Rappelle-toi Barbara by Lily Koslow (vocals, piano, production)
Lyrics excerpted from Barbara by Jacques Prévert:

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante

Un homme sous un porche s'abritait
Et il a crié ton nom, Barbara
Et tu as couru vers lui sous la pluie
Tu t'es jetée dans ses bras

Tu souriais, Et moi je souriais de même
Quand je t'ai croisée rue de Siam
Rappelle-toi, N'oublie pas
Cette pluie sage et heureuse, sur la mer, Sur l'arsenal

Oh Barbara
Quelle connerie la guerre
Qu'es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de fer
De feu d'acier de sang
Et celui qui te serrait dans ses bras

Rappelle-toi Barbara

Black Iris for fixed media.
Created by Lily Koslow in December 2021, at the McGill Digital Composition Studios in Montreal.
Cover photo by Gabriel Koslow.

Black Iris

An Unexpected Tremor of Lines for soprano saxophone, cello, piano, and percussion. Composed by Lily Koslow. Program notes available below.

Soprano Sax: Tommy Davis
Cello: Alistair Mariz
Piano: Paul Çelebi
Percussion: Martin Daigle
Conductor: Charles-Eric Fontaine

Album Art: John Vaccaro
Recording and mixing engineer: Carolina Rodríguez
Recording engineer: Ying-Ying Zhang

An Unexpected Tremor of Lines was tangentially inspired by the novel "The Passion According to G.H.," by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. The novel unfolds as a stream of consciousness monologue by an amateur sculptress, who tells of an existential crisis that overcame her upon crushing a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe. The mystical nature of the book inspired the mood and musical materials of this piece, influencing the development of rich harmony and textures which are organically expressive. The aesthetic of An Unexpected Tremor of Lines is a response to the narrator’s poetic experiences, as well as the timeless and prehistoric notion of a cockroach, one of the oldest insect species that exists today.

An Unexpected Tremor of Lines

Posthaste for singing cellist (2021-2022), composed by Lily Koslow.
Written for and performed  by Andrew Yee
Commissioned by the Composers Guild of New Jersey

Program Notes:
Posthaste for solo cello was inspired by a quotation from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, Minuet II. Musical fragments dance, flit, and swirl in dramatic discourse until the listener is transported back to the 18th century, where the quotation appears in a veiled, distorted format. This presentation of the Bach represents an imaginary historical recording of the first-ever performance of the piece, which in reality occurred long before recording technology was developed. Inspired by the lo-fi aesthetic of degrading physical audio formats such as an old wax cylinder and a warped record, blips in the music intensify to the point of ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, at which point the Bach is released from the constraints of its historical context and free to meander and flourish in the modern epoch. The work is dedicated to Andrew Yee, whose radiant joy and love of music inspired Lily as a budding musician. Lily included humming and sung vowels to explore how Andrew’s voice can fuse with various timbres of the cello.

Posthaste

Premiere of Mycelia for piano quartet at Festival Domaine Forget 2022.
Composed by Lily Koslow.
Piano: Paul Çelebi
Cello: Julie Trudeau
Violin: Anne-Claude Hamel-Beauchamp
Viola: Magali Gavazzi-April

Remastered by Jules Bastin-Fontaine.

Mycelia (Domaine Forget premiere)

S'enraciner for solo violin and electronics
Performed by Magali Gavazzi-April in the Edifice Wilder in Montréal, spring 2022.
In the context of the Vivier InterUniversitaire's Performer Composer Collaboration project.

S'enraciner for solo violin and electronics

[DARK LAB] for tenor sax and live electronics (binaural rendering from 7.1 surround) 

Composed by Lily Koslow in collaboration with Tommy Davis, in spring 2023. Recorded with Tommy in the McGill Digital Composition Studios, Montréal.  Mastered by Jules Bastin-Fontaine.

Cover art by Johann Pacheco-Veissiere @johannigthmares

[DARK LAB] for tenor sax and electronics (binaural mix)

O lente, lente nuit... o mon fusil si lourd... (for orchestra, 2024)
Title translation: O slow, slow night... o my gun so heavy...
Title drawn from the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire

Premiered by the Yale Philharmonia on the New Music New Haven series, December 12th, 2024, Conducted by Ezra Calvino

Program notes:
O lente, lente nuit… o mon fusil si lourd… (O slow, slow night… o my gun so heavy…) is a tone poem for large orchestra. Embracing internal contradictions, the piece explores the cohabitation of diverse musical materials including prolonged and ever-shifting chromatic clusters, teeming nightscapes, and soaring melodies, among other sonic characters.

O lente, lente nuit... o mon fusil si lourd... (for orchestra, 2024)

Performed by Carter Johnson and Vitaly Starikov in Sprague Hall of Yale University in 2024. Composed in 2023.
Recorded by Brittney Benton and Matt LeFevre, mixed and mastered by Jules Bastin-Fontaine
Cover art by Johann Pacheco-Veissiere

i. à mauve ouvert - à McEwen
ii. abstraction verte - à Borduas (1:23)
iii. autriche iii - à Riopelle (3:24)
iv. blanc sur blanc - à Tousignant (5:58)
v. ghost hills - à Ferron (8:27)

Program Notes:

A group of Québécois.e painters known as The Automatistes were inspired by the notion of surrealist automatism, valuing spontaneity of gesture and the unconscious mind in the creation process. What followed this fascination was an artistic movement rich with dynamic, abstract works, with each painting offering unique and striking contrasts of color and form. Through texture and harmony, I sought to translate these evocative visual contrasts into musical chiaroscuro in The Chiaroscurist: Five Contrasts for Pitch Black Night. Each of the short pieces in the set was inspired by a different painting by a Québécois.e artist working in the 20th century, including Jean McEwen, Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Marcelle Ferron, and Claude Tousignant, the latter of which painted in a reactionary style to automatism, known as geometric abstraction. Four of the five paintings are part of the permanent collection of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, while Ferron’s Ghost Hills is located in the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. This piano duo was commissioned by the Luba Zuk Piano Duo Composition Prize at McGill University.

The Chiaroscurist: Five Contrasts for Pitch Black Night

RADIO SILENCE for 14 instruments. Performed live at New Music New Haven on November 7, 2024.

Performers:
Laurel Gagnon, violin
Josh Liu, violin
Ayano Nakamura, viola
Jiyeon Kim, cello
Patrick Curtis, bass
Sophia Jean, c flute & bass flute
Maren Tonini, oboe
Nikki Pet, clarinet
Darius Farhoumand, bassoon
Sam Hart, horn
Grace O'Connell, trumpet
Jude Morris, trombone
Chad Beebe, percussion
Miu Ishikawa, piano
Ezra Calvino, conductor

Album art by John Vaccaro

Program notes:
RADIO SILENCE represents the beginnings of an existential reflection on the brutality of modern imperialism and its representation in mass media. The metaphor of the screaming solo bassoon against an unflinching layer of “broken radio” noise represents an individual’s struggle to make sense of the world while being surrounded by unclear, interrupted, and/or disturbed communications. With textures ranging from subtly expressive to harsh and unrelenting, the piece aims to capture and distill complex and irreconcilable feelings, and to explore their inherent tensions in the framework of musical discourse.

RADIO SILENCE

Honey and Lime Demo Track

Vocals, guitar, and production by Lily Koslow.
Percussion by Olias Bendian.
Flower art image by Grace Tan, Maryjo Hobeika, and Prakruti Dholiya.

Lyrics:
Honey and Lime, swirl it three times
That's the way it goes
Honey and Lime, losing track of time
That's how he does it back home

And it's good to be here
Hearts are steady beating
And we're perfectly fine
Never, ever leaving
Honey and Lime

Let the leaves settle down
It's never quiet in this town
With planes above and lights that glow
It's warm inside, inside his home

And it's good to be here,
Hearts are steady beating
And we're perfectly fine
Never, ever leaving, no

Honey and Lime
When it's dark outside
Honey and Lime
Under the streetlights
Just take your time
We'll be here for hours
Just take your time-
with moments sweet and sour

Like Honey and Lime.

Honey and Lime

Lyrics:

Crystal secrets underground
Buried, hoping to be found
And I hope you'll show me now
What you've got there under the leaves
I'm not afraid to see

In a worn-down jewelry box,
A full collection of your thoughts
And I hope you'll show me now
What you've got there under the leaves
I'm not afraid to see

Roses and wisteria vine
drape the trellis of your mind
I don't know what I'll find inside
What have you got there under the leaves?
I'm not afraid to see

----
Lyrics, music, and prod. by Lily Koslow.

Under The Leaves

Gustave Le Gray for solo piano by Caroline Shaw. 
Performance by Lily Koslow (June 2019)

Gustave Le Gray - Caroline Shaw

Composed by Lily Koslow in July 2020
Written for and performed by flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher
Text excerpted from the poem bloodline by Grace Tan
Final mix by Adam Vidiksis
Original photograph by Sebastian Cristancho

bloodline

Requiem [for K.V.] for solo amplified voice and pre-recorded voices
Composed by Christopher Cerrone
Performed by Lily Koslow, August 2020

Lily Koslow

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