Concert version for brass quintet and live electronics, commissioned by Shriver Hall. (Installation version for overhead wavefield synthesis and video projection commissioned by EMPAC.)

[there are subwoofer bass frequencies present - use good headphones or larger speakers for best effects, not earbuds]

Audio documentation of the world premiere performance.  American Brass Quintet at Shriver Hall, December 8, 2019. (P.S. this was premiered on my birthday, and it was basically the best birthday present ever - thank you ABQ!)

Program Note:
Spending time in the chambers of ancient ruins and the cavities of basilicas and churches has led to a fascination with the interaction of architecture, light, and acoustics in relation to the human spectator. The different window types (from oculus to clerestory to stained glass) guide our relationships with the spaces, recanting visual stories as they divert beams of light in paths of illumination throughout the course of the day. The same is true of the sonic qualities of these, often vast, spaces. Within "The Glow that Illuminates, The Glare that Obscures" I take the brass performance tradition of the madrigals and motets of Renaissance polyphony and pass sourced quotations through a compositional prism. The resultant fragments are illuminated and obscured in the composition through the use of antiphonal and heterophonic writing, density and silence.  Fragments of Josquin's Miserere, a spare and austere motet setting of Psalm 51, jostle our memory as they are stretched and ornamented throughout the ritualistic sonic space.

The Glow that Illuminates, the Glare that Obscures (2019) for brass quintet + elec (concert version)

Phosphorescent Devotion (2021), electro-acoustic composition for wavefield synthesis with 20 localized sound sources. (15:50)
This upload is a stereo mix-down.

Commissioned by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust in collaboration with the TIME:SPANS festival and EMPAC.

Premiered August 11 – August 16, 2021, DiMenna Center for Classical Music.

Phosphorescent Devotion (2021) [stereo version]

Live recording of the premiere performance by the PRISM Quartet, June 2019.
PRISM was commissioned by PRISM with the support of NYSCA.

Tarnish: the thin layer of corrosion that forms  as certain metals undergo a chemical reaction. Only the top few layers react; the outer destruction seals and protects the underlying structure.

Tarnish (2019) for saxophone quartet

music and sound design by Nina C. Young 
for an animated film by Yuliya Lanina
http://www.yuliyalanina.com/always-and-forever

Always and Forever (2020) - music for an animation by Yuliya Lanina

music and sound design composed by Nina C. Young with shadows and fragments of cello for a film by Miro Magloire with the New Chamber Ballet

https://vimeo.com/553760817

Gnomon (2021) - music for a video by Miro Magloire

Meditation (2013) for violin and cello

for 2-channel fixed media
made with my new waterphone at MacDowell, December 2021

was is will be (2021)

Recording of Nina C. Young's "Remnants" by the American Composers Orchestra at the 22nd Underwood New Music Readings (April, 2013).  This work was given the Audience Choice Award.

Note: This is a private recording, property of the American Composers Orchestra.  This link is available for educational and professional development; it can not be publicly shared or distributed without explicit permission from the ACO.

www.americancomposers.org

www.ninacyoung.com

Remnants (ACO) for orchestra (2013)

To etch is to cut, carve, or engrave a text or design onto a surface (traditionally metal, glass, or stone).  This process leaves a permanent design on the original surface.

I recall going to the shore as a child and spending hours etching designs in the wet, hardened sad at the threshold of beach and sea.  With the sun on my back I would revel in the glory of these beautiful and ephemeral pieces of art that I created using the sand as my canvas and a stray seashell as my stylus.  As evening encroached, the tide would slowly come in, its regular cycles of crashing waves a whispering reminder of the passing of time.  The gently lapping water would inevitably creep towards my etchings, and as it neared I waited, in tense anticipation, for the arcs of water blindly reaching up the beach.  As the first finger of water washed over my design, the image began its transformation into a subdued echo of itself.  For a short time - an eternity - I would solemnly watch my day's work gently fade into the original blank canvas.

Etched in Sand was written for Sixtrum percussion sextet as part of their young composer workshop centered around the instrumentation of Philippe Leroux's work De l'itération.  Etched in Sand was premiered on December 7, 2013 at Salle Bourgie in Montreal, QC.

Recorded live

Date: June 17, 2017
Venue:  Domaine Forget International Dance and Music Academy, Saint Irénée, QC
Artists:  SIXTRUM Percussion Ensemble 
(musicians for this performance:  Noam Bierstone, João Catalão, Julien Grégoire; Philip Hornsey, Fabrice Marandola; Olivier Tremblay-Noël)

Etched in Sand (2013) for percussion sextet

Studio recording (06/2015)- Margaret Lancaster, flute; Jocelin Pan, viola



L'heure bleue (2013) for flute and viola

Live recording of the premiere of "Traced Upon Cinders".  Either/Or Ensemble, conducted by Richard Carrick, and the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Cary Hall. (April 12, 2014 - recorded by Ryan Streber).

"Traced Upon Cinders" is a partner piece to my percussion sextet "Etched in Sand" (2013).  The notes to "Etched in Sand" read:

“To etch is to cut, carve, or engrave a text or design onto a surface (traditionally metal, glass, or stone).  This process leaves a permanent design on the original surface.

“I recall going to the shore as a child and spending hours etching designs into the wet, hardened sand at the threshold of beach and sea.  With the sun on my back I would revel in the glory of these beautiful and ephemeral pieces of art that I created using the sand as my canvas and a stray seashell as my stylus.  As evening encroached, the tide would slowly come in, its regular cycles of crashing waves a whispering reminder of the passing of time.  The gently lapping water would inevitably creep towards my etchings, and as it neared I waited, in tense anticipation, for the arcs of water blindly reaching up the beach.  As the first finger of water washed over my design, the image began its transformation into a subdued echo of itself.  For a short time – an eternity – I would solemnly watch my day’s work gently fade away into the original blank canvas.”

As an adult, I often look back to memories of moments from my childhood.  I trace these images over and over again in my mind, seeking new meanings and connections.  But as time passes their fidelity erodes; they are now cinders of the burning moments they once were, and quickly they do fade.

"Traced Upon Cinders" was written for the Either/Or Ensemble.

-Nina C. Young

Traced Upon Cinders (2014) for 13 musicians

April 11, 2023
Eclipses
electronic fixed media (stereo)

Eclipses

FATA MORGANA (2014)
Instrumentation: 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, 2 percussion

Commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center

Notes: (adapted from those by Matthew Mendez)

A Fata Morgana is a type of distorted maritime mirage seen just above the horizon.  Named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, these mirages are associated to the distant fairy castles and sirens that would lure sailors to their death.  The idea of these mirages elicits a series of evocative musical effects: the hazy scrim of shimmering vibraphones, menacing trumpet calls conjuring up a sinister version of the first movement of Debussy’s “La Mer”, the labyrinthine structure capturing the sensation of being dangerously off course.

Avoiding the customary grouping by like instruments, FATA MORGANA calls for an untraditional seating arrangement, which facilities strange echo effects and illusory resonances.  With its spare juxtapositions, the music has the flavor of surrealism.  Contrast comes in the guise of a fleeting chorale, distant cousin to Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”, which contains the most celebrated Fata Morgana in music.

The poetics of the piece create an imaginative world based on man against the elements: the warmth of human presence (the chorale) versus the cold desolation of nature (fanfares).  Here, nature gets the upper hand, with one of the piece’s final features summoning the sound of drowning. 


Fata Morgana (2014) for symphonic brass ensemble

Metal Works - Part 1 (for piano and electronics)
1.  Steel
Interlude 1
2. Quicksilver
Interlude 2

Recording: Kathleen Supové, piano
Recorded and engineered by Adam Pietrykowski

Metal Works is a suite of 5 pieces for piano and live electronics connected with electroacoustic interludes which explores the sonic and poetic associations of the piano and different kinds of "metal".

Metal Works - Part 1 (2014) for piano and electronics

Live recording of the premiere of "Vestigia". The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, conducted by Lorraine Vaillancourt, at Salle Claude Champaign (Montreal), November 21, 2014.

Program Note:

In book IV of Virgil's Aeneid, Dido – long in grief over her husband's death – is awakened suddenly from emotional slumber by the visiting Trojan hero Aeneas, proclaiming “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae” (“I recognize the traces of an ancient fire”). 

Vestigia Flammae is not explicitly narrative in nature; like other recent works, it deals with the central concepts of lost memories, vestigial emotions, and melancholy for the passage of time.  In contrast to those other works, a strain of optimism characterizes this piece: here, renewal is the driving force – the idea of recollecting, re-experiencing, and rekindling traces of old fires.  This piece searches, through ritual and repetition, for remnants of vanished memories, and forgotten music.  The mind has difficulty remembering – fragmented fossils are pieced together – much is lost and gained in the process.  Ultimately an entirely new experience emerges, fraught with nostalgia, complexity, optimism, and simplicity.  It’s a new beginning.

Vestigia Flammae was written for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s 2014 Forum.

Vestigia Flammae (2014) for 15 musicians

"Post tenebras spero lucem" 
(After darkness, I hope for light)

Recording of the premiere performance.
Yoonhee Lee, violin; Tim Hansson, viola; Oskari Holopainen, violoncello; Eirik Fosstveit, piano.

Creative Dialogue VII, February 7, 2015, Helsinki Music Center Organo Hall (Musica Nova Helsinki).



Spero Lucem (2015) for piano quartet

A weekend trip to my mother's led to the discovery of a box of trinkets and memories.  Among these was a set of unsent letters.

Mark As Unsent (2015) for fixed media

Fata Morgana (version for Orchestra)

Live recording of the premiere performance:
Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Stephen Mulligan - July 15, 2015 - Benedict Music Tent, Aspen, CO.

Companion piece to "Vestigia Flammae" (2014).

Agnosco Veteris (2015) for orchestra

Fleeting Musings And Restless Pause: A Bassoon Pocket Concert (2015) for bassoon, flute, harp, viola, and bass.

Commissioned by Steve Dibner and Brad Balliett for the Metropolis Ensemble.

Live recording: premiere by Brad Balliett and the Metropolis Ensemble - Oct.11, 2015, (le) Poisson Rouge.

Fleeting Musings And Restless Pause: A Bassoon Pocket Concerto (2015)

Temenos
A site-specific collaboration between composer Nina C. Young and choreographer Miro Magloire (New Chamber Ballet)addressing the union of architecture, movement, and sound at the Tempietto Del Bramate.

Project supported by the American Academy in Rome, 2016 Cinque Mostre curator Ilaria Gianni, and the Real Academia de España en Roma.

Premiere performance - March 3, 2016, Tempietto Del Bramante at S. Pietro in Montorio:
Elizabeth Brown and Daniela Giannuzzi, dancers
Miro Magloire, choreographer
Nina C. Young, violin and electronics

Temenos (2016) for violin and electronics (and dance)

Recording of the premiere performance by the Divertimento Ensemble.

Notes:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
On such a full sea are we now afloat. 
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.”

-William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act IV Scene III)

Rising Tide was premiered by the Divertimento Ensemble on September 21, 2015 at the Milano EXPO Gates.  



Rising Tide (2015) for seven musicians

Marilyn Nonken, Live from Roulette (May 23, 2016)
"Vortex Temporum Revisited" Project
------
Patricia Franchini:  What is your greatest ambition in life?
Parvulesco: To become immortal… and then die.
//
Patricia Franchini: It’s sad to fall asleep.  It separates people.  Even when you’re sleeping together, you’re all alone.
------
"À bout de souffle" (English “out of breath”) takes its title from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film (English: Breathless).  My piece shares no direct relation to the narrative of the film, but the compositional process drew inspiration from both the (then) innovative use of jump cuts that film critic Andrew Sarris analyzed as representing “the meaninglessness of the time interval between moral decisions”, and the two quotes above.

Written for the same scordatura tuning as Grisey’s magnus opus Vortex Temporum, it was a great hurdles to compose something new in dialogue with such a monumental and personally influential work.  I focused on simultaneously highlighting and obscuring the relationship between the piano’s standard equal temperament and the four quarter-tones available.  I play with the idea of Grisey’s structural arc and the Ravel arpeggio by presenting repetitive ostinato gestures nested in sonic, resonant arcs that bloom and decay through processes of dynamics, timbre, and registral expansion – a sort of restless breathing.

À bout de souffle (2016) for piano scordatura

Live recording of premiere by Anssi Karttunen, February 15, 2016 - Reid Hall, Paris FR.

Ainsi soit-il (2016) for solo cello

Rehearsal recording of first half - May 2017. American Composers Orchestra; David Tinervia, baritone.

Part 1: Into the Weddell Sea
Part 2: Trapped in Pack Ice 

Music composed by: Nina C. Young
Text written by: Nina C. Young and David Tinervia
Optional Generative video by: R. Luke DuBois

"Out of whose womb came the ice" creates a sonic and visual glimpse of a segment of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17).  In August 1914, at the onset of WWI, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton gathered a crew of 27 men and set sail for the South Atlantic.  They were in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize of the Heroic Age of Exploration: to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent by foot.  Upon entering the Weddell Sea, they encountered unusually foul weather.  Weaving south through the treacherous seas of ice, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped only 85 miles from their destination.  After months of waiting for the ice to break, the ship was crushed and sank, leaving the crew stranded upon the ice floes without any means of contacting the outside world.  In pursuit of survival, Shackleton and his crew endured 22 months traversing ice floes up the Antarctic Peninsula.  The final leg included a deadly 800-mile open boat journey in their lifeboat, the James Caird, in hopes of reaching South Georgia Island.  The crew was rescued on 30 August 1916; everyone survived.  Though this expedition failed, it remains one of the most miraculous stories of polar exploration and human survival.

"Out of whose womb came the ice" looks at the expedition from the time they enter the Weddell Sea (December 1914) to the sinking of the Endurance (November 1915).  The vocal and orchestra music focuses on the crew’s perception of the Endurance in relationship to their surroundings.  She goes from being simply a ship, to a lifeline and memento that connects them to the world they left behind.  Once she sinks, they are truly left alone.  The visuals and electronics offer narrative elements drawn directly from documents of the journey: journal entries of the crew and images by expedition’s official photographer Frank Hurley.

Out of whose womb came the ice (excerpt) for baritone voice, orchestra, and electronics

Sol - the solar deity of Ancient Rome.

Electro-acoustic work generated from several improvisation session of piano and live-electronics at the Casa Rustica at the American Academy in Rome. March 27, 2016.

Electroacoustic Works

Sol (2016) for fixed media (compiled from recorded live improvisations)

Unofficial rehearsal recording of "Tête-à-Tête" for two toy pianos, desk bells, and electronics.
Commissioned by the LA Phil for the HOCKET ensemble.
(Hocket is performing in this rehearsal recording)

Tête-à-Tête (2017) [rehearsal recording] for two toy pianos, desk bells, and electronics

for orchestra

Written in 2008, revised in 2010, Adieu is an elegy to Igor Loch (1917 - 2008). The work comments on the beauty and fragility of life, yet also the calm and relief of death. The piece contains three core harmonies, which are orchestrated, re-orchestrated, and juxtaposed to shift our perspective on their sonic and emotional implications.

Adieu (2009) for orchestra

violin and electronics, performed by Emily Westell

"Sun Propeller" refers to fanned sunbeams that pierce through cloud openings.  It is the literal translation of "Huun-Huur-Tu", a Tuvan word for these crepuscular rays, these columns of light that radiate majestically from a single point in the sky.  A Tuvan folk group has also taken the name.  Their throat-singing style is drawn from a single low drone-tone that is filtered by nuanced vocal techniques to create rays of overtones with beautiful timbres - the vertical composite relationships forming hybrid melodies that become a human mimicry of nature’s sounds.  This is the human muscular structure filtering and synthesizing – electronic music for the human body.

In "Sun Propeller" the violin and its real-time electronic duo partner ebb and flow, filter and amplify, become the body and the environment.  Together, they create a union that is a composite whole - refractions all traceable to a single drone rooted in the violin’s drop-D scordatura tuning.

The electronics, live processing and pre-recorded sounds, are diffused through four speakers.

Sun Propeller (2012) for violin and electronics

Composed and recorded by Nina C. Young, April 20, 2020, New York.

present perfect

present perfect (2020) voice, prepared piano, electronics

The title of Bayu-bayu comes from a popular Russian lullaby Bayu-bayushki-bayu:

Russian:

Баю-баюшки-баю,
Не ложися на краю.
Придёт серенький волчок,
Он ухватит за бочок
И утащит во лесок
Под ракитовый кусток.

English translation:

Baby, baby, rock-a-bye
On the edge you mustn't lie
Or the little grey wolf will come
And will nip you on the tum,
Tug you off into the wood
Underneath the willow-root.

Transliteration:

Bayu-bayushki-bayu,
Ne lozhisya na krayu.
Pridyot serenkiy volchok,
On ukhvatit za bochok
I utashchit vo lesok
Pod rakitovy kustok.

As with many lullabies, the song is meant to be soothing and help one sleep, however, the meaning of the text has a darker undercurrent. My work explores the dream-state of restless sleep and includes quotes of the above melody. This piece was influenced by Yuriy Norshteyn's 1979 film Skazka skazok (Tale of Tales).

Bayu-bayu (2011) for fixed media

written for Lorenzo Marasso's Invention Project, as a bridge between Bach's G-Major 2 and 3-part inventions.

program notes:
In this moment of solitary, suspended time and distanced interactions, Lorenzo's invitation to the Invention Project allowed me to reconsider shared spaces and mutual time. I invite you to this sonic mezzanine, a shared aural architecture bridging our liminal realities together with fragments of Bach past, highlighting the fleeting, interpreted in the present, captured with a microphone, broadcast across continents.

Mezzanine (2020) for solo piano, to accompany Bach's G Major 2 and 3-Part Inventions

2-channel electronic, fixed-media.
Loíza, Puerto Rico, December 25, 2020 - January 2, 2021.
"drink rain from the pulse at my throat" - text excerpted from Kim Addonizio's "Muse".

drink rain (2021)

The music of composer Nina C. Young (b.1984) is characterized by an acute sensitivity to tone color, manifested in aural images of vibrant, arresting immediacy. Her experience in the electronic music studio informs her acoustic work, which takes as its given not melody and harmony, but sound itself, continuously metamorphosing from one state to another. Her musical voice draws from elements of the classical canon, modernism, spectralism, American experimentalism, minimalism, electronic music, and popular idioms. Her projects, ranging from concert pieces to interactive installations, strive to create unique sonic environments that can be appreciated by a wide variety of audiences while challenging stylistic boundaries, auditory perception, and notions of temporality. 

Young’s works have been presented by Carnegie Hall, the National Gallery, the Whitney Museum, LA Phil’s Next on Grand, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series. Her music has garnered international acclaim through performances by the American Composers Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Aizuri Quartet, Either/Or, the JACK Quartet, wild Up, and Yarn/Wire. Winner of the 2015-16 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Young has also received a Koussevitzky Commission, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award, Aspen Music Festival's Jacob Druckman Prize, and honors from BMI, IAWM, and ASCAP/SEAMUS. 

IN 2019 Carnegie Hall commissioned "Out of whose womb came the ice" with the American Composers Orchestra: for baritone, orchestra, electronics, and generative video, commenting on the ill-fated Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17.  Other recent projects include "Tread softly" that opened the NY Philharmonic’s Project 19, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and "The Glow that Illuminates, The Glare that Obscures" for the American Brass Quintet alongside an immersive audio-visual installation version commissioned by EMPAC showcasing their wavefield synthesis audio system.

A graduate of McGill University and MIT, Young completed her DMA at Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor of Composition as USC’s Thornton School of Music.  She serves as Co-Artistic Director of New York’s Ensemble Échappé.  Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.

ninacyoung.com

Nina C. Young

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