prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

I’m fascinated by prismatic musical forms: structures that continuously refract and reflect, kaleidoscopically shifting and evolving but at the same time static and unchanging. I imagine a light shined through a series of crystals and mirrors, shimmering into colorful spectra and bouncing in unexpected directions. Similarly, prisms and mirrors maps a single idea through a series of musical refractions and reflections, a set of continuous variations which is by turns textural, rhythmic, and melodic. To me, this concept of musical form resonates with the beautifully collaborative nature of writing music, in which all ideas are continually refracted throughout the course of notation, interpretation, and performance. prisms and mirrors musically enacts this refraction, with all the fragility, intricacy, and color of a prism refracting light. prisms and mirrors was commissioned by the Boston New Music Initiative as part of their 2020-21 season. It is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano.

Performed December 2021 by Blackbox Ensemble
Leonard Bopp, conductor
Annie Nikunen, flute
Tyler Neidermayer, clarinet
Teagan Faran, violin
Jordan Bartow, cello
JC (Jon Clancy), percussion
Jixue Yang, piano

prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

Grey Fireworks, for violin and piano (2022)

Duo Concertante (after Helen Frankenthaler)

First performance on the 1st of September 2022 at Lukaskirche Kirchensaal, Luzern, Switzerland by Samuel Nebyu (violin) and Charles Abramovic (piano) as a part of the Summer Festival of Lucerne Festival 2022

Grey Fireworks is a work that is a response to a painting of the same name by the American abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. The composition, like the painting, moves quickly through various moods, colors, and gestures. The immense motion, choice of colors, and seemingly improvisational burst of bright hues of the painting enabled the composition’s structure and capricious quality that certain gestures have in the work. Grey Fireworks was commissioned by the I & I Foundation for
Samuel Nebyu (violin) and Charles Abramovic (piano) as part of the Summer Festival of Lucerne Festival 2022.

Grey Fireworks, for violin and piano (2022) | Samuel Nebyu (violin)

"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

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

Program Note:

OSCILLATIONS, for large ensemble and electronics, plays with color and collage, juxtaposing different textures and materials on a constantly shifting sonic canvas. As the title suggests, this piece explores fluctuations between states, expanding the concept of a waveform - a core electronic sound source for the piece - into a greater formal and temporal argument. Defined as periodic movement between two points, waveforms are the building blocks of sound synthesis. In essence, sound synthesis could be described as series of interconnected oscillations, where complex sounds are produced from the combination and modulation of simple sounds. This core concept was my guiding influence throughout the composition of this piece, where fluctuations in parameters like texture and tempo are simultaneous with those in the electronics, creating another kind of sound synthesis between acoustic and electronic components in the piece. 

OSCILLATIONS feature a range of electronic sounds, from sine tone clusters and frequency modulation, to prerecorded processed sounds that act as a halo around the acoustic ensemble. The piece also embeds electronic sound sources within the ensemble, such as the ground hums produced via bass amps in the percussion set ups, and the use of electronic mechanisms like Ebows and electric fans in the harp and piano parts, furthering the shapeshifting role of the electronics.  On a macro scale, this piece oscillates between different textures, tempos, and colors, with varied electronics functioning as a glue, or collaging agent between parts. The instrumentalists weave their parts together to form composite lines, creating a jagged and episodic counterpoint that is frequently interrupted. Taken together, this combination of contrapuntal line, polyphonic noise, and ticking rhythmic vignettes, weave a vivid and varied tapestry, full of fluctuations.

This piece was commissioned by the Grossman Ensemble for premier on March 7th, 2025 under Conductor David Fulmer at the University of Chicago.

OSCILLATIONS for large ensemble, modular synthesizer, and electronics

Reflective Contours - for reed quintet (2025)

Reflective Contours responds to the relation of two primary materials in Norman Lewis’ painting, Street Musicians. In this painting, the central foreground consists of a collection of jagged shapes and calligraphic lines combining bright colors and dark shadings. Surrounding this exists a hazy framing, which consists of largely the same color palette but as greyed and blurred clouds. I am captivated by the collective and playful energy in the central material that seems to recede to the outer edges of the misty texture. In my experience of the painting, the tender framing quells the energy of the central activity with a gentle and reflective hue, while the central motion gives a buoyancy to the haziness. Thinking about the collective activity in everyday musicmaking, in Reflective Contours, I wanted to highlight the virtuosity of the quintet by creating a web of interweaving lines in both movements; sharp and angular in the first movement and resonant and tender in the second movement. These two characters inform the experience of the other, echoing on my experience of Lewis’ painting. Reflective Contours was written with admiration for the Akropolis Reed Quintet and the RED NOTE Music Festival.

Premiered in March 2025 by the Akropolis Reed Quintet at Illinois State University. 
Tim Gocklin, Oboe
Kari Landry, Clarinet
Matt Landry, Saxophone
Ryan Reynolds, Bassoon
Andrew Koeppe, Bass Clarinet

prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

Paul Novak

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