Wellspring

I have an overwhelming obsession with simple processes. In a musical context, I find their predictability transcendent and their personalities amusing, each process evoking a unique character. In 'Still Life No. 2' I put these characters in conversation, employing a loosely stacked collection of three autonomous musical processes to generate the musical landscape. The ensemble is split into groups each performing their own music (strings with an undulating drone, percussion with a phasing kaleidoscopic melody, and winds with aimless harmonies) and the outcome is nearly static, an ambient musical topography of broad harmonic strokes and incidental dialogues. In this music, repetition is a gateway to perception, stretching sound beyond listener's peripheries and providing an environment for listeners to scan the music with their ears the way they might scan a painting with their eyes. Still Life No. 2 was commissioned by Contemporaneous in 2015 as part of their 'Self-Portrait' project.

many many many thanks to the performers:
david bloom - conductor
amy garapic - vibraphone
milena gligic - piano
vicente alexim - bass clarinet
evan honse - flugelhorn
daniel linden - trombone
katie cox - alto flute
adam matthes - viola
dylan mattingly - cello
matt smith - cello
josh henderson - violin
finnegan shanahan - violin




Still Life (No. 2)

01 - Change Of The Guard

Juno (2015)

For Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Percussion, Piano

For much of the world, 2015 was one of the warmest winters on record. In Boston, where I live, it was one of the coldest. By mid-January it seemed like we might get a pass from mother nature, but in the last week of January, winter storm Juno paid us a visit, launching a series of massive blizzards that brought a record breaking amount of snowfall. At the time I was holed up in a small New Hampshire cabin, fireplace and food close at hand, working on this piece, actually. For me the storms brought an eerie, magical calm: leafless trees crackling in the wind; pristine, untouched snow as far the eye could see; deep cold and an endless white horizon. At the same time my wife, eight months pregnant with our son, was alone in Boston, commuting to work on treacherous, ice-covered streets hemmed in by ten foot tall snow banks and a sea of frustrated commuters. The contrast was extreme. My piece Juno, reflects on that time: the anticipation before the first big storm; the beautiful stillness of fresh snow; the loud, dirty, struggles of an urban winter; and the feeling of heaviness as the season drags on seemingly without end. Juno was commissioned by the Mandel Foundation for the Utah Arts Festival and premiered in June 2015 by the Verge Ensemble.

Recorded 9.30.15 live at Bates Recital Hall
UT Austin New Music Ensemble
Dan Welcher, Conductor

www.roberthonstein.com

Juno

grandFather (2012-14) for amplified bassoon
by Chris Fisher-Lochhead

Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon
Galvin Hall, Northwestern University
January 22, 2016

grandFather (Premiere)

For piano and mono audio,
written in 2015 by Charlie Usher
recorded by Miki Sawada

Usher: Aubervilliers (2015)

Here are some snippets of sounds you might hear in my new set of voice/electronics music called Blue Mountain Songs.

Set includes dark ambience, mystical songs, and sculpted improvisations in between them.

Premiere: March 16th 2017 at Mengi, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Other performances to follow...

Blue Mountain Songs - Mengi Preview

From the award-winning bilingual opera for young audiences by Ethan Frederick Greene.

Houston Grand Opera, 2010
Hannah Celeste Lu and Amaia Urtiaga, sopranos

A Way Home - A New Kind of Family (HGO) (opera)

performed by The Fivefold Galactic Bells:
Thad Anderson and Owen Weaver, percussion
Franklin Gross and Luke Gullickson, pianos

"...that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters." -- Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Outer Channel is dedicated to Paul Motian.

Chicago • January 2013

Outer Channel

PERFORMED BY LUKE GULLICKSON
Unlike my most of my work, this is a piece of music that isn't about Byzantines, Romans, or any other bit of history. Every once in a while, I like to write a piece that captures a mood, crystalizes a moment in time and examines it, looking backwards from it and ahead, trying to slow it down and grasp hold before it drifts away. 

I didn't really set out to write a piano sonata, but when I had finished a movement and decided to call it that, I avoided any classical idioms besides three linked movements.

I wrote the motive, which shows up in various guises throughout the work, in the late 1990's while I was in high school in my hometown of Morris, Illinois. I think I have the manuscript somewhere, still.
