Il y a – memory of a word lacking

Commission: Südwestrundfunk for the Donaueschingen Musiktage 2022

Live recording of the world première, Musica Nova Helsinki, 3 March 2023.

Performers:
Mattie Barbier, trombone
Weston Olencki, trombone
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Janne Nisonen, conductor

Photo: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra

where the dark earth bends (2022, rev. 2023), for RAGE Thormbones, orchestra, and electronics

for amplified percussion trio and optional electronics
premiered by line upon line on 25 February, 2023, in Paine Hall at Harvard University

percussion:
Adan Bedell
Cullen Faulk
Matthew Teodori

without you, bear, too, ripen (2023)

Mordedura de Óxido (2022)
Naz Dúo & Alonso Solano
Premio IBERMÚSICAS 2023 de Composición y Estreno de obra

Inspirado en un verso de la obra "Cascajo" del poeta Manuel Illanes

Mordedura De Óxido (2022)

Sueño de La Libélula (version for Ensemble) 2024

Composed for Ensemble Recheche
Commissioned by Koussevitzky Music Foundation
Premiered: December 5, 2024, Freiburg, Germany

Program note: 
The title of this piece, "Journal of an Ordinary Grief," is inspired by a poignant collection of autobiographical essays by the celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. His work profoundly captures the complexities of loss, identity, and resilience through the act of writing poetry in the face of unimaginable violence and suffering.
My composition responds to the ongoing catastrophe unfolding in Palestine, a crisis that compels us to confront the stark reality of this still ongoing barbaric violence and its profound impact on our shared humanity. Structured in five movements and interspersed with three fixed-media electronic pieces featuring recitations by Darwish of three of his poems, the work seeks to narrate the intricate dilemmas and pain we face in witnessing such devastation and aims to create a space for collective mourning.

The poems and translations of the fixed-media pieces:

1)
early evening
over a neglected village
and two eyes dreaming
I go back thirty years
and five wars
I see that time holds for me
a grain of hope
the singer sings about
the fire and strangers
and the evening was evening
and the singer was singing
and they interrogated him
“Why do you sing?”
He replies
“Because I sing”
They searched within him
but found only his heart
they search his heart
but found only his people
they searched his voice
but found only his sadness
they searched his sadness
but found only his prison
they searched his prison
but found only themselves in chains
and the evening was evening
and the singer was singing

2)
Excerpt from Counterpoint
(for Edward W. Said)
Translated by Mona Anis

On wind he walks, and in wind
he knows himself. There is no ceiling for the wind,
no home for the wind. Wind is the compass
of the stranger’s North.
He says: I am from there, I am from here,
but I am neither there nor here.
I have two names which meet and part…
I have two languages, but I have long forgotten
which is the language of my dreams.
I have an English language, for writing,
with yielding phrases,
and a language in which Heaven and
Jerusalem converse, with a silver cadence,
but it does not yield to my imagination.

He says: The poem could host
loss, a thread of light shining
at the heart of a guitar; or a Christ
on a horse pierced through with beautiful metaphors. For
the aesthetic is but the presence of the real
in form/
In a world without a sky, the earth
becomes an abyss. The poem,
a consolation, an attribute
of the wind, southern or northern.
Do not describe what the camera can see
of your wounds. And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you’re still alive,
and alive, and that life on this earth.. 


3)
Nothing pleases me
the traveler on the bus says-Not the radio 
or the morning newspaper, nor the citadels on the hills. 
I want to cry/
The driver says: Wait until you get to the station, 
then cry alone all you want/ 
A woman says: Me too. Nothing
pleases me. I guided my son to my grave, 
he liked it and slept there, without saying goodbye/ 
A college student says: Nor does anything
pleases me. I studied archeology but didn’t 
find identity in stone. Am I 
really me?/ 
And a soldier says: Me too. Nothing
pleases me. I always besiege a ghost 
besieging me/ 
The edgy driver says: Here we are
almost near our last stop, get ready 
to get off…/ 
Then they scream: We want what’s beyond the station, 
keep going!
As for myself I say: Let me off here. I am 
like them, nothing pleases me, but I’m worn out
From travel. 

(Translation by Fadi Joudah)


Journal of an Ordinary Grief (2024)-Ashkan Behzadi

Please, use headphones or good loudspeakers.

vacant lot (strange bird) (2023), for large amplified ensemble
commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain

Live Recording, Klangforum Wien

vacant lot (strange bird) (2023), for large amplified ensemble

for ensemble mosaik
Khachatur Kanajan, violin
Mathis Mayr, cello
Alexey Potapov, electric guitar 
Adam Weisman, percussion
Christian Vogel, clarinets 


"in disoriented gardens, invasive wax eats flowers" for ensemble takes place within an imagined ecosystem, whose disoriented internal logic functions in a dream-like, irrational manner, creating an environment where events grow to absurd proportions, creating imbalanced, juxtaposed situations.
Contradiction is welcome and necessary to the well-being of this environment. Decaying material interacts with ripeness, mechanisms interact with organic matter. Interaction between seemingly contradictory material carves paves the way for strangeness, ambiguity, and humor.
Throughout the work, listeners zoom in on this environment and out again, as it grows and changes. At times, they witness the entire environment functioning in equilibrium, and at other moments, the ungainly growth of a singular being. In imagining this errant ecosystem, I reflect on the irrationality and playfulness of the environment that surrounds us.
- Lauren Siess

artwork - "Asparagus," Suzan Pitt

in disoriented gardens, invasive wax eats flowers - for ensemble mosaik

writing this piece coincided with a moment in my life where waiting has been the sole intention of my everyday.
I haven't seen my parents for a very long time due to the political climate and have reached a surreal point in my life i which my every day is filled with waiting. the waiting has brought a sense of immobility and stuckness accompanied with anger.
this waiting no longer contains a peaceful negative space but a sense of overflowing emotions with numbness.

premiered by SMASH duo at Gaudeamus festival, 2025
                                    
         


10 am is when you come to me

www.johnpax.com/quiet
a 45-minute work in 7 sections for clarinet, trombone, tuba, violin, viola, violoncello, and 12 channel electronics

stereo mix of 12 channel electronic version with spatialised ensemble, recorded live at Harvard University, May 25th 2019

performed by WasteLAnd
Curt Miller (clarinet), Andrew McIntosh (violin), Linnea Powell (viola), Ashley Walters (violoncello), Matt Barbier (trombone), Luke Storm (tuba), and Nicholas Deyoe (conductor)

audio engineer 
James Bean

recording engineer
Anthony DiBartolo

recorded voice and clarinets
Madison Greenstone

live electronics
John Pax

mix & master
John Pax at HUSEAC

excerpt from the center of "Where the Quiet Rests" (2019)

www.johnpax.com/sextet

recorded live at the Bludenz tage zeitgemäßer Musik, November 20 2016

performed by Curious Chamber Players
Dries Tack (clarinet), Anna Christensson (grand piano), Martin Welander (bass drum), Frederik Munk Larsen (nylon stringed guitar), Karin Hellqvist (violin), and My Hellgren (violoncello)

10 am is when you come to me

Golnaz Shariatzadeh