several other composer friends of mine & i linked up with these masters of modern music known as gnarwhallaby--a quartet made up of piano, cello, clarinet & trombone(!)--& wrote some pieces, had a concert & recorded it. here's their performance of what i came up with for them. you can read the program notes from the concert below...

This piece consists of two movements—a dance and a meditation (of sorts)—which both draw from the same basic musical materials. My intent was to create some sense of stability and groundedness using very unstable, dissonant sonorities: three note clusters made up of minor seconds, and also adjacent augmented triads. There is a loosely programatic quality to the title, “an ailing man & a thousand downward dogs,” and to the music itself. I imagined a man who is disintegrating… Physically? Mentally? I don’t really know. But he’s doing so in the midst of a bustling city, surrounded by the many tensions there. He’s well aware of his condition. He begins to dance as he falls apart. Despite the struggle he has with his descent, there’s a joyous kind of detachment—perhaps one that we all might hope to obtain(?). The meditation is an attempt to address the sense of helplessness many of us feel when we consider the entropic nature of all things. Maybe some of us view the madly dancing man as having “lost it.” Perhaps he’s one of the few of us who’ve actually “got it”—whatever “it” might be. After all, all things fall apart… right?  This piece is dedicated with great pleasure and privilege to gnarwhallaby.

an ailing man & a thousand downward dogs

we had a couple of instrumentalists come in & do a workshop in a composition class at csun today. we were told last week that we should write & bring in some material for harp & flute, so... i did. this is allison allport & boglarka kiss--on harp & flute respectively--sightreading the little somethin-somethin' that i wrote last night. yaaaay!!

one unto a thirst for noise... in memory of the duke of ear

this is a song cycle I composed in 2013-14, setting eight haiku from a set of one hundred haiku penned by my friend jean-paul garnier. this recording is of a wonderful performance by sarah reynolds - mezzo soprano & richard valitutto - piano, on july 31st, 2016, for the los angeles-based new music series, unSUNg, which focuses on modern music for voice.

haiku cycle

when you reach the far shore..... in memory of ray lopez

I was invited to write a piece for the new york-based light matter trio--clara kim: violin, joann whang: cello & karl larson: piano--to be premiered in concert at cal state, northridge on 4-25-2018. I was pleased & privileged to be asked, so I got right to work on it. the three members of the light matter trio turned out to be real gems... all three of them. & they can reeeally play their arses off!!

shortly after I began sketching to figure out what this piece might be about, a friend who I hadn't seen a good long, while passed away. the circumstances were about as sudden, unexpected & tragic as could be imagined. I'll leave that at that.

I was left ruminating on death & wanting to write yet another elegiac piece for yet another friend who'd passed on much too soon. my mind moved quickly to a bit of writing by william s. burroughs called "the road to the western lands." this piece is about the individual's journey beyond death... this notion, though eerily suspenseful in burroughs' telling of it, resonates with me as supremely hopeful. there's a dark, sardonic sort of humor in it... & whatever source it was that burroughs tapped in to while he roamed the earth, & this mythology that sprang up from it all... my instinct is to trust its validity. one particular passage from this book really grabs me, & the title & overall arch of this piece comes from that passage... 

"your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool. it's full of holes, it's full of holes." -william s. burroughs

when you reach the far shore.....

performed by
brightwork newmusic:

rachel beetz - flute/alto flute
brian walsh - clarinet/bass clarinet
tereza stanislav - violin
maggie perkins - cello
dustin donahue - percussion
aron kallay - piano

this piece is dedicated to two dear friends who passed on while I was composing it... terry mcconico & tommy moneymaker.

& then into dim night.... (2016-17)

performed by
brightwork newmusic:

rachel beetz - flute/alto flute
brian walsh - clarinet/bass clarinet
tereza stanislav - violin
maggie perkins - cello
dustin donahue - percussion
aron kallay - piano

-thirty-seven seconds of treachery
-(this is kinda what it sounds like when) the cracked menagerie dances
-these emergent properties
-rather resembling an epiphany
-stranglet #9
-sympathetic nervous system

these are miniatures... six of them. yep. haha!! some fun studies for the  pierrot+percussion ensemble... a modern staple.

curios: six quick bits for sextet & subsets (2018)

tereza stanislav - violin

this piece is dedicated to friend who passed on much too soon... christopher ray martinez.

in beginning to really learn to write for strings, I was advised to first take on a single, solo instrument to kinda get my bearings. this piece is the result.

sentience & hypertension (2015)

performed by
brightwork newmusic:

brian walsh - bass clarinet
tereza stanislav - violin
maggie perkins - cello

this piece is dedicated to my uncle, shug harris, who passed on too soon.

this was the first chamber piece that I wrote, in my first semester, at cal state northridge. this is a newer arrangement of the piece. in fact, I was kind shootin' for the stars at first... the original composition was for flute, bass clarinet & trombone. I then arranged it for clarinet, bass clarinet & cello. (there's a recording of the latter somewhere on my soundloud page here.) this is likely the final draft.

the edges & the interstice (2014-15)

aron kallay - piano

-the eschaton shuffle (after ligeti)
-claude, have mercy!! (after debussy)
-looky that lanky man dancing (after bartok)

these three miniatures were composed in my first composition class as cal state university, northridge. we studied pieces from several major contributors to the development of modern classical music. (namely claude debussy, bela bartok & gyorgy ligeti.) we observed techniques they employed in works for solo piano, did our best to internalize them, & tried our hand at employing some of them in minute-long works for solo piano...

three brief dances for solo piano (2014)

performed by
brightwork newmusic:

tereza stanislav - violin
maggie perkins - cello
aron kally - piano

this piece is dedicated to a friend who passed on too soon... ray lopez. the title is lifted from william s. burroughs' "the western lands," wherein he writes:

"your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool... it's full of holes... it's full of holes."

when you reach the far shore.... (2017)

sophomoric efforts at composing contemporary classical music by a middle-aged man/young composer who, with the help of the amazing faculty & staff at los angeles city college, began to learn to read & write notated music at the age of 30. in 2018, I earned a bachelor's degree in music composition at cal-state university, northridge--again, with more support, insight & assistance from yet another amazing faculty & staff. 

more will surely be revealed....

ps...i have a bunch of electronic pieces on another soundcloud page... it's here(!):  https://soundcloud.com/dr-auxiliary

rocco harris

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