Commissioned by Stephen Ai
Supported by Harvard University’s Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund
Dedicated to Stephen, Annie, and Timo, with love

Premiered by Maxwell Hinton, November 14, 2023 in Taplin Auditorium at Princeton University

When I first encountered the sprawling and obsessive beauty of Laurie Spiegel’s music, I was amazed by its experimentation, technical craft, and deeply realized spirituality. Most moving to me was how intensely alive it all felt despite being entirely electronic. Contemplative at turns and pulsatingly rhythmic at others, her work was suffused with an organic sense of discovery: listening to her music, I felt as though I was hearing a master improviser discover a new set. 

I myself frequently improvise at the keyboard as I compose. After playing for long enough, though, my jam sessions almost invariably return to the transparent harmonies and voicings of the church hymns I grew up accompanying. Despite their ascetic nature, these songs, too, felt alive to me. Their ritualistic manner, instead of alienating me, often invited me into a place of meditation. 

Hymns After Laurie Spiegel was written during a very emotionally tumultuous time. To ground myself during the composition process, I considered two hymns that have been especially meaningful to me - Abide With Me and Nearer, My God, to Thee - and sought to place them within the spacious grandeur of Spiegel’s cosmic soundscapes. This piece is dedicated with much gratitude to pianist and commissioner Stephen Ai, as well as my dear friends Annie Hart and Timo Andres who introduced me to Spiegel’s music in the first place. I have much love and admiration for all of them.

Chamber Music

Hymns After Laurie Spiegel, for solo piano

I took a song I used to play, on repeat, at the low point in my life, and I flipped it, chopping the lyrics in honor of the 2-year anniversary of the first healthy love-partnership I’ve ever been in. 

Kaella, “You are my center when I spin away.”  That means more to me than I can ever explain with words.  

I felt compelled to do it as a Fred again.. inspired homage, and titled it accordingly, as his music reminds me of us and these past two years of love and growth. 

And it’s 2 minutes long. All by design. 

Truthlive as Evan Jacob Phillips - ‘You Are My Center (Kaella’s Song) v1.3’

Free Download

You Are My Center (Kaella's Song) v1.3

"sear", premiered by Alarm Will Sound and Alan Pierson at Richardson Auditorium on March 21, 2023.

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen (or at the grill) cooking. It’s something I love to do for myself and others, whether I’m preparing meals for the week or hosting a gathering. In 2018, I read Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat from cover to cover. At the time, I was more passionate about eating than I was about cooking, but I was willing to learn. 

In the section of the book on Heat, the author talks about an event called the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction in which heat causes browning of proteins and sugars within ingredients. There are many ways to achieve the Maillard reaction, one of them being the searing method. Simply put, you prepare an extreme heat source (like a 700 degree skillet), you put a raw ingredient on the skillet (like a steak), and then the surface becomes deeply browned (and incredibly flavorful). A few drawbacks of this method include smoking up your kitchen, setting off the fire alarm, sweating profusely, but it’s worth it for the flavor (…sometimes…this is why I like the grill, even in the dead of winter).

sear is a piece based on extreme contrasts, with the idea of blistering heat in mind.

sear

Commissioned by Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival

Completed May 27, 2023
Premiered July 29, 2023 as part of Bang on a Can's Loud Weekend 2023 by Todd Reynolds (cond.), Claire Litwinowicz (vln.), Santiago Velo Quintairos (vla.), Elizabeth Kate (vc.), JP Bernabe (cb.), Abrielle Scott (fl.), Anne Pinkerton (ob.), Lucas Gianini (cl.), Will Pyle (sax), Maya Stone (bsn.), Betty Chen (pno.), and Ethan Strickland (perc.)

I love watching ensembles play. There’s always so much happening at any given moment: all this cuing and tuning and listening and watching. The complicated group dynamics going on can be dizzying to keep track of, and within larger chamber ensembles, there can be such an intricate web of communication that it feels like a miracle that pieces hold together at all. 

This kind of intimate group communication happens all the time in nature, and one of the most familiar is the flock. Flocks of birds have often been written about in a near-mythological manner - the massive patterns they form and their hypnotic motion have inspired studies and superstitions alike. They can grow to be tens of thousands strong, but despite all their apparent organization, flocks do not have a solitary leader. Instead, individuals hone in on the signals of their seven closest neighbors, and they move about together. Since each neighbor will have its own seven neighbors and so on, a signal from one end of the flock eventually ripples all the way to the other. 

Of a Feather is inspired by the whirling coordination of flocks. Gestures are imitated and scattered throughout the group a la flock communication, and much of the vocabulary of the piece is filled with rushing motion. The piece is mercurial and vibrant, moving rapidly through key areas while freely expanding and contracting its motifs. Ultimately, Of a Feather is a study in ensemble communication, treating its members equally as individuals and parts of a whole.

Many thanks to Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for commissioning the piece, and much gratitude to the fellows of the 2023 Bang on a Can Summer Festival for realizing it.

Of a Feather, for chamber ensemble

The Disarray was inspired by the self-taught abstract and street photographer Olga Karlovac, more specifically her second photography book of the same name, as well her as self-portraits. Her work strikes me as dark and unsettlingly beautiful, and it instills in me a sense of inner turmoil that takes over the outside world. In this piece I aimed to simply capture the feeling of profound grief and inescapable desolation that I find in her photography.

The Disarray

loadbang ensemble

Ty Boque, voice
Andrew Kozar, trumpet
William Lang, trombone
Adrián Sandí, bass clarinet

Niko Yamamoto, live modular synthesizer (YMA; all recordings sampled live from the ensemble)

Produced by New Music Brandeis 
Slosberg Recital Hall, March 23, 2024
Brandon Qi and Niko Yamamoto, recording engineers

ORDINARY ASTRONAUT; astronaut, every day (live; 2024)

Live DJ set recorded at Left Door SF on November 16th 2024.  This is a lounge set with a heavy jazz influence and proper OG Chicago-style house sound throughout.  Perfect for a car ride or to throw on at the gym or in the kitchen while you're cooking. 

REC 11.16.24 Left Door- Max Heegard Live Lounge Set

This work was inspired by Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, my former teacher Carlos
Sanchez-Gutierrez, and the latter’s reverence for this document and Klee’s work in general. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy wrote an eloquent introduction to the 1960 edition of the Sketchbook, where she describes Klee’s unique style as "pictorial composition that uses the identifiable natural shape as mediary." This piece for solo 37-reed sheng uses the sketchbook as inspiration for not only the musical motifs but additionally the way in which certain passages are notated. 

"Mediaries" was partially written during my time as an artist-in-residence at the Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina. It was written for Li-Chin Li as part of the Seed 2024 Virtual Composition Academy. The accompanying picture is from Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook.

Mediaries, for 37-reed sheng (2024)

WIP for Kenny-bo-benny

Shut up, Please?

This recording is of the premiere by Lori Freedman at Ithaca College's Hockett Recital Hall in Spring '17. Written for & dedicated to Lori with my deepest gratitude, STOCHASM features a modular form & explores compositional analogues to improvisation such as chance/indeterminacy, stochastic processes, and automatic writing.

STOCHASM for bass clarinet

Composer/Guitarist/Songwriter/Producer from Ithaca, NY.

Mediaries, for 37-reed sheng (2024)

Parker Callister

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