"Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko" (2024) for solo piano
by Patrick Holcomb

"Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko" © 2024 by N. Patrick Holcomb. All rights reserved.

Program Note:

In writing Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko (2024), I took as my point of departure Darius Milhaud’s Tango des Fratellini and Alexander Archipenko’s Carrousel Pierrot (1913). Tango des Fratellini, an extract from Milhaud’s ballet Le Bœuf sur le toit (1919–20), is based on Tristeza de caboclo (1919) by Brazilian composer Marcelo Tupinambá. My piece weaves together fragments of both Milhaud’s and Tupinambá’s material into a frenetic and off-kilter dance that suggests Archipenko’s clown-turned-carousel spinning out of control.

Composed on the occasion of Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, November 8, 2024–March 9, 2025.

Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko (2024) for solo piano

Patrick Holcomb (b. 1996) is a composer based on Long Island. A member of Mensa since age nineteen, Holcomb seeks to write music that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging.  In his compositions, he makes frequent use of mensuration canons and ratios that govern recursive rhythmic and pitch relationships. He cites the time he spent studying Hindustani (North Indian) music and performing tabla and Indian harmonium under the guidance of Denise Nuttall (a student of Zakir Hussain) as one of his largest compositional influences.

Holcomb’s recent compositional honors include the 2022 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize, a 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a 2021 American Prize in Composition, and a 2020 BMI Student Composer Award. His solo piano pieces Rapture After Schoenberg and Kandinsky and Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko were composed on the occasion of Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, which showed from November 8, 2024 through March 9, 2025 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition to concert music, Holcomb also composes for visual media. His score for the 1925 silent documentary Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life accompanied the film during its showings at the Museum of Modern Art in October and November 2023 as a part of the series Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution, 1925–1979. His music has also been featured at the Aspen Music Festival And School (in 2025), the ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer Grant Project (in 2023), the American Composers Orchestra EarShot New Music Readings (in 2022), June in Buffalo (in 2022), the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop (in 2022), the Bowdoin International Music Festival (in 2021), the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival (in 2019), and Connecticut Summerfest (in 2017 and 2018).

Holcomb earned his PhD in Composition from the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music, which he attended as a Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull University Fellow, in 2025. He also received an MM in Music Composition and an MM in Music Scoring for Visual Media from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2021. Holcomb completed his undergraduate studies at Ithaca College, from which he graduated top of his class in the School of Music (now a part of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance) with a BM in Music Composition in 2018. His primary teachers included Claude Baker, Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, Larry Groupé, Robert Morris, Eugene O’Brien, Evis Sammoutis, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Tom Schneller, Aaron Travers, Dana Wilson, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.

In addition to composing, Holcomb is also a passionate educator. He is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Hofstra University.

Profile photo by Meredith Hart.

Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko (2024) for solo piano

Patrick Holcomb, composer