Daniel Spearman, Trumpet

Inculcate: to fix beliefs or ideas in someone's mind, especially by repeating them often.

Inculcate is a work that explores the repetition of musical gestures through a self-similar, repeating pattern. Each gesture is governed by a hidden pattern that runs throughout the piece. In the same way, larger groupings of material follow the same pattern. This work is dedicated to Daniel Spearman at Penn State University.

Inculcate

Children Of The Forest (Excerpt)

Chronicle Of The Heart (Excerpt)

The Chosen Wind (Excerpt)

Excursion (Excerpt)

God Of The Sun (Excerpt)

Ventus (Excerpt)

"Detritus" seeks to eagerly demonstrate the concept of destructive sound design. This is accomplished through the heavy processing of relatively inconspicuous source material. A prime example of this idea is the first half of the work. A single balloon sample is altered entirely to create a dynamic and varied soundscape. This is embellished to the point of not being able to identify the original character of each sound. The work was realized in Reaper and a variety of digital processes are responsible for the sounds you are about to hear. These processes are varied, but some of my favorites are frequency shifting, distortion, and even sampling my source material in a wavetable synthesizer.

Detritus

Volution: a rolling or revolving motion

"Volution" is a work that is cyclical and energetic. The tumult of interweaving melodic lines are held together by a set of lose rhythmic figures, creating a sense of unrelenting motion.  

Performed by the USF Flute Ensemble

Volution

Perennial: lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring.

Perennial is a work that seeks to repurpose cyclical material by obfuscating and stretching the proportional relationship between each melodic phrase. In some ways, it is also a commentary on my experiences while learning flute. The familiar underpinnings of many older solo flute works has been slightly altered by the use of microtones. With that in mind, the term "perennial" is a reference to the work's past inspiration and compositional approach.

Dedicated to Francesca Arnone
Performance by Francesca Arnone at San Jose, Costa Rica
XI International Flute Festival of Costa Rica, National Institute of Music, University of Costa Rica

Perennial

A short track for game/film that invokes a dangerous desert landscape. I mainly explored simple, adjacent chord changes while using some solo instruments to fill out the texture.

Dune Rider

Erin Rogers, tenor saxophone 
Jay Sorce, guitar
Chris Graham, percussion 
Andrea Lodge, piano

Brink is a work that draws inspiration from 2020. In the process of coping with an onslaught of unfortunate events, individuals often reinvent their lifestyles, beliefs, and habits. In some ways, we must rebuild our belief systems to accommodate for the harshness of the world. 

Much the same, the material in this work is constantly reinvented through different systematic and intuitive approaches to composition. Toward the end, the control over performance is relinquished to improvisatory and unpitched textures. This is representative of the dissolving our pre-2020 way of life. The remains of earlier material are threaded until the piece concludes in silence. 

This piece was composed for the 2020 Hypercube Composition Lab that was hosted by Charlotte New Music. As a participant, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Hypercube ensemble and compose this work for them.

Brink

Joshua Mallard (b. 1998) is an award-winning composer currently residing in State College, Pennsylvania. Mallard's eclectic body of work seeks to reshape musical idioms and embrace experimentation. 

His work consists of music for game, film, and classical music. He has worked with companies and studios such as Blipsounds, E-Line Media, Lunchbox Entertainment, and Forest Ring Games. This includes working on games such as Beyond Blue (IOS), Sky Haven, Just Act Natural, and more. 

Mallard's works have been performed internationally by a variety of ensembles, including HyperCube and Rote Hund Muzik. His flute work Perennial was programmed on Fear No Music’s 2020-21 concert series, “Tomorrow Is My Turn”. Recently, Mallard was commissioned to write a new work for Willamette University's "Artist As Advocate" workshop. 

Mallard's works have been selected for many festivals including The 2022 UNK New Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest 2022, NSEME 2020, MuSE Sound of Arts Festival, Penn State New-Music Festival and Symposium, and more. Currently, Mallard is a host for the Contemporary Art Music Project's podcast, "Lost to Time". Here, Mallard discusses the work of musicians from marginalized groups.

Joshua Mallard

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