Really interesting rhythms! Love the atmosphere it creates!

Sounds like spider webs and creepy crawlers... you kind of don't want to think too hard about it..lol eek good job

woodwinds sound amazing! is it a real woodwinds player or just good sampled VST?

It's always a pleasure to hear your works, but this perhaps more, for its "innovative and complex" character. Contrasting textures, profuse rhythms and rich percussion. Singular timbres and articulations, . . .

Wonderfully playful dark composition piece, I particularly love the creepy piano and walking bass towards the close of it.

This is great; exotically sinister initially but it does get quite jolly towards the end. I'd like to think you have reached some sort of rapprochement with your demons!

Wow, these demons move really fast for being inside a closet! Loved the percussion and brass stabs.

Wonderful composition! Splendid orchestration. Bravo

Powerfully haunting composition with million colours. :)

Closet Full of Demons - for sinfonietta.
Duration: 7'
Live Performance: American Modern Ensemble, David Alan Miller, Conductor
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/composers/robert-paterson/robert-paterson-works/
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/closet-full-of-demons

PROGRAM NOTES
As a child, I remember being very afraid of my closet at night. I was sure that scary things were hiding in the back corner and that my closet was really a nighttime portal to a world of demons and monsters. A bracing, horrible dream I had one night as an adult reminded me of these childhood fears and hastened my writing this piece.

What kinds of sounds do demons and monsters make? What would they sound like crammed together in a gargantuan, pitch black, closet at night? I envisioned screaming, chaos, and violent infighting between the creatures. Sometimes these hellish monsters fight amongst themselves, as I would imagine they would do in a sort of morbid, eternal "monster hell," but once in a blue moon they burst out of the closet and start flying around the bedroom in a chaotic free-for-all, cackling and laughing and spitting and drooling, banging into walls and furniture like a bunch of loose, demonic bats.

Technically, this work is a vehicle for exploring a variety of exotic sound possibilities within a large chamber group. I imagine monsters of different shapes and sizes, similar to characters you might find in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch (the right wings of The Hay Wain and the Garden of Delights triptychs would be good examples), but much more abstract, cubist and multi-shaped, such as the images found in the cubist works by Pablo Picasso (i.e. the Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler painting or the Head of a Woman sculpture). If you took Picasso’s cubist people and "morphed" them with Bosch’s un-earthly creatures, or filtered Bosch’s creatures through a cubist filter and airbrushed the final images with hell, then that would be my goal.

Other images in particular provided inspiration, such as the famous painting The Nightmare by the Swiss-English artist Henry Fuseli. In this work, an ugly demon is seated on the dreamer’s chest and a frightening white horse with glowing eyes is in the background. My work is further inspired by the diverse collage works—digital or not—being created by contemporary visual artists.

Closet Full of Demons

American composer Robert Paterson is a true New Yorker—born and bred in Buffalo, he lived in Rochester and Ithaca for over ten years, in New York City for over twenty years, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. Paterson’s colorful music embraces a wide variety of themes, everything from goddesses and online dating to mathematics and the environment. His music is filled with emotion and fierce rhythmic energy, marked by elegance, wit, and meticulous craftsmanship. Named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall, Paterson is the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and his opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. His music is often a Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio. His orchestral tone poem, Dark Mountains, regularly airs on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with Nashville Opera, then BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and across the United States. Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, The Oratorio Society of New York, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide perform his works. Paterson gives masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. He is the Artistic Director and house composer for Mostly Modern Projects. Robert is a lifelong vegan and advocates for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with ground-breaking works such as his Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.

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