Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon fare...

TAMIYAMI (electronica?)

Ernest Rombout, oboe
impuls festival, Graz, February 2015

Après une lecture (2015) for oboe

Jesse Langen, guitar; Mabel Kwan, piano and toy piano; Meret Bitticks, piccolo; Shanna Gutierrez, bass flute

Ich ruf zu dir (I call to thee) is a musical collage in constant metamorphosis. The musical material begins with my own work then slowly incorporates two pieces by J.S. Bach, his church Cantata BWV 177, Ich ruf zu dir Herr Jesu Christ, first performed in Leipzig, July 6, 1732, and Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 from his Orgelbüchlein collection of 46 chorale preludes for organ composed from 1708-1717. The chorale preludes are a collection of organ music for church services, a treatise on composition, a religious statement and a pedagogical manual. Rolled chords heard in the guitar part are derived from the chords in the chorale. Rhythmic motives, gestures, and ornamentation are derived from the cantata. The kaleidoscopic and dense textures, and the rhythmically frenetic moments in a low register slowly traverse through rough terrain to reveal recognizable fragments of Bach’s works.  A more literal quotation of the organ chorale at the end with piccolo, bass flute and toy piano acts as a calming force, a call, perhaps from a lost child, is heard and answered.

Ich ruf zu dir for guitar and piano; piccolo, bass flute and toy piano

For solo female voice. Composed for and premiered by Nina Dante at Constellation, Chicago.

Text adapted from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen:


The sun was about to go down when she heard a rushing sound and saw six swans fly in through the window. Suddenly, their feathers came off like shirts and the girl recognized them as her brothers. She was happy and crawled out from beneath the bed. Crying, the little sister said, "Can you not be saved?" "They only way” they answered, “is for you to not speak or to laugh for six years, and in that time you would have to sew together six little shirts out of daisies for us. And if a single word were to leave your lips, all your work would be lost."
After the brothers had said this, they turned back into swans and flew out the window.
So the little girl climbed up a tree in the middle of the woods and began to sew. She could not speak with anyone, and she had no desire to laugh. She sat there, looking only at her work for one year, two years, three years, four years….

_______________________________________________

The old woman said, "My child, what have you done? Why did you pick the twelve white flowers? Those were your brothers, and now they’ve been transformed into ravens forever."

“The only way to redeem them is for you to remain silent for seven whole years. And If you speak a single word in the final hour of the seven years your brothers will be killed by that one word."
Then the girl climbed up a tall tree where she sat without speaking or laughing. And sat there year after year…

______________________________________________

“But I must be paid” said the witch  “And the price I demand for my draught is your voice, the best thing you possess”

‘but don’t worry, with your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely you can enchant a man’s heart. 

Then she cut off the mermaid’s tongue so she would ever speak again.




Tell, Monologue for Solo Female Voice

Recorded with the Blythwood Winds by Paul Talbott, August 2016.

"This piece is inspired by “The Formula,” an expansive mural underneath a rail overpass created by Toronto street artist Joel Richardson. The mural’s first iteration was unceremoniously buffed by the City of Toronto, partially due to its political nature – its anti-capitalist imagery, satirizing business and consumption culture, is quite clear. Despite this removal, the mural came back in bigger and better form: larger, more colourful, and even more scathing.

This piece, similarly, attempts to “buffer” an initial dissent, expressed as multiphonics, but these pervasive musical ideals are renewed with even more strength and clarity through an invasive, almost annoying profile of repetition and interruption. It also incorporates some of the numerical elements from the original mural, described as a “commentary on the mathematics of modern finance” through rhythmic and pitch relationships. Additional pitches are “grabbed” from multiphonics."



The Formula (wind quintet)

Performed by the UT Percussion Group - Lane Harder, conductor

A Killing Horizon is mathematically related to an event horizon of a black hole.  Named after Wilhelm Killing, a killing horizon is determined by the surface gravity of an object.  I have often composed motorhythmic pieces for percussion ensemble, always keeping the smallest pulse unit (the sixteenth note) at a constant tempo.  This piece, on the other hand, morphs many tempos into others, sometimes replacing one pulse unit with another.  There are small and large sections that repeat; theoretically, some of these sections could become infinite loops that constantly speed up to the tempo at which the speeding up began.  Some of the music, then, could remain in a constant state of speeding up and in a constant state of stasis.  This element of the piece was inspired by a remark made by Stephen Hawking who said that, if he could choose the method by which he would die, he would like to die traveling through a black hole because, as he crossed the event horizon, he would be able to see the past and the future at the same time.  Paradoxically, he added, this could not work because he would not have enough time to do both.  The sparse opening section uses a rhythmic canon that becomes a texture (in the tradition of Gorecki and Ligeti).  The second section uses the totalist technique of allowing the music in the foreground to “mash against the grid” of a constant pulse, though the pulse often disintegrates and reintegrates into the texture.  The final section (and climax) is drawn from the Native American drumming tradition of several drummers playing one large drum in unison.   

Killing Horizon (percussion septet)

Gilt (2018)

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on bandcamp:
https://isaacschankler.bandcamp.com/track/the-moonlight-sonata-but-the-bass-is-a-bar-late-and-the-melody-is-a-bar-early

sheet music:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/22sq0p19lundped/moonlate12102018.pdf?dl=0

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The Moonlight Sonata but the bass is a bar late and the melody is a bar early

performance by the University of Texas New Music Ensemble
Loren Welles, clarinet; Nick Tavani, violin; Alan Richardson, cello; Charlie Magnone, piano

Hearing Voices: II. Aria (2011) // chamber ensemble

Pierce Gradone’s music has been performed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas; and has been featured in festivals as diverse as the Florida State University Festival of New Music, Red Note New Music Festival, Artosphere Festival, and the Great American Brass Band Festival. His works have been performed by Pacifica Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Line Upon Line Percussion, Ursa Ensemble, the Sacramento Youth Symphony, the Parhelion Trio, Concert Black, the McCain Duo, the Peterson/Hayes Duo, and many others. As both a composer and educator, he has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Sacramento Youth Symphony and as a guest composer at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He holds degrees in composition from Florida State University (B.Mus.) and the University of Texas at Austin (M.Mus.), and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. For more information, visit www.piercegradone.com. 


Hearing Voices: II. Aria (2011) // chamber ensemble

Pierce Gradone

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