destroy the middle w/ ensemble Recherche

"birds, the binding of" was written for Quince Ensemble as part of their 2021-22 residency at the University of Chicago. It sets a text by poet Ira Goga entitled "birds, the binding of."

Performed by Quince Ensemble
Engineered by Chris Willis

birds, the binding of (2022) for high vocal quartet

Composed by Stephane Germana, originally performed by Kayleigh Butcher. Through a process of shared governance, the University of Florida College of the Arts developed a Meta-Strategy. It included language that centered concerns of Access, Equity and Inclusion. In anticipation of Florida's "Anti-Woke" and "Don't Say Gay" bills, the university provost had the institutions' lawyers review the meta strategy and highlight "phrases of concern." The college was asked to "reconsider" (read: rewrite) these phrases. Purchasing these shirts brings this language front and center: it also donates directly to the ACLU. The image is a portion of a score written by composer Stephen Germana, setting All Contested Phrases to live and electronic music based on the works of Shostakovich and Mahler. More info on Instagram and Facebook @culturenaturestructure.

"All Contested Phrases: An Aria" Sample #1

A deconstructed lullaby, it gives the impression of a lilting comfort, but with an air of warning underneath. 

Part of the AIC Irish Canon, performed by Michelle O'Rourke, Live in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

Lua by Amanda Feery

Glasser – Folksexual

Pontifex is a setting of Pope Francis’s Tweets  from 2013, 2014, and 2015. The sonic language is influenced by the harmonies of early sacred Catholic music and the rhythms of Milonga,  an Argentinian traditional music which is a favorite of His Holiness.

This is a live recording by Jorne van Bergeijk and orkest de ereprijs at the Podium Gigant in the Netherlands on February 26, 2015 .

Pontifex (2015)

World premiere 
Mabel Kwan, keyboards
Dal Niente Presents
Jan. 03, 2016
Constellation, Chicago

Graft Blossom for toy piano, clavichord and electronics (2015)

Much of my music is concerned with the transition between recognizable ideas.  This piece is a large-scale exploration of transition.  Sonic spaces of high and low density, high and low range, and high and low volume each flow from one to the next.  Much like the title, the impression is of tuning into and out of a chain of freely associated ideas, notably connected by their proximity and their phonic similarities.  If said out loud, the second word of the three pairs can be thought of as a glimpse of a word in transition.

The concepts of “dream,” “rheme,” and “stream” are also connected to the performance of this piece: changes evolve as though in a stream of consciousness; performed in the dark, the listening environment emulates a dream-space in which structural continuity becomes less important to comprehension.  Acting against its meaning is “rheme,” which is the linguistic term to define the substantive discourse on a topic.  The word is purely transitional in the performance of the title once stripped of its semantic definition, promoting the idea that sound and music do not need to have meaning in order to be meaningful.

This premiere was recorded on 3/24/2016 at Northern Illinois University.

these dream these rheme these stream

In This Paradise by Evan Wiliams

Performed by Kayleigh Butcher and Christopher Narloch at Constellation Chicago on Sunday, November 19th, 2017 for the Schönberg Project.

In this Paradise by Evan Williams

Recorded with the Focusrite Tape app on iPad (internal mic, sorry...), at 10p on Thursday, May 17, 2018 in Pickwick, MN. Sounds of spring peepers, toads, wind, the mill waterfall across the street.

In this Paradise by Evan Williams

Kayleigh M. Butcher

Related tracks