Robin's Egg

Written and mostly recorded in New York City, Summer 2019, post-concussion, mid-possession.

Released on community garden
Mastered by @eliemcafeehahn
 Cover art by @galentipton and Joohee Park

Possession

for viola & electronics

sonic representations of relativistic length contractions & time dilation as realized by nonstandard EDO autotuning systems

colored gradients -- sophie taeuber-arp (1939)

the pace of inhales and exhales, the movement of wind in tall grass

Existential Import

BeepBoopBop

audiotool awards 2021 track of the year! :)

paper trail

written for anthony coleman's open form ensemble
contemporary improvisation at NEC

nikita manin, clarinet
caleb schmale, saxophone
marie carroll, koto, composition
julian seney, viola
emmett mathison, piano, autoharp
anthony coleman, coach 

premiered at nec's eben jordan hall, 12/14/21
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XjVrQVPVts

through stillness i move (2021) for open ensemble

Vocals - Meg Huskin
Koto - Marie Carroll

Chant for a Fried Egg

When your words cracked
My brittle eggshell heart, 
Tucked at the bottom of my 
grocery store-paper bag ribcage,
It began to ooze 
Under the pressure
And seep into everything. 

What could I do -
My broken eggshell heart -
But reach into my paper bag chest
and fish it out?
And hold it,
(A Protean task)
trying not to let it
Slip through my fingers.

What could I do
But toss it into the frying pan?
How could I ever allow
Such life, such nourishment
To go to waste?

So here -
Take my fried egg heart
And make a meal of it.
Stab the yellow center
And let it run
over the edge of the plate
Where you can lap it up.
Pour coarse salt into that wound.
May it mask the crunch of 
broken shell, the bits I could not remove.
I hope it tastes like triumph.

Because the truth is, 
I could feed a thousand of you
With a million eggy hearts,
Stocked by the dozen in neat little cartons.

I am a renewable resource.


But you,
With your foxlike smile 
traipsing uninvited into my pantry -
You with your skin taut over bone…
Well, who am I to refuse the starved?

How should I tell you that all you had to do was ask?
And that it doesn’t hurt to give away for free
What you have in abundance.

Now you may think me the poorer one, 
With my fragile raw egg hearts.
But while you go and hunt your next meal,
To consume and consume and consume, 
Yoked to hunger and lack and need, 
My diet remains balanced.
And I will look for someone 
Worthier to feed.

	-Meg Huskin

Chant For A Fried Egg

Work realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges / IMEB.
Anastasis is a five channel composition realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB). The work is programmatic in its representation of Christ's Descent into Limbo, a frequently treated subject in Medieval art. The majority of sounds used are derived from concrète sources, some of which carry conceptual weight. For example, the recurring sound of wax being scraped away from the metal surface of the candle trays at Bourges ' Cathedral St. Étienne: the residue of prayer — its removal, a daily chore (or performance ritual) captured in sound. Also, the emergence of a field recording of windmills at the work's close: transformation, by man, of nature's breath into energy as a storm blows in on the mountainside.
The piece itself is a stormy, transformative descent. Sounds of friction and resistance represent the interpenetration of spheres of existence. Long intense strokes of sound such as the dragging of wood along wood, glass on glass, and the grinding and scraping of metal against metal are fractured by abrupt, pointed declamations which lead, ultimately, to a representation of the breaking of the gates of hell. The only purely electronic sounds used in the composition are dense, bristling textures that occur as interruptions of the long descent. They represent the accumulation of a mysterious, electrical energy in the empty tomb above — static glimpses of that middle sphere.
Technical notes:
The orchestration of sound objects in the field of five loudspeakers adheres to an elastic gravitational plan assigned to each point in space. Generally speaking, the field of five speakers is “weighted” so that rear point sources support sounds lower in pitch than those occurring in the front of the projection plane where frequencies are raised. The relationship between each point source and its corresponding interval of transposition is in constant flux and its size serves to emphasize the degree of spatial depth present at any given moment. Sound sources are decorrelated to support and exaggerate the listener's experience of space.
— John Mallia


Anastasis

11 minute, single-movement work by John Mallia for sho, clarinet, prepared piano, koto, shamisen, cello, and electronics.

The materials and structure of  “Crevice, sky” (2009) reflect the activity of peering
through a small, present opening in order to see/hear that which is vast and remote.
The latter is represented by the sounds of the sho, as it emerges from, and replaces
the tactile detail of the “crevice.” 

— J.M.

Crevice, sky

Microphones in 2020

composition, improvisation, electroacoustics, koto, cello

ba music and history & science, harvard university
mm composition, new england conservatory