"...with music..." was commissioned by the Gentlemen's Ensemble of Louisville's Youth Performing Arts School (Jacob Cook, director) for their performance at the International Men's Choruses Festival hosted by the Rutgers University Glee Club.  The arrangement combines two unpublished songs by Kentucky composer, John Jacob Niles.  "Epitaph" reflects on a life well-lived: "If I die with music in my mouth, remember I have lived with it anon", and "Come, Gentle Dark" awaits a peaceful rest.  I retained most of the accompanimental figures, all of the melodic material, and Niles' haunting texts, while intertwining the two songs.

Special thanks to the Niles estate, Hope Koehler, and Ron Pen for their invaluable help in allowing this project to take shape.

...with music...

This powerful setting of the classic memorial highlights the role of a "warrior bard" in speaking truth to power.  Often sung or played in tribute to fallen police and fire-fighters, "Minstrel Boy" is a fantastic concert or festival selection.

Irish Spring

Minstrel Boy SATB, Arr. Julian David Bryson, Huntsville Community Chorus Association

This powerful setting of the classic memorial highlights the role of a "warrior bard" in speaking truth to power. Often sung or played in tribute to fallen police and fire-fighters, "Minstrel Boy" is a fantastic concert or festival selection.

Minstrel Boy TTBB, Arr. Julian David Bryson

"Clarion Call" is a reminder to us all that reconciliation, forgiveness, humility, and harmony are goals that have been around for a long time, but have not yet been achieved with widespread consistency. It is an intensely personal, individual invitation to make this world a better place one day, one person at a time. In bugling terms, a call is a command. But for us, this call is a choice—a decision we must make every minute of our lives—whether to live with grace, deference, and love for one another or to live with preconceived stereotypes, fear, and distrust. The words of these two great patriots are clarion, clear: join in the quest “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and unite us all in peace.  

I must give homage to composers who have come before and inspired what I’ve done here. I know of conscious connections to Randall Thompson (rhythmic representation of names, march style of chords), Bela Bartok (use of pitch sets, pioneering the use of set theory in almost tonal music), Charles Ives (quotation), and Giovanni Gabrieli (invention of stereo sound), though no composer can recognize all of his or her influences.

2015 Florida Music Educators Association (FMEA): All-State Women's Chorus & All-State Men's Chorus

Clarion Call (Excerpt) by Julian David Bryson

"pressing instincts" is impossible to play in its current form, but I like the music.  Maybe someday I'll get around to revising it, but in the meantime, feel free to listen.  

This work won the 2002 Southeastern Composers League Undergraduate Award and First Place in the 2001 Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers Competition.

pressing instincts

The University of Kansas Men's Glee Club, under the direction of Josh Donaldson, perform "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" for TBB voices, piano, and congas, arranged by Julian David Bryson.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing—University of Kansas Men's Glee Club

Winner of the 2017 Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition, Directed by Dr. Jeffrey Douma

Performance by the Yale Glee Club, conducted by David McNeil

Available for purchase at https://musicspoke.com/

Program Notes:

In the Spring of 2013, I was blessed to sing Benjamin Britten’s "War Requiem" as a member of the University of Kentucky Chorale.  Though I had heard the work before, Dr. Johnson invited his graduate conducting students into a detailed study to prepare for the performance.  This was when Wilfred Owen’s poem "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" first captured my attention.  I found myself bothered by his alternate ending and wanting to shout, “But that’s not how the story goes!”
 
As rehearsals continued, I returned to that text, eventually realizing that it depicts the way the story often plays out in real life.  Owen was reflecting on the ironically titled “War to End All Wars,” while Britten chose the text as commentary on that particular war’s sequel.  He composed the "War Requiem" in the midst of the Cold War, shortly after the armistice in the Korean War, and at the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam.  Obviously, “the Ram of Pride” was still alive and well, despite sacrificing “half the seed” of far too many continents.

Owen’s warning invaded my psyche, and I wanted others to wrestle with its questions.  Knowing firsthand the challenges of performing the "War Requiem", I decided to write something a choir could sing without two orchestras, three soloists, and a boychoir—preferably something that also presented the original tale as a contrast.  The plan crystalized over the summer of 2016, and after some fantastic feedback from my dear friend (and Triad founder) David Harris, the final version took shape on a quiet, peaceful, sun-kissed morning while on holiday in St. Maarten.  

The parable presents a relentlessly confrontational choice:  humility vs pride; life vs. death; peace vs. war.  Though one may see it as a rebuke of national hubris, these concepts resonate most vibrantly for me when held up to the daily decisions of life.  In our habits of commerce, travel, communication, and the like, may we move consistently toward humility, life, and peace.

Image:  enGRAVEd II, taken by Julian David Bryson at the Vietnam War Memorial, March 16, 2009.

A Parable Of Choices

"Green Is the Color of Its Flame" represents an annual pilgrimage.  A playful, flickering octaves motive, begins the journey as a recurring metaphor for wind, flame, rebirth, life, and all things spring.  Gradually, more notes of the diatonic scale appear, saving G (on "fire") and Ab (with the "first rains of autumn") for last.  In time, the two remaining pitches of the major scale appear.  

Oscillating between these G and Ab becomes the primary focus of the summer section, where the text contrasts yellow with green, hay with grass, last year with fresh life.  A cold, dry, piano interlude provides just enough momentum to set spring into motion once again, as a thin blade of grass thrusts itself up from the sod below.

The closing section reprises the opening material, now balanced with the full diatonic scale and building to a climactic finish.  The green fire spreads once again across the hillsides!  In this triumph, may we be inspired, even in the deadest of life’s winters to put forth our “green blade to eternity”, move from “sod into the summer”, and strive toward “fresh life below”.  

Spring compels us to begin anew our own, unique story; what will you “write about spring”?

Green Is the Color of Its Flame

This is the live audio feed from the premiere of "Redemption Mass".  The performance was conducted by Beth Richey-Sullivan director of choirs, and Michael Arbucci is the director of the orchestra program.  The combined choirs and orchestra include students from freshmen to seniors, and excepting for the percussionists, are made up entirely of students.  For more information on the premiere experience, visit https://julian-bryson.squarespace.com/config/pages/586697229f745649512c1704

Redemption Mass

Redemption Mass Premiere

This is an adaptation of a choral arrangement, prepared for and premiered during the wedding ceremony of Katie Jean and Joshua David Graves.  It's one of my favorite hymns, but a challenge to arrange, as the melody is repetitive.  The mixed meter, frequent register changes, and text painting help to create variety.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (Piano Solo)

Featuring Robert Frost's classic poem, this contrapuntal conversation presents an unanswered question for the audience.  How will the world end?  More importantly, what are we doing to hasten (or delay) this finale?  Performed by C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective of NYC (http://www.c4ensemble.org/ and https://soundcloud.com/c4ensemble), June 7 and 9, 2018 as part of "Water Music".  Conducted by Perry Townsend.  Sheet music available at https://musicspoke.com/downloads/fire-and-ice/  Recorded by Noriko Okabe

Water Music

Fire and Ice by Julian David Bryson (C4)

This is one of my favorite hymns, and I loved having the opportunity to arrange it for the University of Tennessee Women's Choir while I was their graduate teaching assistant.  I've since turned it into a piano solo and adapted it for mixed and tenor/bass voices, but this is the original, and it holds a special place in my heart.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

If I can... began shortly after Jacksonville University cancelled classes during the spring of 2020, when Timothy Keatley expressed interest in singing one of my compositions.  In my career, I had only completed one piece for solo voice, and that text is wholly inappropriate for our present moment.  However, nothing inspires a composer more than the promise of a performance, so I asked for some of his favorite poetry.  Timothy suggested this poem by Emily Dickinson, and in the context of a pandemic, political unrest, and systemic injustice, her words could not be more powerful.

This composition provides a contemplative experience leading to awareness.  The vocal line throughout is rhythmically out of sync with the piano's rocking motive, symbolizing the frustration and powerlessness many of us have felt in the face of our present challenges.  This subtle tension gradually builds to a climax of realization: to serve others--whether by voting for change, speaking out on behalf of marginalized communities, or simply wearing a mask--is the ultimate act of living.  In these actions, we find our voice.  By helping others to live, we come alive.

If I Can…(Timothy Keatley, Soloist)

Julian is an award-winning and often commissioned composer who serves Jacksonville University as Director of Choral Activities.  A founding member of Triad: Boston's Choral Collective, he is an avid performer of and advocate for new choral music and collaborative organizational structures.

Julian Bryson

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