Program Note: 
Three Places for string quartet is made up of three sonic portraits of special places that I frequented over the course of the last two pandemic years. Each of these locations has provided me some sort of refuge and fresh air, helping me navigate this challenging solitary and sedentary time. In each movement, I focus on capturing different aspects of an environment, from distinct sonic markers like the doppler effect of a train horn around a campsite, to more abstract character driven evocations of a visual like that of wine grapes strung between trees in a vineyard field, to more musical depictions of vivid imagery like that of the fluctuating surface of Lake Michigan. 

This piece is dedicated to Quatuor Diotima with admiration and gratitude.

Movements:
I: The Indiana Dunes (0'00 - 5'35)
II: The North Fork (5'40 - 7'50)
III: The Lakeshore (8'00 - 13'00)

Three Places For String Quartet - Live Premier by Quatuor Diotima

2022.12.19 Thrumming Dry

premiered by Miroslav Beinhauer on April 28, 2023
MicroFest Prague 2023, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, CZ

performed on the 36tet August Förster harmonium, originally built for the performance of Alois Hába's "Six compositions for sixth-tone harmonium."

the harvest manual, for 1/6-tone harmonium

Materia Prima was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and was premiered on March 16, 2023 by Daniela Candillari and the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Materia Prima draws inspiration from the mythological motif of the cosmic ocean. This motif, which can be found in the creation stories of a strikingly wide variety of cultures and religions, describes a cosmic ocean of primordial, often chaotic waters from which the universe was created. The title, Materia Prima (Latin for prime, or original matter) refers to the substance viewed as the material cause of the universe.

There are two musical elements that form my piece, sustained sounds and brief impulses. The impulses act as drops of water in a still, vast sea, creating waves of activity that disrupt the stability of the sustained material. The harmonic structure of the piece is built upon a similar opposition, one between the harmonic series of a low B-flat and the open strings of the string instruments, particularly the open A – the note from which the entire piece emerges. The piece unfolds through gradual processes of transformation as it attempts to reconcile these opposing materials. At its core, Materia Prima strives to find serene spaces in a turbulent and chaotic world.

Materia Prima (2023) for orchestra

the being/the world (2024)
for Juliet Fraser and Ensemble Musikfabrik

extract recording:
scene 1: asleep,
scene 2: awake [from 3:00],
scene 3: mesmerized [from 6:00]

premiere recording extract from WDR, Köln on 3 March 2024

total piece duration: 1 hour

in loving memory of Amelia Cuni

commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik and Kunststiftung NRW
photograph: Janet Sinica

the being/the world (2024) scenes 1, 2, 3

Written for the 2024 Black House Collective New Music Workshop. Performance by Charles-Eric Fontaine and the Black House Collective Workshop Ensemble.

Text:
Ovid’s Metamorphoses (15:176-185)
'Et quoniam magno feror aequore plenaque ventis vela dedi: nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe. cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago; ipsa quoque adsiduo labuntur tempora motu,
non secus ac flumen; neque enim consistere flumen nec levis hora potest: sed ut unda inpellitur unda urgeturque prior veniente urgetque priorem, tempora sic fugiunt pariter pariterque sequuntur
et nova sunt semper; nam quod fuit ante, relictum est, fitque, quod haut fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur.

Translation by Frank Justus Miller:
And since I am embarked on the boundless sea and have spread my full sails to the winds, there is nothing in all the world that keeps its form. All things are in a state of flux, and everything is brought into being with a changing nature. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river. For neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but, as wave is pushed on by wave, and as each wave as it comes is both pressed on and itself presses the wave in front, so time both flees and follows and is ever new. For that which once existed is no more, and that which was not has come to be; and so the whole round of motion is gone through again.


Ensemble:
Conductor: Charles-Eric Fontaine
Flute: Elva Tang
Oboes: Victoria Lee, Anne Pinkerton
Bb Clarinet: Emily Mehigh
Harp: Melissa Achten Klausner
Piano: Andrew Anderson
Percussion: Albert Lau, Matt LeVeque
Horns: Caleb Durant, Patrick Williams
Trumpet: Kimmie Sabio
Bass Trombone: Mason Moy
Tuba: Neha Kudva
Violins - Myra Henrichs, Emelyn Bashour, Elicia Neo
Violas: Celka Ojakangas, Emma Antonides
Contrabass - Sam Zagnit

Choir:
Hannah Rice
Andrea Church
Lydia Brown
Ann Chen
Yan Cui
Alondra Santos
Kaitlyn Son
Maura Tuffy



https://www.carlosbandera.com/

as wave impels wave (2024) for 8 voices and 19 instruments

My Idols Are Dead - Dr. Marcus Norris
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

My Idols Are Dead for String Orchestra - Dr. Marcus Norris

Travelogue - Leah Asher
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Travelogue - Leah Asher

3 Pieces for Orchestra - Jonathan Hannau
Jonathan Hannau, piano
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

3 Pieces for Orchestra - Jonathan Hannau

Beauty despite daylight - Oswald Huynh
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Beauty despite daylight - Oswald Huynh

Audio excerpt from the Febuary 18, 2025 world premiere by ~Nois and Varo String Quartet on the Frequency Festival, Constellation, Chicago, IL

This 40-minute octet features a spatial arrangement with the strings centered in the performance space and the saxophones posted around the perimeter. Tones, players, and quartets sound individually and fuse together into composites, melodic shapes blur into vertical harmony, and just-intonation harmonies are animated as their constituent tones take shape in spatiotemporal patterns.

Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry EXCERPT m189-344

Noah Jenkins is a composer and violinist/violist from Oregon, now living in Chicago. His music is inspired by tuning, field recordings, synthesizers, acoustic phenomena, and experiences of deep sound in deep time.

In 2022 Wild Up premiered Spirits Hover as part of the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight festival. In 2023 Jenkins developed and premiered After Life (a 40-minute piece with original text for vocalist and ensemble) in Chicago with Après L’Histoire. In 2024 he released Without Persistent Environments (Sawyer Editions), an album of two electroacoustic trombone pieces recorded by Chicago trombonist and composer Riley Leitch. Peter Margasak (Bandcamp) praised the music’s “sustained lines awash in luxurious overtones” and its “focus on the dynamic interaction of sound drifting into eternity.”

In 2025 John Adams will conduct the LA Phil New Music Group in the premiere of Not a dream sound, but a sound which sleeping we had really heard, a work for string orchestra, keyboards, and antiphonal percussion, and ~Nois saxophone quartet and Varo String Quartet will premiere Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry in Chicago.

Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry EXCERPT m189-344

Noah Jenkins

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