This is a collection of my piano preludes, a continual process of creating short piano pieces, each with an adjective to describe them. Every prelude was performed by the composer.

Muted

Vibrant

Banded One was originally written for Tenor, Harp, Celesta, and Cello, though the harp was replaced by piano in this recording.

Lucas Hernandez - Tenor
Andrew Chen - Piano
Rafe Schaberg - Celesta
Asher Kalfus - Cello

I found H.D's (Hilda Doolittle's) poems when looking to compose this song cycle and was struck by their delicate imagery, consistent tone, and dreamlike, distantly allegorical quality. The portrayal of nature in her poems as an emotional entity captured my imagination completely. H.D.'s nautre is tender, violent, mischievous, elemental, and hypnotizing all at once. I truly loved these poems, though at first they seemed too ephemeral and fleeting without much concrete material to hold onto whille setting them.
To remedy this, I enlisted the help of El Johnson, my twin sibling. El is a wonderful writer and person, and one of the few people I trust to talk about my music with when I am at the first stages of composition. I asked El to react to five of H.D.'s poems in whatever way they saw fit, the only caveat being that I could fragment the reactions and fit them within H.D.'s framework in a way that made sense musically. I then ordered the poems to create an emotional arc throughout the course of the cycle. 
Words that describe the arc of the piece are: release to compression to release, inaction to action to inaction, emptiness to density to emptiness, distance to closeness to distance, separated to integrated to separated. The exception to this arc is the poem The Pool, which centers the work as a moment of stillness, inquiry, and reflection within the denser center. It is also the only poem I asked El not to react to, and the title Banded One draws from here as well. I see the Banded One
as the object of inquiry, the mercurial and effervescent character that permeates the text.
The musical language in this cycle deals with the tension of opposites present in the arc of the piece, and explores the extremes of dense and sparse textures, as well as the areas that intersperse and meld the two. In the vocal writing, there is a push-and-pull between more speech-like, rhythmic setting, and a more lyrical approach. The cycle is 17 minutes in length.

Banded One

Earthwaves was commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for their 2023 student commissioning project. 

Performed by Jacob Gruss, Organist at the Brick Presbyterian Church.

Earthwaves is inspired by the poem "The Treasure" by Robinson Jeffers. Rather than programmatically set this poem, I gravitated more to the general perspective that the poem takes on, that of examining a human life from the scale of the universe. What strikes me about Jeffers' attitude is his ability to find comfort in this seemingly bleak, extremely macro, way of thinking. He finds beauty in the "flash of activity" that is a human life on this scale, and accepts this fleeting beauty rather than getting caught up on the brevity of it all. My piece reconciles this idea with the micro-reality of my lived experience, and attempts to confront Jeffers' treasure musically. In the musical language of this piece, there is a tension between mathematically produced music through the use of 12-tone techniques and my natural intuition as a composer, blending the scientific, cold universe with a creative humanity.

Earthwaves

This set of three pieces is part of an ongoing series of preludes for solo piano that I have been composing over the last few years. In these pieces, I explore new textures, ideas, and techniques in the most immediate way possible, through composing, practicing, and performing them myself. With this process, I feel freer to take more risks in the compositional process because I get to hear the compositional effects of my work right away. The first prelude explores line, melody, and distinct modes of harmonization such as hollow, high-register chords, chromatic, moving harmonies, and multidimensional rolled chords. The second prelude is livelier, focusing on textures and articulations that contrast quick figures with stasis, pointillistic clusters in the upper range, and distinct motives that contrast in rhythm and articulation. The third prelude is focused on color and form, extremes in register, developing my harmonic language using dissonant, clustered chords.

These preludes were performed by the composer.

III. Largo

II. Con Moto

I. Lento

Monument is inspired by my family’s relocation from Pennsylvania to Ireland, and the distinct natural environments, mythologies, and histories of these places. The outer movements evoke memories from these two locations. Levee recalls a childhood hike I took with my family in the Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylvania to a near-mythical monument—a stone pillar engraved with Chinese writing. We had heard stories that was it built to honor laborers, or to serve as a gravestone for a wealthy landowner, but no one had definitive answers. The excitement of this mystery filled my head, though when we finally reached this mythical pillar, it was revealed to merely be a garden ornament lost in the underbrush. Pilgrimage is inspired by an attempted climb of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, Ireland. According to legend, it was on the summit of this mountain that St. Patrick fasted for 40 days, ringing his bell to banish the demons that were tormenting him. We never reached the top, exhausted by the near-vertical ascent and the fatigue from days of travel, so the mystery of this monument still lives on. The interlude acts as a glue between the two outer movements, meditating compositionally on the first and foreshadowing the second.

This piece was performed by the composer at Distler Performance Hall, Somerville MA.


Monument (2025)

Landmake is inspired by the human and geologic processes that shape the landscape, exploring the distinct timescales and intentionalities inherent in what—or who—is leaving a mark on the environment. Tectonic chords, creeping lines, and driving rhythms evoke these often-violent cycles of change, with moments of intimate stillness that recenter the listener as a witness to these cycles.

This piece was recorded by the New England Conservatory Philharmonia

Landmake (2025)

I am usually a linear composer, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end, with an idea of form and structure that crystalizes into a single, unchanging arc about halfway through the process. This piece was different. I went back and deleted sections, added sections in, and reorganized the exposition-to-climax-to-resolution flow multiple times. This resulted in a form that could be explained in several ways (quasi-sonata form, ABA, ABAB), though that none of those explanations I feel fully capture the piece. These possible forms are “ghosts,” remnants of previous, discarded trains of thought that now hold only partial sway over the piece.

This piece was premiered by the Lamnth ensemble at Jordan Hall.

Ghosts (2025)

Owen Johnson is a composer and pianist currently studying at the New England Conservatory and Tufts University. He focuses heavily on orchestral music and on exploring the relationship between music and external art.

Owen Johnson

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