Recorded live performance of Ashley Smith & Raymond Yong at St George's College as Part of "Portraits of the University of Western Australia" in November 2014. 

Program Notes: 
“ Respiration” is a work that describes my experience of witnessing Cheyne-Stokes respiration, a type of breathing exhibited by humans and animals close to death. The Cheyne-Stokes respiration cycle is characterised by progressively deeper and faster breathing, followed by a gradual decrease that results in stops in breathing for an extended period of time. As the breaths would draw further apart I would wait anxiously for the next breath, not knowing if it was to be the last. This process very much sets the form of the work. The bass clarinet musters increasingly desperate melodic gestures between the ever-growing gaps of breathless silence to which it eventually succumbs. The process is narrated by a simple string accompaniment echoing my own feelings of fright, despair, sorrow and eventually relief. The work was premiered under the name “Elegy for a Duck” as the writing of the piece was prompted by the haunting experience of watching an injured duck slowly pass enroute to the vet hospital. The experience was particularly haunting as I realised the duck was not the first time I’d heard it.”

Respiration

Respiration for Bass Clarinet & Strings (2014) [Live]

Recorded as part of Portraits of The University of Western Australia, Perth. Performed by Adam Pinto. 

“Youth” was commissioned by St George’s College and first performed by Adam Pinto to celebrate the acquisition of the College’s Fazioli concert grand piano, and the commencement of the College’s concert series. The work is a show piece which embodies the same hope, excitement and optimism associated with youth. It is in essence a musical portrait of active young student minds energetically buzzing and ticking away.
The work is driven forward by a perpetuum mobile, a rapid ticking fabric of clustered notes from which melodic fragments increasingly emerge, growing one note at time until eventually an entire melody is stated plainly and with confidence (though also flippantly at times).
I wish to dedicate this work to the Knight Family in recognition of their support as a token of my appreciation for their generosity in supporting my residency at the College.

Youth for Solo Piano [Live] (2014)

“Euler’s Music” is a work deeply indebted to Euler’s Disk (a scientific educational toy first developed by Loenhard Euler to illustrate the motion of spinning disk on a flat surface) coupled with my own curiosity of the mechanics of gyroscopes born during my undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering. Given an impulse of energy, the disk spins, the axis of rotation continually shifts, and the disk gradually loses energy. What is interesting and grounds for musical exploration is the interplay of energy within the rotations of the disk. As rotation in one direction decreases, rotation in another direction accelerates, and despite losing energy, the motion of the disk increases exponentially before imploding dramatically to a sudden halt.
I define the 3 axis of rotation (X,Y,Z) as three distinct pitch sets created from the division of the chromatic scale ( C, Db, Ab, Eb | D, F#, A#, B | E F G A). It is possible to hear each of these sets interact, compete and eventually meld as they react to the initial impulse of energy. Euler’s Music utilises the serialisation of pitch sets, polyrhythms, dynamics and register (albeit with varying degrees of flexibility) in an attempt to explore the laws of physical motion that govern the mechanical phenomena of Euler’s Disk as a means to achieve musically structure. Is this logic transmutable and if so could mechanics be a new source of musical structure?”

Euler's Music [Brief Excerpts](2015)

This work as indicated by the title is my first fugue, a fugue in three voices. It was composed as part of a course in writing fugues in the style of J. S. Bach at the New England Conservatory. Of note in this work is the use of a master stretto at towards the end of the work where all three voices can be heard playing the subject at the same time, though staggered.

Fugue No.1 [MIDI] (2017)

Excerpts from a brief sight reading session. 

Program Notes: 

“Home” – not a house but a sense of belonging, a sense of place, a sense of security, a connection to heritage, a connection to culture, a connection to others. But what happens when home is no longer? What happens when to realise hopes you must leave? What happens if through conflict you are forced leave? You arrive in a foreign land. You want to be optimistic, but you are scared and your identity is challenged every day. You are entirely dislocated from everything you knew, there are no familiar or even friendly faces- no familiar places – everything is different, if even in the smallest monotonous way. You are stranded and cannot return – you have no choice: where you are must become your home. Though this reality does not stop the relentless question: can this place ever truly be home?

“Home” explores the composer’s own experiences with moving to the United Sates in search of opportunity. Stranded for two years in a foreign land a world away from all he knew, he was could not help but ponder the parallels of his parents and grandparents who had immigrated from Sicily and Romania to Australia, albeit in far more difficult circumstances. He looked to their lives as examples, and took solace in learning and practicing the traditions of his heritage. Be it language, food or music, it was a means of connecting to a sense of home. While the work commenced as an exploration of the composer’s own dislocation, quoting folksong and folk styles from his parents’ homelands, his awareness broadened in reaction to the increasingly significant development of social and political unrest in the country and around the world in 2017, particularly immigration. Consequently, “Home” comments more broadly on those globally displaced by hardship and uncertainty. This narrative is nearly entirely communicated by the setting of a single word: “Home.” The meaning of the word is continually recontextualized by the voice and orchestra, constituting a complexity of emotional monologue.

Vocalise For Soprano & Orchestra [Excerpts] (2017) (Reading)

Onward & Upward [Live] (2018)

Recording from a brief sight reading session with New England Conservatory Orchestra.

PROGRAM NOTES
‘Capitalist Dreams’ for Orchestra is a reflection on the wonders of capitalism through the eyes of an excited newcomer to America as they reconcile their aspirations with reality. It explores admiration and caution for a system of enormous scale; a system rooted in merit, wealth and the relentless demand for progress; a system of boundless opportunity and endless marvel for those who can keep up. While the work does not depict an explicit program, it does take its arc from these concepts of hope, struggle and progress.

The sonic starting point of ‘Capitalist Dreams’ was the running progression of chords approximately two thirds into the work. This figure provides the core harmonic material from which nearly all the melodic material in the work is derived. As the work was composed retro-synthetically from this point, the emphasis of the work is on the progress towards this material and its subsequent development. Care is taken to avoid explicit use of the source harmony until later in the work, instead creating different harmonisations, textures and metric profiles, such that the materials presented in the first half sound somewhat unrelated to those of the second half. It is only later that the connection is made clear, via the superimposition of competing combinations of melodic, harmonic and metric material from earlier in the work with the original source material.

Capitalist Dreams For Orchestra (2018) [Reading]

Recording of the world premiere performance in Valdeblore Nice, France. 

PROGRAM NOTES
"“Sfidare” is Italian for “Defy” and Romanian for “Defiance”. It’s interesting how art, whether deliberately or not, can echo undercurrents in the artist’s life during the time of its creation. At its premiere, the work bore only the name “String Quartet No.1.” It was only after I wrote this piece that I realised it was a statement of empathy and hope for individuals whom I knew to be enduring hardship, yet continued nonetheless. This work is titled as a tribute to any who must defy to declare their place."

String Quartet #1: "Sfidare" (Defy) [Live] (2018)

Recording of the world premiere, January, 2019 by Amber Evans & Issei Herr at the Australia Day Concert, St John’s in the Village, Manhattan, New York, USA

PROGRAM NOTES
“Sympathy” is a setting of the poem of Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem explores the poets understanding how a caged bird feels. He paints very vivid pictures and a pained narrative of the bird all the while really discussing the effects of deprivation of freedom on the individual – indeed he was the first child of freed Kentucky slaves. When reading this poem I was struck by the power of the text and this work is very much my musical reading of it. The work maintains the original title and draws heavily on word painting while also sounding the undertones of tension, despair and desperation in the poem.
The duet of voice and cello behaves as a dialogue between the poet and the bird, where the cello assumes the role of the bird. The cello draws its cue from the text for various gestures of the bird including singing, pulsing/beating of wings (translating to a visual beating of bowing arm) and also the birds cries of pain, the bird’s prayers of hope, etc… I hope to set more of this poet’s work to take the form of a song cycle.

Sympathy for Voice & Cello [Live]  (2019)

Excerpts of a recording from a brief developmental sight reading session in July 2019 at Atlantic Music Festival Maine, USA.

PROGRAM NOTES
“Sfidare” is Italian for “Defy” and Romanian for “Defiance”. It’s interesting how art, whether deliberately or not, can echo undercurrents in the artist’s life during the time of its creation. At its premiere, the work bore only the name “String Quartet No.1.” It was only after I wrote this piece that I realised it was a statement of empathy and hope for individuals whom I knew to be enduring hardship, yet continued nonetheless. This work is titled as a tribute to any who must defy to declare their place.

Sfidare for Orchestra [Excerpts] (2019) Reading

Performed by Hub New Music @ Connecticut Summerfest 2019. 

PROGRAM NOTES
“A Curious Misadventure” has undergone 6 title changes over the course of its composition. The spirit of this work started from my own sense of excitement, awe and marvel (with a hint of danger) watching Space-X launch and land three rocket boosters for the first time. I remember the feeling of adventure, cautiousness, fear and eventually loneliness as the small payload of the rocket took off and then hurtled into orbit, looking insignificant and lost in the scope of the greater universe behind it. While these set of feelings and experiences were a map, as the piece unfolded it took on a character of its own, a character perhaps echoing my own journey to America, a journey of excitement, fear and feeling fairly insignificant and lost in the vastness of New York City. The work shift towards becoming more contemplative of a journey of mishaps, persistence and unexpected beauty rather than something explicitly prescriptive or programmatic.

A Curious Misadventure [Live] (2019)

Recording of the world premiere, July 2019 by the Contemporary Ensemble at Atlantic Music Festival, Colby College, Waterville, Maine, USA.

PROGRAM NOTES
“Fede” is italian for the word “Faith”. I was reluctant to title this work as I felt nature of the piece, in this particular composition was self-evident upon listening, or at least I was hoping for the work’s significance to be be determined from the listener’s experience, rather than a title. In the most abstract sense though, this work might be considered an expression of faith (though not necessarily in the religious sense) set against grief, isolation and healing.
The majority of the melodic content in the work is created through the lyrical use of natural harmonics. These define very fragile, ethereal gestures in certain sections, sections which are then developed and contrasted with more strained vibrato in fully-stopped passages. Throughout the work, the quartet always remains muted, even through the various extremes of register, creating a more sombre and at times strained quality – a concept almost of struggle hushed by inevitability.

Michael Grebla

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