This piece began with its title, at first nothing more than a silly pun. From there, it was my mission to see how far I could take that pun: how can I craft a strange, removed space, suitable for the offbeat installation the piece is written for? How far can this go? It began with three texts: Geminiani’s trill manifesto A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick, Michael DeAngelis’s deconstruction of roller coasters, Orchestrated (Dis)orientation: Roller Coasters, Theme Parks, and Postmodernism; and the lyrics to Sia’s dance-hall classic Cheap Thrills. From here, the trill acts as the primary motivator for musical material, in many different forms as outlined in Geminiani’s text. The structure is built from the Golden Ratio, that cliché, with events, durations, and pitch material defined by this nested distortion to the point where its effect is totally cheapened. These gestures swoop and sway in the narrative manner of a roller coaster, inspired by DeAngelis’s observations. A progression built from the first four chords of Sia’s song is spaced out in even durational intervals to provide a sense of grounding. Finally, lip trills and scrawled excerpts that freely fuse these texts provide a final layer of removal (designed especially for the Harpsichord House Installation’s face camera), freely excerpted bits of text entering and leaving incomprehensibly and unheard, left as mysterious traces of the piece’s structure on the pages of the music that create both disorientation and explanation for the listener.

Cheap Trills (2017)

Sarah Kendall, soprano
Robert Fleitz, piano
recorded live at UW Madison in May, 2018

Sarah Kendall is one of my closest friends, and has been since we were in fifth grade growing up together in Lakeland, Florida. Over the years we’ve done a myriad of musical projects together, most notably, writing songs together with our dear friend Amanda Callihan as the band Heart Piece. This cycle, written for the notable life event of Sarah’s graduation recital, acts as a kind of grown-up manifestation of these collaborations. Using Sarah’s evocative and enigmatic text, the music acts as a kind of refracted nostalgia, loose gestural strands connecting disparate thoughts together, while static and quasi-improvisatory passages juxtapose the malaise of the mid-twenties with their wild energy. The third movement, Aria, is taken from an unperformed art song I wrote Sarah years ago, and alters the course of the cycle — by the end of the Vocalise (which was written from a live improvisation by Sarah herself), the ominous opening of the cycle is reworked into something much more beautiful.

Circus For Elephants - IV. Haiku

Circus For Elephants - III. Aria

Circus For Elephants - II. Coffeeshop

Circus For Elephants - I. It Was A Long Way Home...

Robert and Claire Fleitz, vocals

This odd, over-the-top, and eventually chaotic little ballad was written for Liana Kleinman's amazing PROMPTUS III, a performance examining intimacy in many forms. During this part of the performance, performers from PROMPTUS danced intimately with members of the audience, asking for consent before each move. The song is intentionally saccharine, with gratuitous vocalizing to give the otherwise sincere music a quality of discomfort and melancholy. The lyrics come from Phil Smith's poem "Aubade".

Porthole

It was such an honor to write a piece for Molly Joyce, one of my best friends and biggest musical inspirations. The piece examines how technology enables and hinders us. At times, the live performer and the unique toy organ act in complete symbiosis with a fixed electronic track. This relationship breaks down throughout the piece, interrupted by moments of violent stasis. The performer’s raw, unprocessed voice and instrument are only heard in the last section of the piece, still modulated by percussion in the electronics.  The piece’s structure resembles that of a drastically slowed-down social media feed, in which various data sources inhabit and take up mental space in mundane but subliminally powerful ways.

The piece was originally written in 2017, and then drastically changed for this newest version. Performed and recorded by the inimitable Molly Joyce.

Upgrade (2019)

This piece, which I wrote in 2016, is inspired by the first words spoken on the telephone -- "come here, I want to see you"; and the poem "Vernon Street" by Heather Christle. Broken phrases and stasis actualize the dichotomy between a modern abundance of communication and its tendency to occur in real-life isolation. 

Han Shi and George Meyer, violin
recorded by Jack Frerer

Come here come here (2016)

Giancarlo Latta, violin

this piece for solo violin and drone was written for Giancarlo Latta in June 2020. The pitches and durations of the piece are derived from the honorariums from gigs that Giancarlo lost during the quarantine. These lost gigs become sonic ‘ghosts’ that Giancarlo exorcises. These arbitrary pitches are then organized into expressive phrases. I wrote this as a small gesture for Giancarlo and with the hopes of recentering the human behind economic disaster.

sorry i missed my show (i)(2020)

Orkest de Ereprijs, ensemble
Julie Hasfjord, Laura Ginström, and Vojtech Sembera, singers

I wrote this piece in the winter of 2019 and 2020, inspired in large part by conversations with my dear friend, the playwright and actor Susanna Fournier. Both of us sent audio messages back and forth from our homes in Toronto and New York, kind of like sending messages in a bottle from islands. In this way, the singers become their own islands -- like humming alone in a great cathedral, absorbed in their own tactile experience of digital spirituality while some other metaphysical force spirals around them.

I was also inspired by Olga Tokarczuk's book Flights, in which she writes about islands as a representation of “remaining within one’s boundaries, undisturbed by any external influence…only the self seems real; the other is but a vague specter…just darting over a distant horizon”.

small thing (2020)

performed by and written for Trio Spilliaert
Jean-Samuel Bez, violin
Guillaume Lagravière, cello
Gauvain de Morant, piano


“So... Are you a bit happy here, at least?”
“What do you mean by happiness? It's such a strong word..."
“I mean do you have a bit of a life, too?”
“Like going to the movies or something?”
“Well, yes... just doing something you enjoy.”
“Lots of words around here: fun, happiness, life... We should sort it out. What do you think it's worth living for?”
“If you want to discuss the big topics... I can't say that off the top of my head. I really just wanted to know how you're doing.”
“I know that. But then you should have your own answers.”
— Maren Ade, Toni Erdmann

rfleitz

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