Composed 2012, revised 2024. Recording from live concert 10/30/2024, BYU Recital Hall. 

Ne Plus Ultra (2024)

Raised in rural towns throughout Utah and Idaho, composer R. Michael Wahlquist got into modern music and Russian culture thanks to the Internet, and studied both in college. Besides Eastern Europe, his blend of influences includes avant garde classical music, obscure science fiction, eclectic modern art and guilty-pleasure hipster indie music.

As a composer, Michael strives to craft a balance between complexity and accessibility, the beauty of the individual moment and the formal structure of the whole. Dichotomies like this abound in his music - monolith and labyrinth, complete and incomplete, the ancient and the digital, the city and the jungle, the divine and the sensual.