Yarn/Wire
New Music Brandeis - March 2022

Russell Greenberg, Sae Hashimoto, percussion
Laura Barger, Julia Den Boer, piano

Thank you, James Praznik, recording engineer

memory-palace: Quilts for San Francisco (2022)

Shepherd Symphony Orchestra at Rice University
Jerry Hou, conductor

SOUND.FIELD (2020) - live

Empyrean 1/05

Linea Negra for solo marimba

The Nameless Path is a metaphor for how the piece was composed.  I began with a relatively clear idea of what
I thought I wanted to happen in the piece, but at a certain point, I found myself in a place I wasn't expecting.  It wasn't a bad place, and truth be told I quite liked where I ended up, but I no longer knew what was around the bend in the path.  In a sense, I let the music lead me where it wanted to go.  Sometimes, I could see a little ways in front of me.  Then I would have to pause, ﬁgure out where the music seemed to want to go, and continue on my way.  It was unsettling at times, but exciting, too.

The Nameless Path is an invitation to explore, to try something a little bit new, to look around for a change and really notice things you take for granted.  As such, I've made sure that there are plenty of details to draw the listener in.  Hopefully, if you listen to it several times, you'll notice something new each time.

The Nameless Path (2022), for 13 players

Earplay's performance of "Piano Trio" by Reynold Tharp on 5/19/2014 at ODC Theater, San Francisco as performed by Terrie Baune, Thalia Moore, and Karen Rosenak and recorded by Ian D. Thomas, copyright 2014 by Earplay, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
				

My Piano Trio was written from December 2013 to March 2014 for Earplay.  As in several other recent pieces of mine, the overall shape or flow of the piece is hopefully clearly articulated within a continuous single movement.  Unlike my other music, however, which typically bears programmatic or poetic titles, in this instance I fell back on a simple generic title.  Nevertheless, the trio still relies on the narrative and dramatic impulses that drive all my music, and evocative or atmospheric qualities (to me, at least) are hardly absent.  In particular, I imagined the slowly changing scales of the opening, with their uneasy rhythmic fluidity, as the slow surging of ocean tides.  These waves return in different incarnations across the fourteen-minute span of the piece, and are also gradually transformed into contrasting ideas--one faster and more rhythmically driven, one playful with its bouncing echoes, and a last one more darkly lyrical.  The trio was premiered by members of Earplay (violinist Terrie Baune, cellist Thalia Moore, and pianist Karen Rosenak) in San Francisco in May 2014.


							


Piano Trio (2014)

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)

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

“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/

Piano Trio (2014)

Reynold Tharp

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