Performed by Alarm Will Sound
Composed in spring 2019

HEXACTINELLIDA: 
A class of ancient, unusual deep sea sponges whose skeletons are composed of a complex lattice of six-pointed spicules made of silica, earning them the name “glass sponges.”  Lacking an epidermis like other sponges, hexactinellids are wrapped in a covering of multinucleate cytoplasm which can send electrical impulses through their glass skeletons better than any fiber optics humans have created. In contrast to this lightening-fast reaction time is their extreme longevity; one currently living specimen is estimated to be 15,000 years old. 

The music evokes glass sponges’ structure: hard, densely-packed, buzzing lattices lit up by pulses of electricity; their texture, crunchy and spiky rather than smooth and crystalline; and their bodily shapes, which simultaneously resemble ultra-futuristic algorithmic architecture and Dr. Seussian plants.

Hexactinellida

Udi Perlman - As of Me and of Mine (2021)

Revised version written for the New Music New Haven concert series. The piece was originally written for loadbang (https://www.loadbang.com)

Jared Swope, Baritone
Lloyd Van't Hoff, Bass Clarinet 
Shania Cordoba, Trumpet
Addison Maye-Saxon, Trombone 

Morse Hall, New Music New Haven, Yale School of Music
November 4 , 2021

As Of Me And Mine - for Baritone, Trombone, Trumpet and Bass Clarinet (2021)

Flute Concerto Aridoamerica, performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh and soloist Zoe Sorrel, October 2021.

Aridoamerica

Premiered by members of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble on August 16th, 2019 in Harris Hall, Aspen, Colorado

Light Patterns (for piano quartet)

Gabe Young, oboe
Commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and School
marcoadrianramos.com

Chillón o Tragicomedia (2019)

Multi-track recording by members of Ensemble Dal Niente.
Recording/Mixing: Igor Santos

video of premier: https://vimeo.com/387611594#

"Patina" progresses from a volatile mass of percussive sounds towards its tainted reproduction. A flickering and multi-colored mixture of noisy and pitched gestures.

The "Zoetrope" pieces mix together disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs end up contributing to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation and repetition.

Composed May/June 2019 (Baltimore)

Zoetrope V: Patina (2019)

Performed by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble on Aug 9, 2019, at the Aspen Music Festival.

All is still
beneath the moonlit sky
Hear the wind,
the leaves rustling, and the
birds that sing at night

birds that sing at night

A musical cocktail of sorts with notes of sea glass, driftwood, copper ore, dark and smokey rooms, rust, incense, absinthe, and Art Nouveau arabesques.

In special rare moments when just the right elements are combined into an imaginary mental potion, they bubble and react, sparking a vision of something new, in this case, the character Kinthrel, a lonely sea sprite who strums his handmade harp in craggy tidal caves. This piece is one of several recent works that I consider Neo-Symbolist in nature, in which I have aimed to lean more heavily into synesthesia and my subconscious to draw out the mysterious, intuitive connections between things and to musically bottle the essences that live behind these connections.

This work was composed for CULTIVATE 2019, Copland House’s emerging composers’ institute, and was premiered by the Music from Copland House ensemble at the Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY on June 9, 2019.

Kinthrel's Limpet Harp (2019) for violin, clarinet, and piano

performed by Jade Conlee in New Haven, CT in February 2020

movements
I. intro
II. yōkai
III. trampoline
IV. fugue: the mirror
V. reflection
VI. the f-hole guitar
VII. outro

my dream journal (2020)

Piano I: Paul Çelebi
Piano II: Olivier Rabu

"Neige" d'Anne Hebert: http://www.barapoemes.net/archives/2016/09/07/34290920.html

Program Note:
Cent traces, sur de vastes plaines was inspired by Anne Hébert's poem "Neige" (snow). Submerged in its poetic image, the music follows its emotional trajectory and attempts to embody it through a language of resonance, harmony, and temporalities. The work was also peripherally influenced by the novel "Kamouraska" by the same author. Both texts depict a wintery dream-scape that devolves into a fever dream peopled with hazy memories. The opening five minutes contain three musical dreams composed using a collection of altered paraphrases from other piano pieces 'about' snow. These quotations appear the way characters in these dreams do: one might have an idea of who they represent from daily life (memory) even if for some reason they do not fully resemble that person. Over the course of the piece the boundaries between dreams erode and the recurring characters' identities become increasingly distorted. Musical memories appear, disappear and intermingle, culminating in a blurred mass and then a rupture.

Commissioned by the Luba Zuk Piano Duo Composition Competition.
Performed November 11th, 2019, Tanna Schulich Hall, McGill.
Composed January-May 2019 (Montreal/Baltimore).

Note de Programme:
Cent traces, sur de vastes plaines est inspiré du poème "Neige" d'Anne Hébert. Submergée dans son image poétique, la musique suit sa trajectoire émotionnelle et tente de l'incarner dans un langage de résonances, d'harmonies, et de temporalités. L'oeuvre a aussi été influencée par le roman "Kamouraska" de la même écrivaine. Les deux textes décrivent des rêves hivernaux qui s'écroulent et deviennent des rêves fiévreux éveillant d'ambigus souvenirs. Les cinq premières minutes contiennent trois rêves musicaux, chacun composés d'une citation altérées d'autres pièces pour piano 'au sujet de' la neige. Ces citations incarnent la façon dont ces personnages habitent ces rêves: on sait qui ils représentent dans notre vraie vie même s'ils ne se ressemblent pas exactement. Au fur et à mesure les frontières séparant ces rêves se déconstruisent et les identités de ces personnages se tordent. Les souvenirs musicaux apparaissent, disparaissent et se mélangent, menant à une masse nuageuse puis une rupture.

Pièce commandée par le concours de composition pour duo de piano Luba Zuk. 
Interprétée le 11 Novembre 2019, Salle Tanna Schulich, McGill. 
Composée janvier-mai 2019 (Montréal/Baltimore).

Cent traces, sur de vastes plaines (2019)

For Violin - Aiyana Braun(Performed by Andrea Obiso)

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.

Chillón o Tragicomedia (2019)

Marco-Adrián Ramos

Related tracks