Voice:  Julianne Casey
Clarinet:  Mimmy Hsu
Image:  Trinket, William Pope.L

Written for and performed by the Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble.

Premiered at the 2017 Atlantic Music Festival.

Losing It.

Performance by the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Jan Wagner.

Beautifully recorded by Josh Frey.

Modern Machinery

Songs from the Phone Booth of the Wind is a chamber opera.  In Japan, there is a phone booth.  After the 2011 tsunami, many people would make a sort of pilgrimage to the booth to speak with their lost loved ones.  In this opera, a father and a mother travel to the booth to deal with the loss of their daughter, and ultimately explore the nuances of grief and the mystery and poetry of death.

Recorded by Josh Frey.

Father: Christos Kokkinis
Mother: Katie Bell

Whisper Chorus:  Paul Winch, Katsuko Kameda, Katie Bell, Christos Kokkinis

Ensemble:
Laura Watson, flute
Elizabeth Beller, clarinet
Caeley Neiss, trumpet
Pilar Boucher, bassoon
Carlos Figueroa, cello
Robert Catinella, bass

Jonathan Wyatt, Composer

Songs from the Phone Booth of the Wind (studio session)

Recess

RISE

Live premiere recording by NOW Ensemble as part as part of the Red Note New Music Workshops at Illinois State University.

Strange Times in Normal, IL is a piece about duality.  The work explores seemingly opposing musical materials: light, dark; happy, sad; aggressive, tranquil.  The title itself plays on this notion, juxtaposing what is "strange" and what is "normal."

As I was writing the piece, another, perhaps more subtle narrative began to occur to me.  Many sections sound almost...sentimental.  Nostalgic.  To me, Normal, IL could stand for almost any small town in America -- maybe not so different from the one in which I grew up.  In our current socio-political climate, I'd say these are certainly strange, tumultuous times.  We are in an era of immense, rapid change.  This piece is perhaps an ode to the "Normals" of the country.  Or maybe it's a relic of a time already past, slipped through our fingers, as nostalgia often is.

Strange Times in Normal, IL (excerpt)

Premiere recording by Wendy Richman as part of the (digital) 2020 Lake George Music Festival Composition Institute.

----

The Acquired Inability to Escape takes as its namesake a 1991 work by conceptual artist Damien Hirst which features a desk and office chair, contained within a steel and glass cell.  To me, this imagery ties in with a more recent and loosely defined art genre coined “corporate surrealism,” which as yet is mostly internet- and meme-based.  In my piece, I wanted to explore this intersection of mundane and magical, as well as Hirst’s original themes of corporate dehumanisation and accepted servitude.

The Acquired Inability to Escape

Jonathan Wyatt (b. 1997) is a composer, conductor, and sound artist.  His work often explores relationships, connectivity, and control. He is particularly interested in making art that engages an audience from multiple perspectives, and that blurs the boundaries of form and medium.  Jonathan is influenced by a number of conceptual and visual artists, including Damien Hirst, Yves Klein, Maggi Hambling, David Shrigley, Jeff Koons, and Mike Kelley. He also draws inspiration from trap, hiphop, folk, metal, and indie rock artists.  Some of his favorite composers are Benjamin Britten, Leoš Janáček, Alfred Schnittke, and Moondog.
 
Jonathan has been a fellow at the Atlantic Music Festival, the Red Note New Music Festival, and was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award.
 
He holds a BM from Shenandoah Conservatory, where he studied with Jonathan Newman and Dr. Natalie Draper.  Raised in a small southern Virginia town, he now lives in Brooklyn NY, and is pursuing an MM at the Mannes School of Music with Dr. David T. Little.

Jonathan Wyatt

Popular tracks