This piece was written for amplified voice and orchestra and is performed by the RSO Wien.

Mouthpiece IX part1

Karen Kim, violin
Chris Gross, cello
David Friend, piano

recorded and mixed by Gleb Kanasevich
LeFrak Hall, Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College
Queens, NY

1.10.23

Many thanks to Adrian Morejon, Tori Cheah, and Talea Ensemble.

burnt canvas, for piano trio

Chasm

"beautiful // fragment" is about the Challenger disaster of 1986, but it is also about how this event became, for many people, enfolded into other, more personal memories,
especially those of a confusing or unresolved nature. Most of the stories meditated upon here are shattered fragments, glittering and intense, beautiful and terrifying. In many cases, we cannot tell which of these memories are fiction, which are real, and which are a bizarre combination of both.

Most of us experienced this disaster through the strange and vivid temporalities of the television. The just-destroyed shuttle would reappear like new, only to be destroyed all over again. The flashes of light and debris, repeated over and over again, would re-comprise and re-cohere, like a resplendent and dazzling fireworks show. Images of the teacher in space would flash and disappear, then reappear again as we flipped through the channels, her kind smile tricking us into believing she still existed, that she hadn’t fallen apart.

In a way, this piece was composed by a child. I put it together using the same techniques I employed as an overly emotional kid in the suburbs, sitting alone in my room with my Casio keyboard and my cassette tape recorder, creating collages of my experiences, building a swirling yet entirely solitary musical space in which to stash memories and emotions for which I had no words.

Many thanks to flutist Janet McKay, and to those who shared their stories with me.

beautiful // fragment (2007)

Live @ Bennetts Lane (29/05/2016)
Mat Jodrell (tpt)
Carl Mackey (alto)
Julien Wilson (tenor)
Andrea Keller (piano)
Sam Anning (bass)
Danny Fischer (drums)

Sunflowers290516

DJ Olive's seminal sleep session was originally recorded and compiled in late 2001 and circulated amongst friends and on an Australian tour as a CDr. The disc shares the same sentiments as Buoy and exposes DJ Olive's talents at crafting gently shifting spatial ambience. Rich textures and deep tone are carefully intermixed and combined with Olive's unique turntable style. The results are quite simply spellbinding - epic, with a markedly personal sensibility.

DJ OLIVE: SLEEP

2007 marked 400 years since the premiere of Monteverdi’s great work La favola d’Orfeo – The Tale of Orfeo. In the intervening years our experience of music has changed dramatically. The first performance of Orfeo was given in the ducal palace in Mantua in 1607, in a small room in the private apartments of Duke Gonzaga for a select party of guests. Today, classical music can be heard everywhere by anyone. In fact, music is so easy to access and carry around it’s now a fashion accessory. So here's to Monteverdi and Orfeo, still in fashion after all these years, “Happy Birthday!”

Tuning Orfeo highlights this shift in musical experience. A sample of Orfeo singing to Charon (the boatman on the river Styx) just before crossing into Hades, is heard in a continuous loop. Over the course of the piece, the context in which we hear the loop changes. Orfeo is in a small room, then a concert hall, now a car, a grieving man’s bedroom, now remixed or digitally processed, or overheard from headphones on a train. The situation switches and jumps, like changing channel on a TV or tuning a radio, but the loop rolls on. The resulting mini-opera evokes Orfeo’s search for Euridice and the ever-expanding influence of this operatic masterwork through history.

Tuning Orfeo 
Radiophonic Mini-opera Cast:

Chilean Orfeo on Train – Andrés Pinto
Charon Phone Message – Veronica Engel
Radio Play Orfeo – Anthony Martin
Weeping Orfeo – Niall Faber


Tuning Orfeo (Radiophonic) Barbeler 2007

STUDY SCORE LINK: 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hw1eh54v05ojkvw/Elastic%20Horizons%20%28STUDY%20SCORE%29.pdf?dl=0

Composed this a long time ago now (2003 I think), but still a special piece for me. It was the first piece where I worked out how to compose rich textures inspired by patterning in nature. I also learned for the first time the idea that complexity arrises from simple layers interacting (another principle from nature).  Here's my old program note...  seems a bit stiff to me now but I was a very intense man at that stage of my career. Cheers D

PROGRAM NOTE:
Elastic Horizons features contrasting textures placed in simple structural blocks. When the colourful blocks interact, in luxurious and brutal fashion, the effect is a weighty, tectonic intensity of orchestral sound. Inspiration for the work came from dynamic systems in nature. Processes such as the layering of simple parts to form a complex whole, and change manifested through gradual corruption, drive the music forward. This results in textures reminiscent of nature, like clouds, and surf, and sandstone cliffs at dusk. 

The beauty and musical strength of Elastic Horizons saw it elected ‘Recommended Work’ in the 2003 International Rostrum of Composers in Vienna. It was composed for the Australian Composers Orchestral Forum (ACOF), and premiered in Perth by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra with conductor Kevin Field.

Elastic Horizons - For Orchestra

hmu if you're interested in it! industry is in shambles! you can't eat art! (@brzraps on IG)

Chasm

JULIAN DAY

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