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A singing escalator, and a short tune baked of thyme in Italy sing a melancholy song of between worlds across the veil of death's thin melody. Composed while a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. 

Composed for WE! Kansas City (Jane Gotch and Mark Southerland)

Death's Thin Melody (Up/Down)

Aquariox Live at Cymatica // Love Burn Miami

The New England Conservatory of Music's Orchestra's Reading of "Rain on a Thin Metal Roof" on May 3, 2023

Rain On A Thin Metal Roof

From my poetry book, Careless Blossoming

A Bird Sang My Heart Open

twilight sang ahead of the day
when I was happy and playing

I forgot to say your name
I forgot the sound of your voice

and then a bird sang my heart open
and the sun warmed my face

Lana Maree Haas
art by Frank Dvorak "The Angel of The Birds"

A Bird Sang My Heart Open

Performed by Factory Seconds Brass Trio: Jack Sutte, Jessie McCormick and Richard Stout. 
Assembly line Suite
in nine movements
1) Daily grind 1’55”
2) Paper jam 1’50”
3) Cutting room floor 2’20”
4) Squeaky wheel 2’40”
5) Interchangeable parts 2’25” (may be interchanged to #8)
6) Lunch break 4’33”
7) Quality control 2’40”
8) Power outage 2’30” (may be switched to #5)
9) Cranking it out 2’50”
Total time 23’ (including Lunch Break)
Program Notes:
Assembly line was written for a trio of first-rate seconds: Jack Sutte, Jesse McCormick and Richard Stout! Playing in the Cleveland Orchestra is one thing, and this is something entirely different…

1-Daily Grind : the task remains mind numbingly regular. Time
warps…ceases to exist, and then lasts forever. The mind wanders into oblivion even as the body continues to carry out tasks!

2-Paper jam : the hurridier I go, the behinder I get. Only at the copy
machine is it possible to have started 10 minutes ago, and already be 30 minutes behind…

3-Cutting room floor : Assembling raw footage shot on the set, clarity is laboriously edited out of 10 takes. The floor accumulates piles, while the final reel tightens. Bit by bit the scene clarifies and emerges whole.

4-Squeaky wheel : like every well-oiled machine, time, repetition, and friction, cause even the best maintained equipment to cry out. I wonder if machinery likes it even less than over-worked disgruntled humans. You think you’ve got it bad…?

5-Interchangeable parts : out of small, identical little parts, more and
more complicated things can be made. While evidence existed from two thousand years ago in the Carthage war machine, Eli Whitney
standardized the modern interchangeable part for an order of 12,000 muskets by President Washington in 1798, which initiated the slow march towards the homogeneity of Western society, despite attempts to thwart it…

6-Lunch break : everyone needs a break, even on the daily grind of making music. Ever wonder what happens back stage at half time of a concert?

7-Quality control : Products slowly grind by on the conveyor belt of
consumerism, needing to be checked for quality. Attention to detail
languishes in mind-numbing sameness. Worker bees dozing off…don’t buy it if it came off the floor on a Monday morning!

8-Power outage : Just like machines squeal and break down, so do the power systems that drive them. Whether a fire running out of wood for steam to drive conveyor belts, or electricity shorting out, systems that run hour-upon-hour are not sustainable forever.

9-Cranking it out : Despite all that can go wrong with 90 musicians on stage, or thousands of moving parts on an assembly line, work gets done. Sound and merchandise are cranked out in the never-ending cycle of modern-day consumption of both art and tangible goods.

Performance notes:
Individual movements may be played separate from the suite, or in smaller sets of suites ordered out of varying combinations of movements.
#6 Lunch break may be “performed” as the start and end of intermission.
#5 and #8 may be interchanged in order (thanks to Eli Whitney!)
Trills in the horn and trumpet parts are to the next natural note up, unlessotherwise specified with an accidental.

Assembly Line Suite

Part 1 Fountain

Objective: 
To create a public gathering around a “water fountain” sound sculpture.


Implementation:
Create a circular (facing out from a center point and vertical in shape) speaker array, in the center of a public space, to project the sound from the fountain audio included in this score. The size and shape of the sculpture may vary depending on location, but the characteristics of the specific space of the installation, and the intentions of the presenters should be taken into consideration. 

Ideas for implementation can include (but are not limited to) stacking boom boxes or any size/type of speakers on top of each other in a circle, and extending up as high as needed. You may also wish to build a sound sculpture such as a pole with speakers (i.e inexpensive computer speakers), attached in a spiraling direction up to the top (as in the photograph attached). All speakers may be fed by a single device, or a multichannel computer system with delay lines or varying equalization for speakers. A low power stereo broadcast FM radio transmitter (in compliance with local communication regulations), wifi transmitter site or internet web stream onto computer, cell phones/hand held devices or wireless headphones (infrared, Bluetooth, etc.) may be used to distribute the audio to the fountain and to personal devices locally or remotely so that those not physically present may participate also. Any method of sound projection may be devised based on the resources of the venue, and to maximize the experience for the community.

Performance:
The public audience should gather around the fountain, enjoying the sound of the water, drinking it in with their ears. Near the end the gathered audience is invited to follow the conductor into the launch of Part 2: River. Part 1: Fountain can also be looped for a permanent installation, with or without Parts 2 or 3.

Duration:
33’22.11” (or looped for as long as necessary)


La Chiena Campagna Fountain Audio (mp3)

Pale Blue On Deep - Aaron Perrine

Tears Of St. Lawrence

Lyric Fracture: Kansas City Central Library. Composer Gracie Caggiano's musical interpretation of Kansas City's Central Library, as performed by And2 Percussion. Recorded and mastered by Jacob Souders. Written, performed, and recorded in 2024. Made possible through generous funding from ArtsKC.

Lyric Fracture

A Song of Your Soul Session is a remote guided journey to your Soul. I channel your Soul's Song. Each is unique, always beautiful. You receive a digital track of your session. Find out more at: thesacredlisteningroom.com 

The Song of Your Soul

Score and more: http://www.stevenbryant.com/music/catalog/nothing-gold-can-stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay was commissioned as a surprise gift for Kevin Sedatole in honor of his first ten years at Michigan State University. His conducting students spanning that decade, led by Jamal Duncan and Armand Hall, banded together and approached me at the 2015 College Band Directors National Convention in Nashville about writing the work, and I knew immediately that I couldn’t refuse this special project, made all the more appropriate because my wife, Verena, was one of Kevin’s very first students at MSU.

The music is my deliberate attempt to write a chorale – something simple, beautiful, and familiar. The deceptive surface simplicity of Robert Frost’s poem seems to coincide with this music, particularly the paradoxical descending of dawn to day, all embodying the concept of felix culpa, or “lucky fall” – the idea that loss can bring greater good, and is in fact necessary.

Nothing Gold Can Stay (MSU World Premiere)

A Glimpse of the Eternal

For Large or Medium Wind Ensemble Fixed Media, Horn Solo and Melodica (or Accordion), and guided improvisation

Dedicated to all those who have lost a loved one without a chance to say goodbye.

Death’s thin melody too…is a set of variations that began with the sound of a squeaky
escalator in Arezzo, Italy. The sound itself seemed to be reminiscing about the days when a lone monk wandered the hillside dreaming of a way to help people remember melodies. There is a hidden simple chord progression in this squeak, and yet, there are tones that rise beyond that simple progression into a harmonious other world: they belong, even if they do not fit. Death’s thin melody too…returns to Arezzo, in the footsteps of Guido of Monaco, and invites musicians to let go of notation and return to using their ears as a primary instrument for music-making. This work asks something different of the musicians: that they make music in community using all of the skills they have developed on their instruments, but guided by their unique sensitivities of each person as a listener.

Death’s thin melody first appeared as “Up/Down” in a Kansas City multi-media dance production called WE! (Jane Gotch and Mark Southerland, Spring, 2012), and as part of my epic series called 2012 Stories in live performance and appearing in forthcoming CD No. 7, Chanes. This version invites other instrumentalists to perform along with the haunting, simple tune that I originally improvised along with Arezzo’s escalators. Death’s thin melody too… was commissioned by Joseph Parisi for the UMKC Wind Ensemble.

Death's thin melody too...

Shîyr means “Song”. 
Shîr Hashirim means “Song of songs”.
These are the first words of the sacred text written by Solomon, in the Old Testament. It has been poetically and theologically interpreted throughout the centuries in many different ways. The most common ones are the Christian official interpretation that considers it as an allegory of the love between the Church (the wife) and God (the husband), or the Jewish interpretation as the love between Israel and God. But also there is a possible interpretation of this text as a real love song between husband and wife, containing simultaneously all the sacred and sensual implications that marriage and life together must have.
This piece does not attempt to induce any of these interpretations on the listener, but tries to leave an open space for the listener. It is the wish of the author that a religious person may hear in it the spirituality of the sacred relation, but at the same time an agnostic person may see in it the sensual and almost erotic implications of the text.

Text:
Excerpts from the book Song of Songs from Salomon (Old Testament)

Chapter 1, v. 1, 2
Osculetur me osculo oris sui quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino. 
Fraglantia unguentis optimis oleum effusum nomen tuum ideo adulescentulae dilexerunt te.

Chapter 5, v. 5, 6, 8
Surrexi ut aperirem dilecto meo manus meae stillaverunt murra digiti mei pleni murra probatissima pessulum ostii. 
Aperui dilecto meo at ille declinaverat atque transierat anima mea liquefacta est. Ut locutus est quaesivi et non inveni, illum vocavi et non respondit mihi 

Adiuro vos filiae Hierusalem si inveneritis dilectum meum ut nuntietis ei quia amore langueo 

Chapter 7, v. 11-13
Veni dilecte mi egrediamur in agrum commoremur in villis. Mane surgamus ad vineas videamus si floruit vinea si flores fructus parturiunt si floruerunt mala punica ibi dabo tibi ubera mea. Mandragorae dederunt odorem in portis nostris omnia poma nova et vetera dilecte mi servavi tibi.

Translation:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

Shiyr

Reverie is an acousmatic composition that leads the listener through an immersive fantasy centered around deconstructed music boxes. The work comprises eight sections that alternate between explorations of the music boxes’ gears and chimes. In the work, the music boxes’ sounds are pulled apart, exaggerated, expanded, and combined with other sounds whose timbres and textures are reminiscent of the original. As the piece unfolds, the timbres increase in spectral and textural density, and the associations become more and more fantastical. Gears are transformed into zippers, coins, chainsaws, motorcycles, and fireworks, and the chimes morph into rainstorms, all sizes of bells, pianos, and more. 

Reid composed the work during residencies at the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

Reverie won First Prizes in the 6th International “New Vision” Composition Competition “Galaxies” in memory of Nicolaus Copernicus, the 8th KLANG! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition, and Musicworks' Electronic Music Composition Contest; Sound of the Year's “Composed with Sound Award”; and Second Prizes in both the Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition and the XIII° International Destellos Competition.

Reverie

Graduate Conducting Fellow at the University of Miami, Frost School of Music

My musical Odyssey continues to grow, with 6 CD's of 2012 Stories on transformation, sound healing and meditation practice and improvisation performance and facilitation. At the center of my journey is music for the higher purpose of peace and healing between people and Mother Earth. I am grateful to have received so much recognition for this music including Rome Prize (2010), Guggenheim (2008), Fulbright (1997), and Wurlitzer Foundation (2007 and 2009) Fellowships; 2 Global Music Awards (Innovation in Sound and Mixing and Editing); Sounds Electric ’07 Competition (Dublin), EMS Prize (Sweden), Citta di Udine (Prize ex aequo, Italy) international prizes, and performances all over the world. I perform internationally and am available for booking small and large groups and venues.  I teach at the University of Missouri at Kansas City where I received the 2008 Kauffman Award for Artistic Excellence. In 1994 I completed the Colorado Grand Slam after climbing all 54 of Colorado's 14,000 ft peaks. I now enjoy surfing the unknown and catching all the things I missed getting to all those summits…

Death's thin melody too...

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