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

In June of 2006, while watching the late afternoon fog roll in on the last day of a visit to San Francisco, I was reminded of György Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds, which was inspired by his stays in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 70s. I was eager to listen to Clocks and Clouds again when I returned to Chicago the next day, but arrived home to an inbox full of forwarded obituaries. Ligeti had passed away the day before. That chance association of San Francisco fog and the melancholy of loss became the starting point for my “San Francisco Night.” The title comes from a poem by the rather obscure French poet Paul Gilson, which begins:

Je crois qu’il n’a jamais fait plus noir que ce soir
où la sirène pleure au bord du monde en ruines
mais la merveille vaut le prix du désespoir….

The ensemble (flute, clarinet, horn, piccolo trumpet, percussion, piano, violin, and cello) is treated as a miniature orchestra (two instruments from each family of winds, brass, percussion, and strings) without a strong bass.  This chamber ensemble “without feet” allowed me to create intricately detailed, floating textures while maintaining clarity of line and shape. While the piece traverses a variety of musical materials and moods, they are bound together by similar falling contours or gestures that recall the spreading fog.

Throughout its composition, I was always spurred on by the knowledge that it would eventually be brought to life by the wonderful musicians of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and it is dedicated to the ensemble, Music Director David Milnes, and Executive Director Adam Frey. San Francisco Night was premiered by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players on 6 May 2008 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  The piece has subsequently been performed by Reynold Tharp with the Illinois Modern Ensemble in 2009 and by Joel Sachs and the New Juilliard Ensemble at MOMA in New York in 2010.

San Francisco Night (2008)

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

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/

San Francisco Night (2008)

Reynold Tharp

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