not yet here, the stars gone – what next? Is it Dawn, pressing the snooze button, hoping for a few more minutes’ sleep before coming to color the sky, to paint it anew?

What color is the dawn?

What Color Is The Dawn?

"Topos" by Anthony Cheung, excerpt from mvt. 2 (Streams, Storm/Stress, Tempesta)
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
recorded live at Severance Hall, May 2017

(posted with the kind permission of the Cleveland Orchestra)

Anthony Cheung: Topos

Topos (2017) for orchestra, excerpt

From the Top
Freedom from the Anxiety of Influence

If I were asked to list my influences, I would produce a list that would likely be more performative than it is true. This piece is an honest look at my musical influences and personal musical landscape. It is filled with strange juxtapositions and heavy repetitions—truly great favorites and tracks I downloaded for free when I was a teenager and don't really remember—Bach, Mozart, Xenakis, John Zorn, The Beatles, Wilco, Radiohead, Enya, film scores. I am interested in the extent to which we choose our influences. Surely what we choose to repeatedly listen to influences us most, but it seems to me a nature vs. nurture question. The playlist I used for this piece, chosen genuinely at random, takes something like an objective view. 

Of course, this isn’t science. This is art. In fairness, the contents of my iTunes library is a bit of a time-capsule given that I stream much of the music I listen to now and don't "own" it. That said, the influence of what I chose to spend money on at one point or another can't be minimized.

One of the most satisfying things for me about this piece is that the specific interactions of the different musical samples that I used were unplanned and yet come together in wonderful ways. The piece is structured systematically and any samples could have been used. Just after minute 8 in my piece there is this moment that is always a little sublime to me in which over this looping progression by Doveman [ I - V6 - iv - iii - IV - I - ii - V ] we begin to hear the opening of this John Zorn violin solo which, though atonal itself, hangs on a high E-flat and G (scale degrees 1 and 3 in the Doveman song). I remember listening through the whole piece the first time and being struck by the beauty of this serendipity and the beauty of overlaying John Zorn and “singer-songwriter” material with a mild cacophony in the background.

How it was made:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15ER0G7r7kdpKhZ3P3M39h1ktVaMi1FB3YNc-5uLd8vM/edit?usp=sharing

Samples used:
Two Studies for Organ, II. Coulée (1969) by György Ligeti
Golden Sand by The Republic Tigers (live radio session)
Nocturne from String Quartet #2 in D by Alexander Borodin
“Porgi, Amor” from Le Nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Mozart
All You Need is Love by The Beatles
1.36 by Coldplay
If I Needed Someone by The Beatles
Less Than You Think by Wilco
“Drive to the Cottage” from the film Finding Neverland by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek
If You Wait a Little Longer by Nico Muhly and Teitur
Sonatina, I. Andante by Jerome Moross
La Dousa Votz by Bernart de Ventadorn
Apophthegms ix by John Zorn
Grow Till Tall by Jónsi
Angel’s Share by Doveman
 Please Be Patient With Me by Wilco
Allemande from Suite #4 in A Major BWV 1010 (ed. Lippel for guitar) by J.S. Bach
Miss Clare Remembers by Enya
Rebonds, Part A by Iannis Xenakis
Exile by Enya
Date of Execution February 11, 2004 by Cory Dargel
Either Way by Guster
One Million Miles by J. Ralph
Pyramid Song by Radiohead
“Caras Galadhon” from the film The Fellowship of the Ring by Howard Shore
Puspanjali - by Nyoman Windha
People Keep Coming Around by Tindersticks
Albion Voice by Bishi

From The Top

Performed by Quartetto Indaco, 2012

Photo: flickr.com/photos/gazeronly/

Wasabi

Composer of Postclassical music. PR editor for the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications. Avid reader. Casual runner. Interested in nearly everything.

Night Flocks Of Angels Trumpet

Joseph Sowa

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