Gaslight (2022) for stereo fixed media

Nathaniel Haering | to facilitate friction — ASCAP / SEAMUS 1st Prize Commission, 2019

Violin: Ilana Waniuk

Program Notes:

While working on a recent piece for chamber ensemble and electronics, I was immersed in its erratic, panicked atmosphere. I became obsessed with the idea of frantic, futile solos lashing out violently from silence with such constant intensity and fervor that they resulted in a kind of horrified stasis, a unit of grotesque and vicious sustain, striving endlessly but going nowhere, grasping desperately at nothing in the pursuit of a distant unseen hope. to facilitate friction elicits this sense of urgent driving desperation even more potently as it is condensed, focused, and amplified by being embodied by a single performer. Acting as the sole conduit for the rapid, jarring yet intricately intertwined shifts in materials, sonic worlds, and dire emotional stakes of the piece the soloist wields, reinforces, and rallies against the electronics as an extension of themselves.

to facilitate friction - Violin and Live Electronics (2020)

Squint Skyward and Listen— for piano and electronics. Performed by Justin Paul Ortez. Recorded at the Dancz Center for New Music, University of Georgia on May 2, 2023.

Squint Skyward And Listen—

Pointillism for sampling various voice No.1

[re]Glossolalia, Note:
Updated: June 20, 2018

Written in 2018, [re]Glossolalia was composed as a companion work to another composition of mine from early 2017 for alto saxophone and live electronics. Both pieces heavily critique the sometimes insidious and subversive nature of late-night rural US radio broadcasts, utilizing excerpts recorded from a circuit-bent radio. The broadcasts used in this piece vary in content, covering topics such as: predicting the United States’ role in bringing about the biblical apocalypse, why monetary donations earn entry into the afterlife, to the “comforts” of mutually assured destruction, and so on. Compositionally, the piece presents an unpredictable, dense, and continuously fracturing interpretation and dialogue of that radio content – exploring the balance between real and imaginary sound worlds in a type of liminal space. The sonic materials for [re]Glossolalia were created and transformed using custom-written granular synthesis programs, duffing oscillator synthesis, FM synthesis, and through hardware hacking.

Please note: I don’t intend for this piece to present a prescriptive worldview, or condemnation of socio-political affiliation and / or religious beliefs. However, I do intend to utilize this as a platform in which I can bring blind hatred, anti-intellectualism, and dangerous zealotry under scrutiny.

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A further element of this work is the installation portion, which was placed in the Talbot Rice Gallery stairwell and elevator entry routes.  These placed fractured elements derived from this composition within the space of the gallery as "echoes" which inhabited the gallery.

[re]Glossolalia (2018)

For two percussionist and one musician on No Input Mixer.

Premiered June 22 in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Nief-Norf Music Festival.
Winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2019.

Talk Circus (2018)for 2 percussionist and 1 musician on NiPM.

Performed by soprano Estelí Gomez, accompanied by John King on piano and Luke Smith on crotales.

The piece sets the opening of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton” (1936), exploring the rarified and time-twisted world Eliot creates through the story of a rose garden haunted by absences. In Eliot’s poem, you, the reader, explore a secret rose garden where you may walk passages of time not taken. The garden is haunted by absences: unheard birdcalls, untrod leaves, and gradually you realize that garden is filled with unseen guests too, echoes of yourself visible only in the reflected sunlight. You catch a momentary glimpse, and a bird implores you to leave, saying, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

Esteli Gomez Residency 2018

Burnt Norton

Premiered by the TAK ensemble at the Penn Sound Collective concert of graduate composers in March 2019.

Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Laura Cocks, flute
Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Ellery Trafford, percussion

Recently, two ideas I enjoyed exploring separately in my pieces were the notion of time, and playing with the Polish language. “Tik-Tak” combines both. I wrote the text in Polish because “tak” bears several meanings, including yes, such as, as if, as much, etc.; moreover, there are countless of sayings involving the word “tak”, few of them being used here. In regard to the notion of time, this piece is about time passing by mercilessly -- independent of, and indifferent to any of our human events and interactions. Any meaningful moment that we would like to hold on to, vanishes irrevocably. No matter what happens, time goes on, as if nothing had happened. In addition to presenting my personal take on time, “Tik-Tak” also contains “Tak”, the sound I wanted to use in this piece, given it was written for the TAK ensemble.

Tik - Tak for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, and percussion (2019)

Work for soprano, flute, clarinet (doubling Bb and bass), vibraphone, and violin premiered by TAK Ensemble at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2019.

ska jag också bli gammal?

No Input Mixer(s), Trombone, E.Guitar, Video

3rd instance of the zP42 project between myself and Riley Leitch.

ZP42.c_2 (2018)for Trombone, E.Guitar, and Video.

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Kristopher is a Lawrence, KS based composer teaching music composition and technology at the University of Kansas. He recently received a PhD in Music Composition from the University of Pennsylvania as a Benjamin Franklin fellow and has a Master's of Music Composition from Western Michigan University and a Bachelor's of Music from Columbia College Chicago.

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Kristopher Bendrick