Echo Flute was written for the Empyrean Ensemble with Tod Brody on flute. This recording is from the premiere at UC Davis on February 12, 2023.

Echo Flute is an instruction: echo the flute! That simple directive encapsulates the ensemble’s role, realized in various styles, textures, and moods. There is no meter, no beat, and no conductor. Each musician plays in free rhythm, subtly adjusting their timing to stay just behind, and sometimes ahead of, the solo flute. The idea of staying loosely tethered to a leader was influenced by the unmetered textures of pathetan in traditional Javanese gamelan. The beautiful resonance of the UC Davis Pitzer Center concert hall was the inspiration for the initial concept of quiet echoes.

Echo Flute is composed for solo flute with open instrumentation. Musicians make decisions regarding register, timbre, and timing. Echo Flute was composed on request from the Empyrean Ensemble. Thanks to Sam Nichols and the musicians for making this project possible.

Echo Flute

Reverent Murmurs was written for Sarah Cahill and Eric Zivian, commissioned by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. The work serves as a companion piece to Olivier Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen. With Messiaen's monumental work in mind, I composed a quiet prelude (or postlude) to place the listener in a relaxed state of concentration, to focus the mind for the larger work to come.

When composing, I drew influence from the tradition of preludes and postludes in Javanese gamelan, known as pathetan, which accompany larger, more substantial works. Pathetan are considered small pieces in their own right, although they never exist in isolation. As preludes they foster the proper atmosphere for the upcoming work; as postludes they provide a sublime end to a musical suite.

In Reverent Murmurs, a gently shifting fog of notes fills the space and acts as a backdrop for fleeting visions, or memories, of Messiaen's music. These brief murmurs are made of tiny flecks of music from passages within Visions de l'Amen, blended together, appearing in a flash, and disappearing just as quickly.

Reverent Murmurs

For flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello. Performed by the Empyrean Ensemble on May 20, 2018.

This piece is about "aural gazing", a short listen to a sonic object that twists and turns and rearranges itself. The music is self-propelled but without any intended direction. It's wandering music for lost souls.

All in a Gaze

String Trio: Violin, Viola, Bass
Luminous Harmony (2019) is a world of soft sounds and suspended chords. I wanted to create a musical world that forever stays soft and slow but always changes size, shape, and color.

I wrote this piece for my wife Emily. It was played during our wedding ceremony by three good friends, Chris Castro, Kurt Rohde, and Elliot Cless.

Luminous Harmony

Piet's Keys is a solo piano work inspired by the artist Piet Mondrian. Mondrian's paintings, with their intensely unadorned spaces, helped me capture a musical austerity I've long searched for. In the piece, I articulate only slow movements and simple musical shapes, peering into similarly unadorned sound spaces that slowly breathe and settle. I use a minimal palette of harmonies, à la Mondrian's limited color and shape palette. The occasional wobbling of notes, a kind of glacial tremolando, most often in thirds in the right hand, is a subtle nod to boogie-woogie, Mondrian's favorite music.

During this pandemic I found some relief in writing and playing this piece at home, peering through these quiet windows of sound for a simpler world. I hope this informal recording of me playing on my out of tune piano reflects some of that spirit.

Piet's Keys

Phil Acimovic is a composer in Easthampton, MA.

If you'd like to perform my music, please contact me through my website below:

Phil Acimovic

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