Reading by the Laurel Springs String Sextet at Wintergreen Performing Arts on July 31st, 2014.
Matt Beland and Kori Hill, violins; Erin Morse and Genny Triana Florez, violas; Joseph Falconer and Megan Stigall, cellos; David Vess, conductor.

String Sextet (2013)

1. The Juggler of Day
2. The first Day's Night had come

Performance at Washington University in St. Louis in the Recital Hall on March 30th, 2014.
Jamie Perkins, tenor; Jonathan Heaney, piano.


1. The Juggler of Day
(Written 1862; published in 1864 as “Sunset”.)

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple 
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying her spotted Face to die

Stooping as low as the Otter's Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone

2. The first Day's Night had come
(Written in 1862.)

The first Day's Night had come - 
And grateful that a thing
So terrible - had been endured - 
I told my Soul to sing -

She said her strings were snapt - 
Her Bow - to atoms blown -
And so to mend her - gave me work 
Until another Morn -

And then - a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs, 
Unrolled its horror in my face - 
Until it blocked my eyes -

My Brain - begun to laugh -
I mumbled - like a fool -
And tho' 'tis Years ago - that Day - 
My Brain keeps giggling - still.

And Something's odd – within -
That person that I was -
And this One - do not feel the same - 
Could it be Madness - this?

Two songs with texts by Emily Dickinson (2014)

Recording by the Ravens Roost String Quartet at Wintergreen Performing Arts on July 30th, 2014.
Will Jackson, violin 1; Isabella Ulate, violin 2; William Hederer, viola; Claudia Beshears, cello.

Numbness and Tingling (2014) - Wintergreen Recording

Performance by the Washington University Chamber Choir at Washington University in St. Louis in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall on November 23rd, 2014. Nicole Aldrich, conductor; Sandra Geary, piano.

Text by David Davison:

When I tire of my run,
Will I stretch beside some stream;
Or will I lay beneath our setting sun,
And lose myself to dusky dream?

I lost you and you lost me and—
So how in death will we still be?

The forest is not what I thought,
No din of dusty silence overhead—
But instead a thousand rocket shots,
zooming midair: Tumult, discord, shock
of bird and bug, frantic, to move,
to sing, to spawn, to spread.

That explains their mating cry—
All of us shall surely die.

Beauty, trees, love, and pain—
How many floods of fire, of rain,
have freshly razed the trees of life
into a new and darker day—burning
the bursting, blooming buds of youth
that have now gone, gone, gone away,
turned back into the inky black soil,
totally unmade?

Not quite enough,
For some—some remain.

For now I, mortal I, remain.

Equinox (2014)

(0:00) headache
(1:35) prelude (submerging)
(2:41) spine

Performance at Southeast Missouri State University in the Robert F. and Gertrude L. Shuck Music Recital Hall on April 5th, 2015.
Robert Fruehwald, piano.


Program notes:

feels (2014 –) is an ongoing set of piano miniatures inspired by bodily experiences. Each piece represents and/or responds to a particular feeling.

I composed headache in April 2014 in response to an assignment from my teacher, who asked me to compose something crazy, dense, and fast-paced. When I sat down to write, a terrible headache inspired the exact opposite; rather than translating the pain into music, I opted to write a calm, soothing, quiet antidote. 

prelude (submerging) depicts the process of immersion and the subsequent state of being immersed. When composing this piece, I thought about various methods of entering a swimming pool – diving head-first, jumping with a splash, slowly lowering oneself from the side – and what it feels like to be partially versus completely surrounded by water. Originally conceived in April 2014 as a prelude to the set, the submerging is also intended figuratively, with this piece facilitating the listener's immersion within a musical world.

When I composed spine in July 2014, I drew on the experience of running my fingers down my neck and back and feeling my individual vertebrae. I am fascinated by the vertebral column – how these bones are so close to the surface, yet protect something so crucial as the spinal chord. spine plays with this relationship between surface and depth – at first foregrounding dyads against low, sustained chords, then blurring this distinction as the piece progresses.

feels (2014-)

Performance by the Perseid String Quartet at Washington University in St. Louis in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on April 9th, 2015.
Hannah Frey, violin 1; Manuela Kaymakanova, violin 2; Eliana Haig, viola; Stephanie Hunt, cello.

Artwork by Manuel Rivera: Metamorfosis (Presencia), 1960. Photo by Whitney Curtis.
https://mlkemperartmuseum.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/the-eisendrath-years-art-inspiring-music/

Program notes:
When observing Manuel Rivera’s Metamorfosis (Presencia), I was struck by the variation in density achieved with such simple materials. At first, I perceived a progression from sparsity to density—a convergence from the four corners of the frame towards its center, like an increasingly tangled spider web. But my attention was soon drawn to the open space within the work, as well as how that space changes with one’s angle of observation. Considering the idea that the same material can appear radically different with a change in perspective—as well as how memories fade, resurface, and transform with time—I based in memory on a repeated line which weaves through the entire piece. Each time this line recurs, it is transformed in some way; while the pitch content remains the same, the line is perceptively different in each variation.

in memory (2015)

Performance at the Community Music School of Webster University on March 21st, 2015 in the Concert Hall.
Alison Rolf, violin; Tova Braitberg, violin; Eliana Haig, viola; Tara Santiago, cello.

https://www.webster.edu/community-music-school/programs/young-composers-competition.html

Kelly Stathis