Mots (1963), for 5 solo voices and 8 instruments
Betsy Jolas

Mots (Betsy Jolas)

pour Flûte, Clarinette Basse, Percussion, Piano et Violoncelle

Solistes de l'Ensemble InterContemporain et de l'Ensemble Next
Oscar Jockel, direction

Chants d'étoileurs II (2020 / 2022)

performed by:

Elijah Spies – viola
Francesco Palmieri – guitar
Jacob Mason – piano
Mikołaj Rytowski – percussion

recorded by Santiago Villar Martín
mixed by Isaac Roth Blumfield

recorded Nov 30, Klaus Linder Saal, Musik Akademie Basel

Underglow | for viola, guitar, piano, percussion, feedback network, and electronics (2022-23)

String Quartet composed by Ko Muramatsu for MIVOS Quartet, premiered at VIPA in July 2024.

Virtuality

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

Beauty is brief and violent for sinfonietta

Premiered at Lucerne Music Festival on August 31st, 2024. Performed by International Ensemble Modern Academy 2024

Beauty is brief and violent

Fleeting Musings And Restless Pause: A Bassoon Pocket Concert (2015) for bassoon, flute, harp, viola, and bass.

Commissioned by Steve Dibner and Brad Balliett for the Metropolis Ensemble.

Live recording: premiere by Brad Balliett and the Metropolis Ensemble - Oct.11, 2015, (le) Poisson Rouge.

Fleeting Musings And Restless Pause: A Bassoon Pocket Concerto (2015)

Rehearsal recording of first half - May 2017. American Composers Orchestra; David Tinervia, baritone.

Part 1: Into the Weddell Sea
Part 2: Trapped in Pack Ice 

Music composed by: Nina C. Young
Text written by: Nina C. Young and David Tinervia
Optional Generative video by: R. Luke DuBois

"Out of whose womb came the ice" creates a sonic and visual glimpse of a segment of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17).  In August 1914, at the onset of WWI, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton gathered a crew of 27 men and set sail for the South Atlantic.  They were in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize of the Heroic Age of Exploration: to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent by foot.  Upon entering the Weddell Sea, they encountered unusually foul weather.  Weaving south through the treacherous seas of ice, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped only 85 miles from their destination.  After months of waiting for the ice to break, the ship was crushed and sank, leaving the crew stranded upon the ice floes without any means of contacting the outside world.  In pursuit of survival, Shackleton and his crew endured 22 months traversing ice floes up the Antarctic Peninsula.  The final leg included a deadly 800-mile open boat journey in their lifeboat, the James Caird, in hopes of reaching South Georgia Island.  The crew was rescued on 30 August 1916; everyone survived.  Though this expedition failed, it remains one of the most miraculous stories of polar exploration and human survival.

"Out of whose womb came the ice" looks at the expedition from the time they enter the Weddell Sea (December 1914) to the sinking of the Endurance (November 1915).  The vocal and orchestra music focuses on the crew’s perception of the Endurance in relationship to their surroundings.  She goes from being simply a ship, to a lifeline and memento that connects them to the world they left behind.  Once she sinks, they are truly left alone.  The visuals and electronics offer narrative elements drawn directly from documents of the journey: journal entries of the crew and images by expedition’s official photographer Frank Hurley.

Out of whose womb came the ice (excerpt) for baritone voice, orchestra, and electronics

Composed and recorded by Nina C. Young, April 20, 2020, New York.

present perfect

present perfect (2020) voice, prepared piano, electronics

Premiered at outHEAR Festival in Larissa, Greece on December 14th, 2019 by members of Klangforum Wien and PPCM. 

Felix Martl, bass clarinet
Mikael Rudolfsson, trombone
Leo Morello, cello
Joonas Ahonen, piano
Dimitrios Polisoidis, conductor

recorded by Dimitri Papageorgiou

[pictured: John Divola]

Sunol (2019) for bass clarinet, trombone, cello, and piano

Please, use headphones or good loudspeakers.

They left us grief-trees wailing at the wall (2020), for 9 amplified instruments
Commissioned by Ars Nova Ensemble Instrumental, The Riot Ensemble, and Wien Modern

Live Recording, Riot Ensemble, 12 November 2020, London

Everything That Begins... for string quartet

Julian Stuart-Burns

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