Completed September 11, 2023
Premiered by JACK Quartet in Taplin Auditorium, November 29, 2023

Written for JACK Quartet

The grisaille technique has always interested me for the challenges posed to its practitioners: the technique limits painters to monochromatic palettes. Beginning as underpainting for stained glass, grisaille eventually flourished as an entire form of its own in the 16th century. Today, art historians depict it as a singularly rigorous exercise that forced artists to more carefully consider their brushstrokes and composition in the absence of color. 

Many of my teachers spoke similarly about writing for string quartet: a practice that forced artists to write with economy and intention within a limited color palette. This piece, Panes of Grisaille, is a study in timbre, seeking to pull as much depth and energy from its homogeneous instrumentation as possible. The music leans heavily into sounds and tunings that are only possible on strings, ricocheting through as many techniques as possible while barreling forward with incessant momentum. 

I owe much thanks to the astounding musicians of JACK Quartet, to whom this piece is dedicated. I only dared write something so frankly demanding knowing it would be in their hands.

Panes of Grisaille, for string quartet

"Through us from which language speaks" for large ensemble
Composed by Sofia Ouyang

Michelle Di Russo, conductor
International Ensemble Modern Academy:
Phoebe Bognár, flute and bass flute
Jeanne Degos, oboe
Drew Gilchrist, clarinet and bass clarinet
Jens Bracher, trumpet
Michael Martinez, trombone
Jaroslav Novosyolov, piano
Ying-Chen Chuang, percussion
Aya Masui, percussion
Miria Sailer, violin
Veronika Paleeva, violin
Miho Kawai, viola
Katarina Leskovar, cello
Riverton Alves, double bass

Performed at KKL Luzern as part of Lucerne Festival Composer Seminar final concert in August 2023.

Through us from which language speaks

through depths and shadows - for sinfonietta (2023).

through depths and shadows continues my recent exploration of the relationship between music and the visual arts. through depths and shadows was inspired by Jackson Pollock's fascinating and atypical piece, The Deep, which I saw this summer at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Unlike many of his athletic and excited “drip paintings,” this one seemed to have a much more measured and slower energy. The painting layers large swaths of colors on the canvas—while also maintaining distinct lines, gestures, and shapes—allowing for the various shades to make their presence known or hidden depending on the other colors present. My experience of this piece was very different from what I usually experience with Pollock; rather than experiencing dynamic and vibrant motion across the painting, I felt like I was continually sucked into the canvas and attempting to find myself within the layers of the “deep.” Looking at this painting became an experience of continual exploration and uncovering, in a way that is analogous to exploring the many layers of one's self. through depths and shadows is not a literal representation of the painting but an abstraction of both Pollock’s materials—his modes of layering, sporadic drips, and gradual unveiling—and my experience of continually searching within the shadings and underlayers. through depths and shadows was written with admiration for the incredible virtuosi of the Grossman Ensemble.

Commissioned by the Grossman Ensemble and the Center for Contemporary Music at the University of Chicago. Premiered December 2023 with the Grossman Ensemble and conductor, Georgia Mills. Recording Engineer, Chris Willis.

through depths and shadows - for sinfonietta

small tenderness for vocal sextet and string quartet (2023)

Commissioned by the BSO and Joyce Linde in honor of Ellen Highstein

Conducted by Stefan Asbury

Soprano, Bridget Esler
Mezzo-sopranos, Bella Adamova and Gabriela Barkidjia
Tenors, Bradyn Debysingh and Nathaniel Bear
Bass-baritone, Jacob Heacock

Violins, Sage Park and Tiffany Wee
Viola, Elizabeth Doubrawa, viola
Cello, Benjamin Fryxell

small tenderness for vocal sextet and string qurtet (2023)

Emiliano Gavito, flute
Adam Starkie, clarinet
Sophie Wahlmüller, viola
Christian Lozano Sedano, electric guitar

Audio by David Bird

Program Note:

This piece’s title is culled from an eponymous work by the 20th century Catalan visual artist Joan Miró. I fell in love with Miró’s style of painting during my elementary school art class. We were assigned various exercises where we had to attempt to emulate salient characteristics of certain painters, using their work as a model for how to craft our own pieces. With Miró, I had so much fun trying to recreate (admittedly inexpertly) what I saw as bizarre, alien, stick-figure like beings in these swirlingly otherworldly environments. Revisiting his work now, I am able to more deeply appreciate the sense of mystery, abstraction, and intense spirituality in these paintings—both ancient and modern-seeming all at once. And yet, I still find them deeply playful and childlike as well, full of joy and unfettered exuberance. 

In my piece, I try to capture the experience of looking at this strikingly beautiful painting for the first time and gradually taking it all in in; first, as an incredibly rich and colorful composite, then honing in on specific shapes. Because of the abstract nature of the painting’s style, the viewer is invited to entrain and re-entrain to it visually. In the same way, the piece begins by presenting all of the musical material at once in a wild set of swirls and shimmers, and gradually zooms in on specific motives and interrogates them until, at the close, the composite of all these motives are viewed in a new light.

Ladders Cross The Blue Sky In A Wheel Of Fire (2024): for Collective Lovemusic

Studio version of the first movement of Following and Flocking and interactive audio-visual piece co-composed and performed by Charlotte Mundy.

Interactive visuals, and live electronics by me
Vocal part - Charlotte Mundy

Full performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4dbT443MwE

Following And Flocking (2023) I.

Written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz

Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble

O lente, lente nuit... o mon fusil si lourd... (for orchestra, 2024)
Title translation: O slow, slow night... o my gun so heavy...
Title drawn from the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire

Premiered by the Yale Philharmonia on the New Music New Haven series, December 12th, 2024, Conducted by Ezra Calvino

Program notes:
O lente, lente nuit… o mon fusil si lourd… (O slow, slow night… o my gun so heavy…) is a tone poem for large orchestra. Embracing internal contradictions, the piece explores the cohabitation of diverse musical materials including prolonged and ever-shifting chromatic clusters, teeming nightscapes, and soaring melodies, among other sonic characters.

O lente, lente nuit... o mon fusil si lourd... (for orchestra, 2024)

Performance by Mycelium New Music 

For pierrot ensemble plus amplified percussion

ASMR Music (Mycelium New Music)

O Chest Pain

glimmersongs (2020) for pierrot quintet

glimmersongs unfolds in a delicate, dream-like atmosphere, rippling like light reflected on water. From the resonance of the highest range of the piano, the strings emerge like piercing glints of light. From this fused sound, the ensemble begins to crack apart: instruments pass around runs and musical lines in fierce orchestrational games, and a rhythmic, angular music punctuates the ends of phrases. Despite its textural variety, the piece is motivically minimal, using only two tiny musical cells: a sudden crescendo on a sustained note, and a 5-note line that tumbles downwards. From these two cells, the work organically grows from a ghostly, pale outline into a colorful dance. glimmersongs was commissioned by the Society of Composers, Inc. and ASCAP for the Texas New Music Ensemble in Spring 2020. 

Joshua Hong, conductor
Abby Easterling, flute/piccolo
Taylor Isberg, clarinet
Adam Woodward, violin
David Dietz, cello
Erberk Eryilmaz, piano

glimmersongs (2020) for pierrot quintet

Paul Novak

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