Thank you!  I'd be glad to email you a score if you're interested.

In the mountains north of Osaka, just off the trail which leads to Mino waterfall, stands the temple Saiko-ji.  Each year in the early autumn, people gather there to pity the short lives of insects and hold a memorial service for them, called mushikuyo.

Mushikuyo, for chamber orchestra (live, Grinnell College Symphony Orchestra)

Sean Sheperd
Concerto for ensemble (extrait)
Ensemble intercontemporain 
Matthias Pintscher, direction 
Créé et enregistré le 21.04.2015 à la Philharmonie de Paris

Sean Sheperd, Concerto for ensemble (extrait)

for string quartet
Live recording on May 10, 2016 Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, NJ
Composer: Juri Seo
Performer: Jack Quartet
Recording engineer: Andres Villalta
www.juriseomusic.com/respiri

Respiri - in memoriam Jonathan Harvey (2016)

Illinois Modern Ensemble, Niko Yamamoto (cond.)

November 16, 2016

on view of clouds (2016)

Illinois Modern Ensemble, Stephen Taylor, conductor.  8 February 2017.
Sonic Illinois Festival, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Cold Horizon, for chamber orchestra, grew out of a piece for vibraphone and piano entitled Cold, which I wrote in Paris in January 2001.  The basic musical ideas and icy, shimmering instrumental colors of Cold have been stretched out into a supple, continuously flowing, and dramatic form, and colored as if seen at twilight under a fading and distant light.  

In a sense, Cold Horizon explores resonance as a model or metaphor for developing musical gestures and forms.  Often resonance is used to create a sense of perspective, reminding us that music takes place not only in time but also in space. Musical lines that are slightly out of alignment shadow each other as they seem to echo in a reverberant space.  Similarly, rhythmic processes and subtle changes of orchestration create the illusion of musical gestures that approach or recede.  The opening of the piece, a quasi-Doppler effect, is one example.  Another typical idea is the filtering of complex harmonies into simple intervals, floating points of stability that form a thread of consonance woven across the span of the piece.  The use of quarter tones blurs the line between harmony and instrumental timbres to create a sense of depth and shadow against the well-tempered, “normal” pitches.

Cold Horizon has passed through a series of incarnations, beginning with an initial sketch premiered in 2002 by the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence under Sylvio Gualda at the Centre Acanthes contemporary music festival in France.  The complete piece was premiered in 2003 by the University of California, Berkeley Symphony conducted by David Milnes, followed by a revised and expanded version performed by the Minnesota Orchestra at their Composer Institute in 2006 with David Alan Miller.  I revised the piece one last time in early 2017 for this performance, making some minor adjustments to its pacing, clarifying the orchestration and several harmonic details, and pruning back some pretentious complexity in the notation.

Cold Horizon (2017 Version)

A live recording of Bond Music performed by Roomful of Teeth and the Boston Children's Chorus a the Eastern ACDA Plenary Concert February, 2016. Sander's Theatre, Harvard University.

Trevor L. Weston's Album

bond music

vi (2010) for percussion and piano
Mark Eichenberger, percussion
Ju Ri Seo, piano

vi (2010)

Hubert Ho's (USA) contribution to Prague Modern "Inspired by Borges" Project - The Garden of Forking Paths for small ensemble (2012) // premiered by Prague Modern with Marian Lejava conducting, Prague Conservatory Hall, April 17th 2012.

Hubert Ho: The Garden of Forking Paths_live

Michael Lynn & Kathie Stewart - Hotteterre Flutes at 392
Flutes by Rod Cameron

John Thow - Duet

“Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.”
 - Naomi Shihab Nye

Have you ever sought anonymity in a crowded streets of the city? Tried to blend in with the wallpaper at a party? Thought about going out, but couldn’t bear the thought of being seen? There is an art to remaining in the shadows, to fading from view, to disappearing completely. 
This piece was composed for and dedicated to Ellen Ruth Rose (viola) and Meredith Clark (harp). It is a very quite piece. Throughout the piece, each instrument tries to hide behind the other. The take turns fading in and out of the texture. Occasionally, they blend into one another. The starting note takes on different shades and textures, before dissipating into trills and losing its focus. A little more than half way through the piece, a short, simple, sentimental passage is exposed, like a tender memory. The simple counterpoint of this passage actually underpins much of the piece as a whole, even though one is unlikely to hear it. While it does its best to hide itself throughout, in this moment it is starkly exposed. One might consider this an authentic moment that has done its utmost to elude exposure—not unlike how we shield our own authentic, most vulnerable selves from public perception in preliminary social engagements. 
The piece trails of with a series of slow harp arpeggios and with the viola sustaining long single notes. It fades and eventually evaporates leaving the first note of the piece lingering as a harmonic played by the viola.

the art of disappearing (2020)

The chamber orchestra version of Flying Fish. Live Recording of the Summer 2019 Dream Unfinished concert.

The Dream Unfinished, July 11 2019

Flying Fish

The music of Reynold Tharp has been described as “tone painting at its most adroit” evoked with “a prismatic palette” (Financial Times), and “gorgeous…a sensuous evocation of colors and atmospheres…. Not content to write textures that are merely interesting or surprising, Tharp concocts sounds that are also ravishing and intoxicating” (San Francisco Classical Voice). The New York Times called one piece “a winner” and added, “Elegant, airy and weightless figurations for an octet of strings, winds, brasses, piano and percussion were a stylish and fitting homage to Ligeti. The music also made you eager to hear more from Mr. Tharp….” 

Tharp’s music has been performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia by groups such as the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra chamber players, New Juilliard Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Minnesota Orchestra, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Dal Niente, Boston Modern Orchestra Project club concerts, Ensemble Diffraction, Orchestre Lyrique de Region Avignon-Provence, and the Nieuw Ensemble.  Recent highlights include the Hong Kong premiere of his music, the Korean premiere of his music at the Sejong Chamber Hall in Seoul, and a piano trio premiered by the Earplay ensemble in San Francisco in 2014. From the Financial Times: "Of the evening’s two premieres, the more memorable was Reynold Tharp’s Piano Trio, which may, all by itself, restore the primacy of melody to the chamber music format. The composer may evoke influences from the past in this richly harmonised opus, but he speaks in his own voice." About his piece A Backward Glance, the Nieuwsblad van het Norden wrote, "To me, the most exciting part of the evening was A Backward Glance by Reynold Tharp. With its more symphonic timbres, wide spans and beautiful rhythmic momentum, you could hear long lines and melodious lyricism even in the fragmentation"  In 2012, Albany Records released a CD by the Aletheia Duo entitled "Song of the Black Swan" of music inspired by nature, which includes his piece Chaparral.  This recording is available on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Song-Black-Swan-Aletheia-Duo/dp/B007EBZ1DY/

Cold Horizon (2017 Version)

Reynold Tharp

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