The harp, well played, is such a pleasing instrument to hear.

I really like this track...amazing duo of harp.

Another awesome piece of music , Robert!! The harp blends very well with the title of your work.  Great stuff, as always!!

This sounds like two harps duetting together. They sound great and the tone is lovely. I'm amazed how you have written music for so many different instruments and classical styles.

Another stunning piece - I'd love to know what your main instrument is or was - you seem to be able to write equally well for all of them! With John Williams I think one can tell that he was a French horn player. He certainly knows how to write for the horn - so do tell!

A deliciously dark opening delivering a sense of urgency, love the use of harmonics.

Very spicy dissonances and very eerie melodies, it creates a compelling and mysterious soundscape bordering on macabre, which I enjoy quite a bit.

If You like this song please listen my other organ compositions.They are titled "4" and "6" greetings

ASFdeafboar - Dark Cathedral

Nouvelle collaboration internationale Québec / Hongrie / US. 
 Réarrangement d'une pièce de Milan Szavics, chantée originallement par Narah. Un beau jazz-chill rythmé mais relax. Bonne écoute!

New collab Quebec / Hungary / US. Rearrangement of a piece by Milan Szavics, originally sung by Narah. A beautiful jazz-chill rhythmic but relaxed. Good listening!

Standing Here (feat. : Narah)

Sorrow's Wisper

Un Cántico Nuevo…. Alejandro González M.  Agosto 2023.

Un Cántico Nuevo

Featured as the second track on Suburban Bicycle Gang's sophomore album 'In The Cosmos'.

In The Cosmos

Suburban Bicycle Gang - Lake Scugog

I think I have seldom been so optimistic about something I created, so free of doubt and worry - which is coincidentally a feeling I want to convey with this new piece and project / album.

I dearly love the OST for "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis and always wanted to do something in a similar fashion, but up until now lacked the means to do it. The means being a library (I'm not big on collaborations of such an interconnected nature and am quite the control freak, so outsourcing performances isn't yet my forte) that could portray solo strings in this very specifically rustic and imperfect, soft and brittle form that is so iconic to Warren Ellis' style of playing.

Well, along come Orchestral Tools and break my mind with the unbelievably authentic and brilliant "Peteris Vasks' Strings", forcing me to make this!
I gotta say, I've never been more happy about any kind of enslavement.

But jokes aside, this really is one of the best purchases I have ever made, and one of the best pieces of music I have ever made - maybe not because of some brilliant melodical structure or a perfect arrangement (which this obviously doesn't have :P), but because of this unbelievably authentic and iconic sound, and the atmosphere it creates.

I did have to do quite a bit of EQ adjustments and automation to iron out some of the more resonant moments (didn't quite achieve a perfect balance, but I'm gonna get better the more I use it), plus making my own mic-mix cause the library was recorded in a bloody huge church - but the close mics are, despite this, bone dry and together with some of the other options able to have this up-close, intimate feeling that I wouldn't have thought possible.
One or two samples are a little borked sometimes, but with a bit of imagination one can circumvent these small errors.
All in all, this product is nigh perfect - for me, obviously :)

But enough about this - what Revalescence is about, is a journey. As always. I need to wander, both in reality as in my fantasy so this kind of theme will never go away, most likely :P
Anyhow, the term describes the process or rather state of getting better, healing. And since that is such a loose concept, you could apply it to really anything : a struggle with mental health, a physical injury or other avenues of trouble that open themselves up to you. 
This time, I will not describe an actual story, but rather a more metaphoric path to betterment, whatever that might entail for you specifically.
I love placing things into the setting of an Arizona desert, cause it's just so relentlessly beautiful to me, but feel free to wander off to anywhere you would like to go with it. Sometimes, I'll be more setting-specific, other times it'll be more ambiguous - whatever I feel like at any given moment.
You can expect ups and downs, but at the end I will try to weave it all together into a calming, reassuring and hopeful outlook and reflection on things past, present and future.

All of this sounds terribly pretentious and usually I would refrain from writing bloated nonsense like that - but I think this time, I'll try being more conscious about creating music, with a broad, human theme in mind that one can read into if one chooses to. Don't know whether or not it's gonna work out, but what the hell - I'll try anyway :D

If you did, thank you very much for reading through all of this and I hope you'll find a connection to Revalescence, as have I.

Cheerio,
Cedric

Revalescence

Leaving Home

Revalescence - Leaving Home

Me jamming on buddy 5 string bass and a k2000

Jazzjam - You're here

A reflective orchestral piece, featuring principally brass instruments.

Background image by Larisa_K on Pixabay: https://bit.ly/3rm2yiQ

Things That Might Have Been

Once Upon A Time In Rome

Dark Mountains for orchestra
Commissioned by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Jaime Laredo, conductor
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=994
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/dark-mountains
View Score: https://issuu.com/robertpaterson/docs/dark_mountains_for_orchestra_fs-bou

PROGRAM NOTES
Vermont is famous for its green mountains, but I often find myself taking long drives through the mountains on overcast days or even at night, when the mountains lose color and become gray silhouettes. Many roads in Vermont are so dark, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom, that you need to use headlights, even during the day. Dark Mountains is meant to portray the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the peacefulness of the open roads, but also the darkness and occasional treacherous passes one may encounter during the evening hours. The piece is in three connected sections. The first section portrays the calmness and austerity of a quiet evening. The second is inspired by a fast drive down winding country roads, with twists and turns, frequent tempo changes and shifting gears. The final section evokes the feeling of looking at the nighttime sky with moonlight shining through the trees and the sounds of nature in the distance.

This piece is commissioned by and dedicated to the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Jaime Laredo, and was originally written for the Made in Vermont Music Festival.

Dark Mountains (for Orchestra)

Scorpion Tales for Two Harps
Duration: 15’
Publisher: Bill Holab  Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1126
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/scorpion-tales

PROGRAM NOTES
Gruesome creatures have always fascinated me, so when Duo Scorpio asked me if I would be interested in writing them a new piece, and their only request was that I incorporate the scorpion as a theme, I was happy to oblige.

The first movement, Trinidad Scorpion, is inspired by a fiery red pepper called the Trinidad Scorpion "Butch T", currently the hottest pepper in the world. It measures a blistering 1,463,700 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). (A typical jalapeno pepper measures around 5,000 SHU, while a habanero pepper measures up to 350,000 SHU.) The tempo is appropriately marked con fuoco, and the contrapuntal middle section is subtly infused with Calypso rhythms.

Promenade à deux is the title of the second movement, borrowed from a colorful description of the scorpion's complex courting and mating ritual. This begins when the male and female locate and identify each other using a mixture of pheromones and vibrational communication. The courtship starts with the male grasping the female's pedipalps with his own; the pair then perform a "dance" called the promenade à deux. The courtship ritual can involve several other behaviours such as juddering and a cheliceral kiss, in which the male's claw-like mouthparts grasp the female's. In some cases, the male will inject her with a small amount of venom, perhaps as a means of pacifying her. Once mating is complete, they separate. The male generally retreats quickly, most likely to avoid being cannibalised by the female, although sexual cannibalism is infrequent with scorpions. Scorpions glow fluorescent under black lights, so I imagine the scorpions basking in a fluorescent afterglow after completing their courtship.

The third movement, The Tale of Orion, is inspired by an ancient Greek myth. According to legend, Orion boasted to goddess Artemis and her mother, Leto, that he would kill every animal on earth. Although Artemis was known to be a hunter herself, she offered protection to all creatures. Artemis and her mother sent a scorpion to deal with Orion. The pair battled and the scorpion killed Orion. The contest was apparently lively enough to catch Zeus's attention, so he raised the scorpion to heaven and afterwards, at the request of Artemis, did the same for Orion. This served as a reminder for mortals to curb their excessive pride. A second version describes Orion and Artemis growing fond of each other. Learning of this development, Apollo, Artemis's twin brother, grew angry and sent a scorpion to attack Orion. After Orion was killed, Artemis asked Zeus to put Orion up in the sky. So every winter Orion hunts in the sky, but every summer he flees as the constellation of the scorpion approaches.

Scorpion Tales was commissioned by harpists Kathryn Andrews and Kristi Shade of Duo Scorpio through a grant from the American Harp Society.

Scorpion Tales

Scorpion Tales - III. The Tale of Orion

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.

Scorpion Tales - III. The Tale of Orion

Robert Paterson Composer

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