There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
			-Queen Gertrude

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.”  Hamlet

Willow

Embers studio recording. Richard Schwartz, saxophone and Philip Schuessler, piano

Embers

I have been dreaming of alien life since I was a child. Perhaps I’ve watched and read too much sci-fi. Perhaps my father taught me too much about biology, evolution, and zoology on Earth and we spent far too much time looking in remote streams and caves for different types of salamanders. The truth is, our own planet is so rich in biodiversity, with so many types of animals that can live anywhere from the ice in the polar regions to the deepest depths of the oceans. Biologists on Earth have discovered the concept of convergent evolution. This is the idea that unrelated organisms will develop certain features and functions depending on the conditions in which they develop. They develop to fill specific niches, which is why the hummingbirds of the Americas and the sunbirds of Southeast Asia both developed long beaks to sip nectar from flowers although they are not closely related.
 
Although we won’t see birds on extra-solar worlds, if the conditions are right, we will see flying creatures. They may not have feathers, hollow bones, and a syrinx, but they will fly. They will catch smaller aliens to eat or devour alien fruits or seeds. They will communicate. Maybe they will sing. Maybe they will have a syrinx like Earth birds, or maybe they will have a built-in organ more akin to a percussion ensemble. “Flight and Song” features several species of newly-invented (by myself and others) bird-like aliens, such as the Trappist Neon Mote Catcher, the Giant Land Strider, the New Laconian Sunbird, and the Deathwatch Aviar that resides on Drominad First of the Sun.

World premiere performance at Louisiana Music Teachers Association conference, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on October 8th, 2023. Performed by Yuki Tanaka, violin; Sixto Franco, viola; Rachel Hseih, cello; Katalin Lukacs, piano.

Flight And Song Recording

The Inhibitors is an anti-piece, a study in frustration and irregularity. When a pattern or melody begins to emerge, it is ignored, thwarted or immediately stamped out. The bleakness is deliberate. Creation is futile.

(Also, the title may or may not directly reference the ancient machines in Alastair Reynold’s Revelation Space series whose sole purpose is to stamp out intelligent species of life as they emerge. These “wolves in the void” wake up after millennia asleep in cold, dark space transforming suns and entire planets into weapons of mass destruction on a galactic scale).

World Premiere Performance - Southeastern Louisiana University, April 1, 2015, Mabel Kwan, piano


Besharse - Inhibitors - SLU

"Pursuit" from Forest Songs

Text by H.D.

World Premiere Performance March 15, 2016 @NienteForte Festival @Tulane University

Performed by Amanda De Boer Bartlett, soprano and ECCE Ensemble

Pursuit

Performed by Hypercube 
Andrea Lodge, piano and Jay Sorce, guitar
February 17, 2016 @Cafe Istanbul, New Orleans, Louisiana

In January 2014, I went to Banff for a short winter residency. While there, I was allowed to play with the entire collection of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis music boxes. I loved all the mechanical sounds these little boxes made – particularly the whirring of the gears, the noise of the winding mechanism and the gradually distorting, sinking, slowing sound of the music boxes as they gradually wound down. In this piece, the piano and guitar are used like gargantuan broken down, spastic music boxes, sometimes spitting out noise, sometimes warping chordal and spectral materials and occasionally spitting out fragments of the Virgo, Sagittarius and Taurus music boxes.

Music Box

Vocal trio written for Accordant Commons, featuring Stephanie Aston, Tany Ling and Argenta Walther

Composer's Guild

Palus

In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel," but also means the center of the world. According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. To mark central point, a stone monument was placed at the oracle in Delphi. James Joyce also references the omphalos several times in the novel, Ulysses.

From these layered meanings, the idea of a center point was translated into personal terms. In my piece, Omphalos represents a search for mental peace and the connection between outer and inner worlds. The work is in the form of a journey from the far reaches of the universe, through the dissonant, active earth with its traffic and noise, into the soul, where hopefully one can find peace.  However, a cognitive dissonance that exists between outer and inner worlds remains. There is always an interference pattern, or distortion that makes true inner peace perpetually ambiguous.

		“To ourselves . . .  new paganism . . . omphalos.”
					- James Joyce, Ulysses


Omphalos

This piece was inspired by photographs taken during a trip to Paris in July 2003. Many of the pictures were taken along the Seine and reflect different places along the river.

Tim Johnson, guitar

Phil by the Seine

Late summer is always bittersweet. The birds begin to leave. One day, the kites will soar above, swooping their impossible arcs, dipping and diving to catch giant dragonflies and then the next day, they will be gone. One evening, the nighthawks will call and fly at dusk, the next evening, they will be gone. The bright, merry prothonotary warblers will reach a mob level in the swamp, but then they too will depart for the other side of the world. The cicadas will swell – louder and louder in their desperation to mate. At the end of August, the dusk choruses are all encompassing, but then they gradually fade, leaving dusk eerily silent by October. In August 2016, I spent many hours nursing my son in the rocking chair in his nursery. Together, we listened to the cicada choruses in the evening while he would drift off to sleep in my arms. This piece is dedicated to him.

Performed by Loadbang on 2/15/17 Cafe Istanbul, New Orleans
Andy Kozar, trumpet
Carlos Cordiero, bass clarinet
Will Lang, trombone
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone

Cicadas sing of summer fading

Feathers is an open instrumentation graphic work for 1-8 players. The score for Feathers is a map of a sonic landscape.

Performed by the Versipel Collective 6/14/18 @The HiHo Lounge, New Orleans, LA

Laura Patterson, flute
Mendel Lee, percussion
Shane Courville, trumpet
Kari Besharse, guitar

In the Anthropocene, humans are shaping the environment in unprecedented ways; altering landscapes through deforestation, mining, farming and wall building. We have altered the balance of eco-systems for our own benefit and have irreparably changed the ways our animal brethren live. We are headed for another mass extinction event, not seen on this scale since the dinosaurs died due to the meteor impact. This time, animal species (some estimates are up to 2/3 of the species on the planet) are expected to die off due to human activity. Many animal species are in decline, but in this piece, I wanted to think specifically about birds. I want to address the fact that so much of what we find beautiful and marvel at in nature is in decline. Birds, for example. We are ignoring how much our own actions are affecting the objects of our wonderment.

Feathers - 6-4 -18

Kari Besharse’s compositional output spans various facets within the field of contemporary music, fully engaging new technological resources as well as traditional instruments and ensembles. Her works, which incorporate sounds from acoustic instruments, found objects, the natural world, and synthesis, are often generated from a group of sonic objects or material archetypes that undergo processes of rupture, degradation, alternation, expansion, and distortion. Recent projects include Rails, a large chamber ensemble work written for Alarm Will Sound and premiered at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival in July 2010 and Embers, a work for saxophone and piano commissioned by Richard Schwartz, which premiered in March 2011. Her music has been presented around the world by venues and organizations such as The California Ear Unit, Society of Composers, Inc., Texas Computer Musicians Network, The LaTex Festival, The Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, ICMC, SEAMUS, Bourges, Elektrophonie, Third Practice, 60X60, The Electroacoustic Juke Joint Festival, New Music Forum, Pulse Field, and the Art of Sounds Festival at Belgrade, Serbia. Currently a lecturer at Southeastern Louisiana University, Dr. Besharse has also taught music theory, music history, and electronic music courses at Illinois Wesleyan and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kari’s education includes undergraduate studies at UMKC (B.M. ‘98), and graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin (M.M. ‘02) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (D.M.A. ‘09).

Kari Besharse

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