filigree is a piece that explores the margins of sound, attempting to show musical gestures under varying degrees of magnification and compression. Sonic materials are at turns hyper-compacted and expanded to a grandiose volatility as the piece searches for a vantage point of relative stability. filigree was written for International Contemporary Ensemble.

International Contemporary Ensemble

Isabel Lepanto Gleicher - piccolo
Ryan Muncy - soprano saxophone
Clara Warnaar - percussion
Julia Den Boer - piano
Josh Modney - violin
Nicholas DeMaison - conductor

Premiered May 15, 2022
Martinos Auditorium - Brown University - Providence, RI

filigree (2021-22)

Performed by Music at Copland House 
Pala Garcia, violin
Alexis Gerlach, cello
Margaret Kampmeier, piano

In this piece, two antipodal textures are established and juxtaposed against each other, one centered around a maximal construction of elements, the other based on a minimal treatment of material. The body of the piece consists in the gradual metamorphosis of one material into the other and vice versa; the maximal texture is slowly scrubbed of details, gestures, and pitch material, while the minimal texture gains activity and motion as it sits in space. 

THRASH/counterTHRASH was commissioned by Copland House for its CULTIVATE 2021 emerging composers’ institute, and was premiered by the Music from Copland House ensemble. CULTIVATE 2021 fellowships and commissions were funded by the Amphion Foundation, ArtsWestchester, ASCAP Foundation, BMI Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Friends of Copland House, Jandon Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NewMusicUSA, and New York State Council on the Arts.

THRASH/counterTHRASH (2021)

'in drops of dew will I sink down and mingle with the dust' is a line taken from the Hymns of the Night by the German Romantic poet, Novalis, which envisions night as the threshold between life and death. Novalis died far too soon, at the age of 28, and his work has been an important and guiding light in my own 28th year. I was immediately struck by the imagery of this line and wanted to translate the motion of absorption between water and dust into the sonic medium, a descending into the earth. A harmonic texture is set-up which becomes decentered in its development, forcing it to journey through uncomfortable and odd territories before it reaches a level of satiation. 'in drops of dew will I sink down and mingle with the dust' was written for Ensemble Dal Niente.

-Ensemble Dal Niente
Emma Hospelhorn, bass flute
Zachary Good, bass clarinet
Matthew Oliphant, horn
Ben Melsky, harp
Kyle Flens, percussion
Theo Ramsey, violin
Juan Horie, cello
Michael Lewanski, conductor

-live recording: 3/8/23, Martinos Auditorium @ Granoff Center - Providence, RI

in drops of dew will I sink down and mingle with the dust (2022-23)

Concordance (2024)

Some of my earliest memories are of intricate boxes. My father, a furniture maker, often restores antique pieces, and I remember being fascinated by wardrobes and desks that had secret drawers and spaces. These are often only accessible by putting one’s hands in the right spot with the right pressure, a type of haptic code. In writing Puzzle Box, I wanted to create a work that pays homage to these beautifully compact pieces, where one has to explore around an object and test it in various ways until a hidden passageway opens. Puzzle Box was written for the Cabrillo Festival as part of the 2024 Conductors /Composers Workshop and is dedicated to my father.
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra - Omar El-Jamali, conductor

Puzzle Box [EXCERPT]

The initial inspiration for Alien Altar came from a desire to write a piece that could feel at once distant and remote, yet intimate and close. It is perhaps too easy a metaphor, but the far reaches of deepest space have always represented to me an ultimate expanse, the final threshold of perceptibility where knowledge breaks down into incomprehension. Alien Altar is a paean to that idea at the edge of our imagination, seeing it as something nearly holy in its profound distance and unreachability. Alien Altar was written for Sandbox Percussion.

Sandbox Percussion - Grant Recital Hall

Alien Altar

Mary Bonhag - soprano
Nicholas Fox - percussion
Nicholas Bentz - violin
Jay Campbell - cello

to not walk upside down in the realm of the dead is a setting of an Ancient Egyptian spell from around four thousand years ago. Like many others, this incantation was found written on the inside of a coffin where it was to be read in the afterlife by the deceased. These spells served as advice to those making their way to salvation with Osiris in the Field of Reeds. This spell in particular was used to protect and save those who found themselves upside down in the afterlife. To be upside down in the afterlife was to be marked for damnation – not a hell as we know it, but a total obliteration and erasure. My setting of this text places the soprano in an upside-down environment from which only the spell can save them.

Spell 224: to not walk upside down in the realm of the dead
I will not walk upside down for you
I walk on my feet
I will not walk upside down for you
I walk like Horus – my strides are like those of Atum
My tomb is like that of a spirit
I walk as one who is among the spirits who open up the mounds of the gods

to not walk upside down in the realm of the dead (2019)

Quattri Quartet
Melissa Lander - clarinet
Lauren Rausch - violin
Ismar Gomes - cello
Wan-Chi Su - piano

Glimpse is a piece that I wrote as I found myself fascinated at the way and speed at which our brains catalog information. The human brain is a complex machine that often works in ways that we’re unable to readily perceive – one of these subliminal processes being facial recognition. The brain constantly perceives and creates patterns among the faces that we encounter, even in passing, using information from all around us to infer how we might interact with one another. It’s through the repeating of similar stimuli that we’re able to quickly read emotions and situations in order to best ascertain how to act, or to unlock our own empathy towards each other. However, these same processes can yield implicit biases, shortchanging the very people we see.
     Glimpse is structured and derived from a five-pitch set which is constantly run through various processes. As these processes repeat, the material begins to ‘learn’ from bar-to-bar and gesture-to-gesture, playing with and sometimes against the very rules that it finds itself entrapped within. Glimpse was commissioned by the amazing clarinetist Melissa Lander for the Quattri Quartet.

Glimpse (2018-19)

for eight amplified violins and electronics
Atmospheric Entry attempts to translate the process of a probe passing through an atmospheric membrane into sound using eight violins. The electronics are originally taken from the Huygens lander’s descent to the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan. Atmospheric Entry was written for the studio of Lina Bahn at the University of Southern California.
Played by Nick Bentz

Atmospheric Entry (2020)

for soprano, double bass, and electronics

Anika Kildegaard - soprano
Will Yager - double bass

please continue (2020)

Composer originally from Charleston, SC - Currently based in Rhode Island.

Nick Bentz

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks