that in shadow or moonlight rises
for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, classical guitar, violin, cello, bass

premiere performance by USC Thornton Edge; Donald Crockett, conductor

that in shadow or moonlight rises

A quintet I wrote last school year, this piece is a romance of sorts and is dedicated to my wonderful Cassidy. I wrote it with her voice in mind and I was trying to imagine something that would suite her voice well.

Special thanks to everyone who helped make this piece a reality including Cassidy Goldblatt (soprano), Emily Camras (cello), Zan Berry (cello), Katelyn Hoag (viola), Amy Tan (viola), Azariah Tan (piano), Phoebe Wu (piano), Christopher Weiss (waterphone), Chris Schaublin (recording engineer), Emma Azelborn (recording engineer), and Peter Littlejohn (recording engineer).  

regeneration

“Barnstorming” was a bizarre fad of the 1920s, where skilled pilots would use old WWI biplanes to travel around the Midwest, landing in random farms.  There they would charge the locals for airplane rides, and perform thrilling airshows.  Much like traveling circuses, these barnstormers only stayed in any given place for a short while, and their arrivals were tremendously exciting events for the culturally and technologically reclusive farmer audiences.  These airshows were tremendously gripping, but were also excessively dangerous.  Some of the stunts they performed were barrel rolls, flips, dives, wing walking (walking on the wings of a moving plane), midair plane transfers, and even playing tennis on the wings of a moving plane.  Often these barnstormers were, naturally, injured of killed doing these stunts.  The strange and ridiculous juxtaposition of the exciting thrills and tremendous danger is the main impetus for this piece.

The music opens with a terrifying and visceral growl, signifying the engine of the plane starting up.  After taking to the air, we are abruptly introduced to some exciting popular ragtime music, soon to be joined by some jarring dissonances.  Quickly and with agility, we move from style to style, tempo to tempo, interspersed with exciting flips and stunts.  After a return to our ragtime theme joined by several other styles vying for our attention, we finally enter clear skies, and come to a glorious climax.  However, this does not last long, as very soon after our plane stalls, and we come crashing down to earth.

I have always been interested, fascinated, and tickled by polystylism.  From Ives to Schnittke to Zorn, I believe that the intrinsic humor in the incongruity of it is alone worth pursuing it for.  While I have always used such techniques in my music, with this piece I go all out.  I was aiming for a ridiculous mix of styles nestled somewhere in between Gershwin, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, and Carl Stalling.

This work is dedicated to my nephew, Ethan Browne.


Barnstorming Season for Symphony Orchestra

A trio for flute, clarinet, and piano. Composed for and read by the Trillium Ensemble.

A Call To Prayer (Read by Trillium Ensemble)

A mock recording of my brand new and original marching show!  Some of the flute parts got cut off in some spots, but still sounds great!

Destinations (Flawed)

Tinderbox (Live at AMPL)

Text by William Carlos Williams ("Epitaph").

An old willow with hollow branches 
slowly swayed his few high gright tendrils 
and sang: 

Love is a young green willow 
shimmering at the bare wood's edge. 

Electric Epitaph (Basement Session)

This idea came to me in a dream…
¡DALE!

G.F. Händel feat. Pitbull - Hallelujah Chorus (Reggaeton Remix)

A never before heard Stephen Sondheim song cut from the workshop of Assassins. Orchestrated and debuted for full symphony orchestra at his request on 11/7/16. Sung by Raul Esparza.

The Flag Song by Stephen Sondheim (CUT SONG from Assassins)

Recording from the world premiere performance on October 27, 2016 in Bloomington, IN. 

Evan De Long and Leigha Amick, violin
Yonsung Lee, viola
Eliza Bracken, cello

I started murmurs and murmurations in the early days of November 2014, in the midst of a period of tumultuous change in my life. I completed it in October 2016, nearly two years later, on the brink of yet another seismic shift. During this long incubation period, spanning an epoch of incredible personal and artistic growth, the piece has collected and synthesized an enormous number of ideas and concepts. It grapples with shifting paradigms of control and freedom between composer, performer, and process; it references, reimagines, and occasionally refutes a wide spectrum of contemporary composition techniques, yet folds them into a cohesive whole that feels true to my own musical voice. Ultimately, murmurs and murmurations is a series of emotional and conceptual snapshots, told in the music of a place beyond words: part memoir, part experiment… part something else entirely.

1. flock together

Jóhann Schram Reed, bass-baritone
Taylor Chan, piano
Recorded live in performance June 8, 2019 at the Center for New Music, San Francisco, CA
Full text: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi…red-prufrock

--

"Let us go, then, you and I," beckons the opening line of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (1915). The journey that invitation spurs, guided by the titular J. Alfred Prufrock, winds through the sitting parlors and smog-filled streets of Edwardian London, and through the innermost thoughts and fears of Prufrock himself.

The poem is a study in contradictions. It is a heroic epic written about a deeply unheroic man-- vain, self-loathing, and cautious to a fault-- lamenting the impossibility of the epic in modern life. Banal and even grotesque turns of phrase appear next to heartachingly beautiful ones, woven together with allusions to Shakespeare and Dante. Above all, Prufrock obsesses over his senescence and the eventual approach of death-- yet the poet (then signing his name T. Stearns Eliot) wrote the bulk of the poem at the age of 22. Prufrock is a spectre of what Eliot himself fears he may become-- a miserable, aging man whose life is measured and revised so carefully that he talks himself out of art, love, and happiness-- dying as alone and forgotten as he was in life.

I hope that I have done this masterpiece justice.

--

This song cycle would not exist without the incredible talent and support of Jóhann Schram Reed. He is without a doubt one of the finest musicians I have ever worked with, and I am grateful to call him a mentor, a colleague, and a friend.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Part II (LIVE)

Composer, mezzo-soprano, and extremely minor Twitter celebrity. Refuses to feel guilty about how much she loves Gilbert and Sullivan and the color pink.

1. flock together

Patricia Wallinga

Related tracks