Commissioned by Kendra Pomerantz

Recording by Gabrielle Chou, violin
marcoadrianramos.com

Un paisaje de techo para desvelados o Movimiento perpetuo (2021)

Maura Tuffy, soprano 
Anthony Ratinov, piano 

I. Song 

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life
mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
how I hate disease, it’s like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen
in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me


II. Today

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.
 

III. Lisztiana 

A ribbon is floating in the air, 
spring breeze, yellow white ribbon, 
tossing and catching on itself,
panting like a Maltese terrier.
Now it has discovered the earth’s 
warm cleavage and drifts slowly down.
Are you crying over what we lost 


IV. On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday
 
Quick! A last poem before I go
off my rocker. Oh Rachmaninoff!
Onset, Massachusetts. Is it the fig-newton
playing the horn? Thundering windows
of hell, will your tubes ever break
into powder? Oh my palace of oranges,
junk shop, staples, umber, basalt;
I’m a child again when I was really
miserable, a grope pizzicato. My pocket
of rhinestone, yoyo, carpenter’s pencil,
amethyst, hypo, campaign button,
is the room full of smoke? Shit
on the soup, let it burn.  So it’s back.
You’ll never be mentally sober.


V. Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

V. Animals

IV. On Rachmaninoff's Birthday

III. Lisztiana

II. Today

I. Song

Gabrielle Chou, violin
marcoadrianramos.com

¡Precaución! Huapanguero suelto o Baile (2020)

Commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, for the Flux quartet
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Barro tejido para la muerte de Mario Lavista o Cuarteto II (2022)

First performance with 45th Parallel (Portland, OR) 16/jun/22
Commissioned by GLFCAM and 45th Parallel
ASCAP Morton Gould Award 2021
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Guadalupe o Retablo (2021)

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"This piece was conceived during the inaugural Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music Composition Workshop in 2017; I am very grateful to Gabriela Lena Frank, Johnny Gandelsman, and Joshua Roman for their part in its formation. The work unfolds in a series of lyrical episodes, ranging from the bittersweet to the almost mystical." 
-program note from first performance (Paul Hall, Juilliard Feb 2018)

Manami Mizumoto, violin
Aaron Wolff, 'cello

Unknown album (2/23/2018 10:06:10 AM)

Verónica o Serenata (2017)

Winner of the Arthur Friedman Prize
First performance 23 april 2018 
The Juilliard Orchestra 
Maestro Jeffrey Milarsky
Matthew Pearce, tenor 
Text by Yusef Komunyakka, permission generously granted by Wesleyan University Press

Starlight Scope Myopia

Gray-blue shadows lift
shadows onto an oxcart.

Making night work for us,
the starlight scope brings
men into killing range.

The river under Vi Bridge
takes the heart away

like the Water God
riding his dragon.
Smoke-colored

Viet Cong
move under our eyelids,

lords over loneliness
winding like coral vine through
sandalwood & lotus,

inside our lowered heads
years after this scene

ends. The brain closes
down. What looks like
one step into the trees,

they're lifting crates of ammo
& sacks of rice, swaying

under their shared weight.
Caught in the infrared,
what are they saying?

Are they talking about women
or calling the Americans

beaucoup dien cai dau?
One of them is laughing.
You want to place a finger

to his lips & say "shhhh."
You try reading ghost talk

on their lips. They say
"up-up we go," lifting as one.
This one, old, bowlegged,

you feel you could reach out
& take him in your arms. You

peer down the sights of your M-16,
seeing the full moon
loaded on an oxcart.

We Never Know

He danced with tall grass 
for a moment, like he was swaying 
with a woman. Our gun barrels 
glowed white-hot. 
When I got to him, 
a blue halo 
of flies had already claimed him. 
I pulled the crumbled photograph 
from his fingers. 
There's no other way 
to say this: I fell in love. 
The morning cleared again, 
except for a distant mortar 
& somewhere choppers taking off. 
I slid the wallet into his pocket 
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be 
kissing the ground.

“You and I Are Disappearing”
-Björn Håkansson

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

Toys in a Field

Using gun mounts
for monkey bars,
Vietnamese children
play skin-the-cat,
pulling themselves through–
suspended in doorways
of multimillion-dollar helicopters
abandoned in white-elephant 
graveyards. With arms
spread-eagled they imitate 
vultures landing in fields. 
Their play is silent as
distant rain,
the volume turned down
on the six o’clock news,
except for the boy
with American eyes
who keeps singing 
rat-a-tat-tat, hugging
a broken machine gun.

All texts taken from Dien Cai Dau © 1988 by Yusef Komunyakaa
All rights reserved
Permission generously granted by Wesleyan University Press

I. Starlight Scope Myopia

marcoadrianramos.com
Emily Duncan, alto flute/piccolo
Stella Perlic, percussion 
Recordings of the composer's paternal grandmother, María Teresa Ruíz de Ramos, and her funereal procession 

Grabaciones de la abuela paterna del compositor, María Teresa Ruíz de Ramos, y su procesión fúnebre

Altar con pinos y pan de Acámbaro o Música con mi abuelita (2018)

Santiago Pizarro, tenor 
Gabrielle Chou and
Mitsuru Yonezaki, violins 
Sophia Sun, viola 
Aaron Wolff, 'cello

Dos Cuerpos (Octavio Paz 1914-98)

DOS CUERPOS 

Dos cuerpos frente a frente
son a veces dos olas
y la noche es océano.

Dos cuerpos frente a frente 
son a veces dos piedras 
y la noche desierto.

Dos cuerpos frente a frente 
son a veces raíces
en la noche enlazadas.

Dos cuerpos frente a frente 
son a veces navajas
y la noche relámpago.

Dos cuerpos frente a frente 
Son dos astros que caen
en un cielo vacío.

MONÓLOGO

Bajo las rotas columnas,
entre la nada y sueño,
cruzan mis horas insomnes 
las sílabas de tu nombre. 

Tu largo pelo rojizo,
relámpago del verano,
vibra con dulce violencia
en la espalda de la noche. 

Corriente oscura del sueño 
que mana entre ruinas 
y te construye de nada:
amargas trenzas, olvido,  
húmeda costa nocturna
donde se tiende y golpea
un mar sonámbulo, ciego.






ÁRBOL ADENTRO

Creció en mi frente un árbol.
Creció hacia adentro.
Sus raíces son venas,
nervios sus ramas,
sus confusos follajes pensamientos.
Tus miradas lo encienden
y sus frutos de sombra
son naranjas de sangre 
y granadas de lumbre.
                                   Amanece 
en la noche del cuerpo.
Allá adentro, en mi frente,
el árbol canta.
                      Acércate, ¿lo oyes?



    ALBA ÚLTIMA  

Tus cabellos se pierden en el bosque,
Tus pies tocan los míos.
Dormida eres más grande que la noche
pero tu sueño cabe en este cuarto. 
¡Cuánto somos qué poco somos!
Afuera pasa un taxi
Con su carga de espectros. 

El río que se va
                         siempre 
está de regreso.

¿Mañana será otro día?

MADRUGADA 

Rápidas manos frías 
retiran una a una 
las vendas de la sombra 
Abro los ojos 
                     todavía
estoy vivo
                en el centro 
de una herida todavía fresca.

TWO BODIES

Two bodies face-to-face
are at times two waves
and the night, ocean. 

Two bodies face-to-face
are at times two stones 
and the night, desert.

Two bodies face-to-face
are at times roots
woven in the night.

Two bodies face-to-face
are at times blades 
and the night, lightning. 

Two bodies face-to-face
are two stars that fall
in an empty sky. 

MONOLOGUE

Under the broken columns,
between the nothingness and dream, 
my sleepless hours come across
the syllables of your name. 

Your long reddish hair, 
summer’s lightning,
quivers with sweet violence
on the back of the night. 

Dark current of sleep
that flows between ruins 
and builds you from nothing:
bitter tresses, oblivion,
a damp nocturnal coast
where it tends to strike 
a blind sea, sleepwalking. 

INSIDE-TREE

A tree grew in my head.
It grew inwards. 
Its roots are veins,
nerves its branches,
its confusing foliage thoughts. 
Your glances set it ablaze
and its shadowy fruits
are oranges of blood 
and pomegranates of fire. 
                                         It awakens
in the body’s night.
There inside, in my head,
the tree sings.
                     Come closer, do you hear it?



FINAL DAWN 

Your hair loses itself in the forest,
Your feet touch mine. 
Asleep you are greater than the night
But your dream fits in this room.
How much we are to be so little!
Outside a taxi passes 
With its spectral cargo. 

The river that leaves
                                 is always
on its way back.  

Will tomorrow be another day?

EARLY MORNING  

Quick cold hands 
remove the shadowy bandages 
one by one
I open my eyes
                         I am still 
alive 
       in the center
of a still-fresh wound.

IV. Alba última

IIIA. Árbol adentro IIIB. Interludio fantástico del árbol cantador

II. Monólogo

I. Dos cuerpos

Gabe Young, oboe
Commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and School
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Chillón o Tragicomedia (2019)

marcoadrianramos.com
Responsorial psalm for 3 April, 2020 (day of this performance)

R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

2  I love you, O LORD, my strength,
3A  O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

3BC  My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
4  Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

5  The breakers of death surged round about me,
the destroying floods overwhelmed me;
6  The cords of the nether world enmeshed me,
the snares of death overtook me. 
R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

7  In my distress I called upon the LORD
and cried out to my God;
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.
R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

Lydia Graham, narrator 
Philip Sheegog, 'cello

Little psalm nebula (3/apr/20) (2019)

Marco-Adrián Ramos is a Mexican-American composer whose potent and eclectic music spans a variety of media including works for voice, instrumental and electroacoustic ensembles, and dance.  
   His work has been sought and performed by a variety of institutions and ensembles including the MATA Festival, FLUX Quartet, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, 45th Parallel, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, the New York Youth Symphony, the Houston Symphony, ZOFO Piano Duo, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Emmanuel Music, the Aspen Music Festival, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music. 
   Recognitions include three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, an artist grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Arthur Friedman Prize (Juilliard), the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the William Schuman Prize from the BMI Foundation.
   He currently is an instructor at the University of Arkansas, teaching classes on music theory and composition. Since the beginning of 2024, he has also worked as an administrator at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM).  
   Marco-Adrián holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University’s School of Music; cherished mentors have included artists like Mari Kimura, Melinda Wagner, Christopher Theofanidis, Derek Bermel, Gabriela Lena Frank, and David Lang.

Marco-Adrián Ramos

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