Reading session: Kevin Kay (USA - 1995), this breath your body

Live recording of Kevin Kay’s Coalescing for Solo Cello

Kevin Kay- Coalescing [Liam Battle, cello]

composed for red panel
performed 02. April 2024 at Neue Musik Zentrale, Essen

clarinet: Kevin Kay
cello: Eden Lonsdale
electric guitar: Levin Zimmermann
clavichord: Forrest Moody

currents and wires, for clarinet, cello, electric guitar, and clavichord

I'll Teach You To Levitate (2017, 7 min.)
for solo cello

I'll Teach You To Levitate

I'll Teach You To Levitate - for solo cello

for carillon and tape

performance by Joey Brink, University of Chicago Carillonneur

commissioned by University of Chicago Carillonneur Joey Brink
for the 75th anniversary of the  first human-controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction

the curve is exponential

Quirkhead (2017) - 2018 ASCAP Morton Gould Awards Finalist
For soprano and string quartet

Performed by Tony Arnold (soprano) and Third Angle New Music:
Ron Blessinger (violin), Greg Ewer (violin), Charles Noble (viola), and Marilyn de Oliveira (cello)

Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music Concert
Portland, Oregon - October 21st, 2017

http://ninashekhar.com/quirkhead/

Program notes: 
I was born a quirkhead.  I was the little girl who tapped every wall she walked by and believed that vegetables had feelings.  I made up thought rituals that I would perform every day to alleviate my fears of losing those I loved.  I counted the number of times I swallowed, and I put my hangers in my closet a certain way because I was terrified that one item out of place would trigger the next apocalypse.  And it would be all my fault.
     I didn’t know that millions of others lived this way, until my seventh grade teacher observed that I wrote sentences in a specific arrangement.  I was both amazed she noticed and completely mortified that someone had seen my most vulnerable self that I had been trying to hide for so long.  I explained to her that I associate letters and words with certain connotations, and because I like the word “left” better than “right,” I write the words I like better to the left and the ones less so to the right.  After hearing about some of my other rituals, she told me about obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I felt liberated knowing that I was not alone, but I grew to hate myself.  I felt so ashamed that everyday tasks that were so easy to others felt impossible for me to complete.
     Through years of counseling and self-healing, most of the tics subsided.  But it took me years to realize that having OCD didn’t make me a horrible human being.  In fact, it made me a better one because it gave me immense patience and diligence through performing endless compulsions.  It allowed me to be more accepting and empathetic towards others.  And it made me love those close to me more.  My brain will always be wired differently, but maybe that’s okay.  And I’m finally proud to be myself – I’m proud to be a quirkhead.
     This work was created under the aegis of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy for Music and premiered by Tony Arnold and Third Angle New Music in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, October 21st, 2017.  Many thanks to Gabriela Lena Frank for her incredible kindness, support, and guidance while writing this piece, and to Tony Arnold, Ron Blessinger, Greg Ewer, Charles Noble, and Marilyn de Oliveira for their extraordinary musicianship throughout.

Text:
dog to the left
            fish to the right
bear to the left
            pig to the right
cow to the left
            shark to the right

how do I know it’s real
this hurting, wounding suffering?
how do I know this wrecking
blistering figment of my imagination,
the demons lurking in my mind?
rest, brain.
close your eyes.
let’s quiet those voices,
and sleep until we wake up.

out of the bed, left side
hands to the floor
now turn around
and run around the bed three times and go
faster
into the bathroom
tap the faucet four times
touch the floor, touch the wall
turn the lights
            on, off, on, off
need to finish by eight forty-two
wash your hands
wash them again and again
            until their chapped
dog to the left
blink six times now
oh no, it’s eight forty-one
            fish to the right
need to finish
must finish now.

must save my loved ones
must sacrifice myself for them
my heart
            my soul
my mind is ready to snap

oh no, I didn’t make it
i’m sorry that I love you.
but maybe I should love myself a little more
and see how beautiful this haunted mind is
because it’s not my fault.

and I don’t know what the future will hold
but tomorrow is a new day.

Tony Tony Tony

Quirkhead (Tony Arnold & Third Angle New Music)

"reaching" for string quartet and electronics
M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago

Premiered 4/5/2018 by Spektral Quartet (Clara Lyon, Maeve Feinberg, Doyle Armbrust, Russell Rolen)
Cover art: Matt Omahan (www.mattomahan.com)

This piece is about striving for something - a goal, an aim, a success, etc. - and subsequently failing. However, it is not about the failure; rather, it is about the repetition of trying, attempting, reaching.

reaching, for string quartet and electronics

(2018) for string quartet, 6 channel tape, PVC tubes, and DMX lights

live performance recorded on April 5, 2018
by Spektral Quartet
CHIMEFEST
Logan Center for the Arts
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

mixed by Ted Moore
CHIME Studio
University of Chicago

circle by Ted Moore

"Not numbering or counting, but ripening like a tree"

for organ and marimba
by Bryan Michael Wysocki

Larry Tremsky, organ
Bryan Michael Wysocki, marimba

Recorded, mixed, and edited by Jacob Fruchtl

Incarnation

Not numbering or counting, but ripening like a tree

DJ Eric Umble
Live Mix | January 17, 2019
Club H0l0
Ridgewood, Queens

Set List:
Solah - Amotik
Enigmatically Everything (Original Mix) - Irazu
Life Rhythm (Original Mix) - Planetary Assault Systems
From Dust to Dust - Ribes
Bit Massacre - Juan Trujillo
Zart - Mascon
I Love You Right From The Very Start - Irazu 
Random Kingdom (Original Mix) - Planetary Assult Systems
SvMt - RNGGD
Ancelyn (Original Mix) - Claude Young 
Celestial Body (Original Mix) - Alex Randal 
HOWL - Overclocked
Them (Original Mix) - Lady Starlight
COLLIDE - Overclocked
Walfisch - Roman Poncet

DJ Eric Umble, Live Mix 1/2019

This piece was inspired by the craft of needlepoint, in which different-colored yarns are stitched onto a stiff canvas to produce a pattern or image. What inspires me about this art form are the contrasts it contains: between the flexible strands of yarn and the rigid canvas and between the small complex patterns that combine to form larger shapes and images. Throughout the work, small melodic threads are stitched onto a slowly-evolving harmonic grid. Dynamic swells produce rapid changes between the foreground and background, while stark tempo changes create a sense of ebb and flow as the music sometimes surges forward and sometimes seems to be held back against its will.  Essentially, this piece stems from my love for orchestral performance and from the sonic complexity that emerges when a multitude of small sounds come together to form a coherent musical whole.

Recorded by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Cliff Colnot, conductor.

Needlepoint--for orchestra

Kevin Kay (b. 1995) is a composer interested in the physicality of sound. He is furthermore interested in expressing the physical nature of our reality abstractly through music. Working in just intonation, his music is concerned with the sensation and perception of sound as a physical phenomenon through framework based on the physical, mathematical, and psychoacoustic properties of sound. Through an obsession with patterns and numbers in music, such mathematically oriented harmonic spaces often become entangled with temporal processes.

Kevin’s music has been performed by ensembles and musicians such as the Copland House Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Spektral Quartet, Imani Winds, soloists from Ensemble intercontemporain, The Van Swietens, Divertimento Ensemble, zone expérimentale basel, Density512, PinkNoise Ensemble, Ghost Ensemble, and MotoContrario Ensemble, among others. As a clarinetist, he performs with red panel.

Festivals and academies that have performed his music include: the Copland House CULTIVATE emerging composers institute (2024), impuls Academy (2023), CIEL Academy (2023), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (2020 Cortona Prize winner, 2022, 2023), the International Workshop for Young Composers (2020), IRCAM’s ManiFeste Academy (2018-19), Les Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau (2018), New Music on the Point (2017), the Yarn/Wire Institute (2017), and the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival (2017). Kevin has been in residence at Arts Letters and Numbers (2023) and the Hambidge Center for the Arts (2022).

Kevin resides in Berlin where he stayed following support from the DAAD-Stiftung (Respekt & Wertschätzung Scholarship) to pursue composition and artistic research at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Marc Sabat. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, and a B.S. in physics and music from the College of William and Mary. He has studied with Margaret Schedel, Sam Pluta, and Sophia Serghi, among others.