Snaps And Shadows - Fantasy for solo piano (2021 - 2022)

MIDI recording by Sibelius NotePerformer

Instrumentation: 1(picc.).1.1+bcl.1/1.1.1/1perc+mba/2.2.2.2.1

Twister - Fanfare For chamber orchestra (2022)

Text by Denis Johnson.
Performed by loadbang in Pickman Hall, Cambridge, MA. 2023.

Sticky With Gin

Conducted by Floris van der Veken
Performed by the Eastman Graduate Composers Sinfonietta
Kilbourn Hall, Rochester

In a Few for sinfonietta

Read by the Eastman Wind Orchestra
Conducted by Luca Peveroni

Twister - Fanfare for Wind Orchestra

Performed on July 6, 2024 at the Paul Hindemith Center in Blonay, Switzerland as part of soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange 2024.

Leah Thomas, Clarinet
Mark Fewer, Violin
Mafalda Santos, Cello
Kyle Adam Blair, Piano
Julius Mauldin, Conductor
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Mirror-Laden is a potpourri of different characters, moods, and figures. I tried in constructing this piece to maximize the contrasts both within sections and in-between sections while still weaving a formal thread that would bind the whole piece in a sensible and self-consistent fashion. I have been thinking a great deal recently about the discrete sections that appear in various rock, pop, and metal genres, and I wanted to find an approach to my own music that would integrate this kind of compartmentalized approach. I found that by vastly simplifying my pitch language and by more intently focusing on rhythmic variation and dynamic fluctuation, I could more intuitively create chunks of music that, while rather dissimilar on the surface, are united through specific formal and character elements.

The “mirror” in the title derives from the oversaturation of inversion throughout the piece, whether with respect to pitch, rhythm, character, or timbre. As I discovered the pitch sequences that I would use in Mirror-Laden, I noticed a striking similarity of one sequence to the opening melody of “Subject and Reflection”—a short piece from the sixth book of Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. Having found this uncanny resemblance, I decided to use this idea of reflection as a foundation for each section of the piece.

Julian Stuart-Burns - Mirror-Laden

Performed at the Societat Ateneu Musical del Port in Valencia, Spain as part of VIPA 2024.

Mivos Quartet
Olivia de Prato, Violin
Maya Bennardo, Violin
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, Viola
Nathan Watts, Cello

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Everything That Begins… plays with some ideas of form that I have been considering for several months now. My most recent pieces have dealt with forms oriented around short segments that build up and juxtapose similar musical ideas—or ones that are severely contrasting—only for the edifice to collapse entirely, ushering in new iterations of this process. While moments of collapse are relatively sparse over the course of this piece, the quick succession of the four movements creates a sonic environment where the listener is continually in suspense as to what will come next.

This piece takes its title from a refrain found in a succession of micro-chapters contained within Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. As a matter of copyright, I will not copy the passage down here, but those who have read the book will likely be familiar with the segment in question. In one of these micro-chapters, Bolaño puts forth a theory of works of art, criticism, and readership that had quite an effect on me upon reading it. Everything That Begins… could even be seen in its form to mimic this trajectory of a work’s lifespan that Bolaño traces, though that certainly was not my intention upon setting out to right this piece. This piece owes a great deal to well-known works of other composers—Henri Dutilleux, Hans Abrahamsen, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Gyorgy Kurtag, among others—and there are certainly moments in this piece where each of these influences shines a bit brighter than the others. The title thus pays homage to that genesis and evolution of the work of art—and its reception—with which I have been fascinated for my whole adult life so far.

Everything That Begins... for string quartet

For trumpet and fixed media
Performed by Daniel Adamczyk, trumpet

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Recall, Assemble was made in collaboration with my friend Daniel Adamczyk, for whom the piece was written. Though he mostly plays classical-style trumpet these days, Daniel used to play a lot of jazz trumpet. Knowing this, I asked him before starting the piece if he could give me any of his favorite tunes as a reference point. He gave me two: Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus” and Kenny Dorham’s “Lotus Blossom.” Much of the material in the trumpet part stems from these two tunes. The overall pitch structure is greatly influenced by Joe Henderson’s writing and improvisation, and the rhythmic syncopation owes a great deal to his solo on the tune as played on his 1969 record Power to the People.
The electronics part was written entirely using trumpet sounds and granulated recordings of jazz combos. Specifically, I was extremely invested in the sound of sung trumpet multiphonics while writing the piece, and I recorded Daniel playing many different multiphonics and split tones before starting the electronic part. The drones that re-occur throughout the piece are made up of pitch-shifted versions of these recordings moving in and of the foreground.
A huge thank you to Connor Simpson, Logan Barrett, Ko Murumatsu, Dr. Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Dr. Mikel Kuehn, who all assisted in the writing, sculpting, and recording of this piece. Without their help, none of this would have been possible!

Julian Stuart-Burns

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