first movement from "Colors in Motion," feat. Kurt Rohde (viola) 

One of my favorite things about writing music is the chance to work with friends, new and old. Commissioned by Gregory Guss and Peter London as a complement to their own artwork, this piece began with several free conversations with these new friends and many cups of tea. It was written for composer/violist Kurt Rohde, a good friend, longtime mentor, and performer extraordinaire.

The composition itself responds to two artworks by these artists, aiming to evoke the textures, colors, and feelings I found in each. The second movement gradually shifts from fully composed, to aleatoric (guided improvisation), to completely improvised (the Cadenza). In this way, I hope to give the performer the chance to interact freely with my own music while also making it fully their own. I also hope to make a few new violist friends, new listener friends, etc. Many thanks to Greg and Peter for their conversations, to Kurt for his feedback and enthusiasm, and to violist Vijay Chalasani for his own detailed feedback on technical aspects of the score.

Peruse score here: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/colors-in-motion

Colors in Motion

1. Blue Scintillating Paths (2021)

feat. Empyrean Ensemble (Matilda Hoffman, conductor)
score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/vox-mysterium 

This music was originally conceived as a mysterious cadenza in the slow movement of my Piano Concerto. Equally mysterious, the cadenza sort of “came to me” in one or two afternoons sitting at the piano. That never happens. In the piano version, resonance and heavy pedal use is a key factor – melody creates chords and the natural decay of the instrument creates different shapes and durations.

The piano can sound an almost unlimited number of notes at once, but it cannot crescendo on a single note. In this version, I had a lot of fun creating a kind of “magic” piano pedal effect, where the “resonance” from melodic gestures could crescendo or shift. It can behave in odd ways. It’s a piece for chamber ensemble, inspired by the piano, but also very much not a piano piece. I hope you enjoy.

vox mysterium (2020)

"decketh joy, water destroy" by Ryan Suleiman 
Ensemble Dal Niente, Christian Baldini (conductor). 

Water has always fascinated artists. It mesmerizes through the intrinsic beauty of its physicality and its complex relationship with us humans. In our own time, we can be awestruck by its beauty and cognizant of the destruction it increasingly brings in this century, each year more than the last. The text is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem, “Water”:

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

decketh joy, water destroy (2018)

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble feat. Nikki Einfeld (soprano) 
text by Gibran Khalil Gibran
soprano, piccolo, cello, piano 

score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/the-robin
video: https://youtu.be/nzxUPUXL_ws 

Gibran’s “The Robin” for me in 2020 represents a yearning for peace while in a state of isolation and anxiety. This feeling is also reflected in the singer’s situation. The piece, created with social-distancing measures in mind, is written such that the singer is not only physically isolated from her instrumentalist colleagues, but also musically. She has to sing, then wait for a reaction. During the pandemic, we want to gather together, but can’t.  In Gibran’s robin we find beauty, peace, and tranquility. The robin lives gracefully and in the moment. Imagining this robin as I composed has been a kind of balm. I hope it is for you, too.

Gibran, like my father, emigrated to the United States from Lebanon. My father grew up in Beirut, and I became especially motivated to work with Gibran’s poetry after Beirut’s devastating explosion, which compounded the numerous crises in that country. Half of performance royalties will be donated to relief efforts in Lebanon.

The Robin (2020)

The performance of my "neo-Baroque" suite on my Senior Composition Recital, conducted by yours truly.

IV. Apparition

V. Last Riddles (finale)

I. Overture

feat. Juventas Ensemble, Cambridge, MA, March 2022.

Frederick Law Olmsted is considered the “father of landscape architecture” in the United States. Though not exactly a household name, his impact on his country was profound and his aesthetic was visionary in the nineteenth century, designing the first urban parks, including Central Park, Emerald Necklace, Stanford University’s campus, and many more. Contrary to the European aesthetic, Olmsted was keen on “listening” to nature. Though a park is by definition human-made, his designs focused on local landscapes and allowed them to be themselves. In crowded, noisy, stressful city-environments, he believed we all deserved a place to stop and take in nature.
 
Olmsted’s home and office, Fairsted (Brookline, MA), is where his firm operated, and this location – a park and creative studio – provides the inspiration for Piece of Mind. The piece is about stillness, contemplation, the creative process, and above all, letting sounds and silences simply be themselves.

This piece was a part of Landscape's Music Lungs of the City Project - learn more about this collaboration here: https://landscapemusic.org/tag/lungs-of-the-city/

Piece Of Mind (2021)

Mystic Improvisation 1

for two violins, feat. Sharan Leventhal & Clara Mazo. Boston Conservatory, March 2023. 

This piece is not necessarily “about” fireflies, but it can be if you want. The aspects evoked by the title are the gentle qualities of nighttime, stillness, luminescence, and rhythm. It is really a piece about two violinists listening to each other constantly, walking in lockstep while also enjoying their own sound, taking their time.

Purchase score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/fireflies

fireflies (2023)

feat. Moon Young Ha (conductor) & Ensemble Mise-en

Compared to the Sun, the Earth is about the size of a grain of sand. So where does that leave us humans? Since the planets of our solar system are made of debris from the Sun during its formation (which, in turn, comes from even older stars and gases), we are all technically stardust.
 
Three characters of our nearest star are presented distinctly in order: power and sheer magnitude, gentle nourishing warmth, and mystic energy. Later, they intermingle and play.

Purchase score / parts here: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/threesolaressences

Three Solar Essences (2017)

feat. Rose Hegele (soprano) & Sakurako Kanemitsu (piano) 

Purchase score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/julymidnight 

Text by Amy Lowell:
Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees,
Flicker in the lower branches,
Skim along the ground.
Over the moon-white lilies
Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.
As you lean against me,
Moon-white,
The air all about you
Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame
Starting out of a background of vague, blue trees.

july midnight (2023)

feat. Michael Dahlberg (cello), Sakurako Kanemitsu (piano)

Lights, sparks, and movement are all important ingredients in this playful, whimsical piece, written to be performed both as a concert work or with dancers. The cellist and the pianist themselves interweave with and overlap each other like the dancers they imagine accompanying.

Composed at UC Davis, this piece was choreographed by Jacob-Gutiérrez-Montoya and performed by Sacramento Contemporary Dance Theater. 

Video here: https://youtu.be/-i8MNSNF8vo?si=py7f-I57eE-8l3JR 
Score / parts here: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/in-a-field-of-stars

in a field of stars (2020)

feat. David Russell, cello 

Movement 1 of 3 from "Imageries"
Imageries is a set of character pieces exploring some of the sonic and expressive capabilities of the cello. Composed for David Russell, they depict elements of the natural world; the vast majesty of the sea, the violence and devastation of wildfires, and the peaceful tranquility of night. I hope the piece will encourage listeners to reflect on the beauty of the world around them and act to protect it in the midst of climate change.

Purchase score: https://www.ryansuleiman.com/imageries

I. Oceans, solo cello (2015)

feat. David Russell, cello

Movement 2 of 3 from "Imageries"

Imageries is a set of character pieces exploring some of the sonic and expressive capabilities of the cello. Composed for David Russell, they depict elements of the natural world; the vast majesty of the sea, the violence and devastation of wildfires, and the peaceful tranquility of night. I hope the piece will encourage listeners to reflect on the beauty of the world around them and act to protect it in the midst of climate change.

Purchase score: www.ryansuleiman.com/imageries

I. In Flames, solo cello (2015)

feat. David Russell, cello

Movement 3 of 3 from "Imageries"

Imageries is a set of character pieces exploring some of the sonic and expressive capabilities of the cello. Composed for David Russell, they depict elements of the natural world; the vast majesty of the sea, the violence and devastation of wildfires, and the peaceful tranquility of night. I hope the piece will encourage listeners to reflect on the beauty of the world around them and act to protect it in the midst of climate change.

Purchase score: www.ryansuleiman.com/imageries

III. Night Sky, solo cello (2015)

from The Red Velvet Violin Suite (2015):
performance by Leo Eylar (conductor), Ray-Anthony Trujillo (solo violin) and the Sacramento State Symphony Orchestra. 

Full notes and descriptions for each of the movements are available here: http://www.ryansuleiman.com/#!the-red-velvet-violin-suite/c1f4u 

IV. First Tune On The Violin And The Curse

III. Saverio Makes The Violin

II. Saverio And His Magical Dream

Sacramento State Symphonic Wind Ensemble; Dr. Robert Halseth, conductor.

Reflections explores different musical meanings of its namesake. Emotional connotations of the word such as meditation, introspection, and reminiscence, as well as more physical ones like brilliance, reverberation, inversion, and retrograde all served as inspiration. The music is held together by the interval of a falling seventh, introduced by solo trombone in the opening and permeating throughout. The orchestration aims for spaciousness and transparency, highlighting tone colors of individual instruments. The texture is also quite fragmentary, like a mosaic, and musical materials are "reflected" across different timbres. Percussion and piano play a special role in simulating resonance and reverberation. Ultimately, all instruments converge in a celebration of fireworks and lights.
 
The piece was commissioned by Dr. Robert Halseth, Director of Bands Emeritus, in appreciation for all the dedicated, courageous musicians in Symphonic Wind Ensemble (1993-2016) on the occasion of his retirement from California State University, Sacramento.

Reflections (2015)

Empyrean Ensemble

For me, walking around at night often provokes a unique feeling of wonder, mystery, and even serenity, mixed with a healthy dose of potential danger (depending on where I am walking!). At night, one’s surroundings are much more obscured and fewer people are out. This results in a heightened internal awareness and awareness of the environment. The lack of clear visual stimuli forces both the imagination and auditory senses to dominate. Among the sounds I concentrated on during this particular night walk were the beauty of wind in the trees and the occasional sound of wind chimes. The first few notes of the piece are stolen from somebody’s wind chimes.

The score shifts between a kind of guided-improvisational notation (also called “aleatoric”) and traditional, fully notated music. In the aleatoric passages, performers are given specific inventories of notes to play, with some expressive or guiding instructions to improvise on. In other words, as a composer I chose to control the harmony and basic texture, but left more of the nuance and interplay up to the whim of the live ensemble. For me, this is analogous with the spontaneous “counterpoint” of wind chimes, though it differs in the sense that the performers are in fact listening to each other and reacting in the moment.

https://www.ryansuleiman.com/nightwalk

2018-05-20: Works by Graduate Student Composers

Night Walk

2018-05-25: Works by UC Davis Graduate Students

Two Pieces in Variable Order for Solo Percussion

Daedalus Quartet performs Thought Bubbles at UC Davis.

The following brief “thought bubbles” are exactly that. Like many of our thoughts and ideas, some are dark, some are joyful, and some are purely abstract. “Skies of Smoke” is dedicated to those who lost everything in the fires in Butte County, California. “Mosaic #8” is inspired by a vibrant work by the visual artist Yuka Yamane, who lives in Osaka, Japan. “Breezes” is a tribute to simple moments of peace and quietude which are life’s best moments. “Icarus” deals with the notion of reaching too far, and “Melting” is a contemplation of physical processes happening on our planet.

I. Prelude
II. Skies of Smoke - in memoriam
III. Mosaic no. 8 - Yuka Yamane
IV. Breezes 
V. Icarus
VI. Interlude
VII. Melting

Thought Bubbles (live)

Pete Nowlen / Symphony d'Oro (November 2019)

Commissioned by Pete Nowlen and the Symphony d’Oro, Burning is dedicated to wildfire victims, firefighters, climate scientists, and activists. The piece aims to provide a space for contemplation, healing, and awareness regarding fires in California and places all around the world suffering from climate change. To honor the victims and help fight climate change, 50% of royalties generated from performances of this piece will be donated to One Tree Planted, a non-profit which plants trees around the world.

More info on this piece is available here: 

https://www.ryansuleiman.com/burning 
https://landscapemusic.org/essays/drawing-inspiration-from-nature-in-a-time-of-ecological-collapse/

photo credit: https://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/GettyImages-591909162.jpg?w=1920&h=1080&crop=1

Burning (2019)

Performance of my composition, "Acqua e Luce" by the Calder Quartet at the Mondavi Center for UC Davis' Art of Migration Festival, February 2013.

Program Notes:
This piece was composed for and premiered at the HighSCORE Festival in Pavia, Italy. As my first serious composition for string quartet, I wanted to seize the opportunity to experiment with the vast coloristic, textural, and expressive possibilities this historic instrumentation has to offer. As a structural framework for this goal, I decided to use the emerging and passing of a storm. For example, many of the sustained and glissandi (a technique of “sliding” from one note to the other) passages represent sunlight, and the col legno (the strings are hit with the wood of the bow) and pizzicati textures in the middle section often represent rain and water. However, it isn’t so important to me that the audience necessarily hears this connection. Instead, I’ve seen it as a tool for me to compose interesting sounds, contrasts, and to create an emotionally satisfying musical journey for the listener. 

Acqua e Luce (2012)

Performance by Sakurako Kanemitsu of my composition "Under Moonlight" at the Festival of New American Music, November 2012. 

Program Notes:
This piece originally began as one movement and was later broken up into these short miniatures. It can be taken as a medley of different “night scenes” inspired by not only the beautiful and tranquil, but also the curious and mysterious wonder of night. While I think of it as a set of character pieces, I also see it as a continuous and evocative narrative – imagine someone taking a walk through a mystical nature under the moonlight. 

I. Fanfare for the Setting Sun

Performance by Sakurako Kanemitsu of my solo piano composition at the Festival of New American Music (FeNAM), November 2012.

Program Notes:
This piece originally began as one movement and was later broken up into these short miniatures. It can be taken as a medley of different “night scenes” inspired by not only the beautiful and tranquil, but also the curious and mysterious wonder of night. While I think of it as a set of character pieces, I also see it as a continuous and evocative narrative – imagine someone taking a walk through a mystical nature under the moonlight. 

II. The Moon and the Stars

IV. Night Wanderer

Sacramento-born, Boston-based contemporary/classical composer. 

*  *  *

Ryan Suleiman was born in California to Lebanese and Mid-Western parents. His music engages with dreaming, the natural world, and the understated beauty of everyday life. His one-act chamber opera, Moon, Bride, Dogs, was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gem” with “an aesthetic that is at once so strange and so accessible.” While his artistic interests vary, he seeks ways of conveying the simultaneity of beauty and dread that characterizes our times. In his work, he is exploring the question what is music and what can it do?

Ryan’s musical output consists of numerous works for orchestra, opera, a puppet show, solo and chamber ensemble, singers, and a piano concerto. In addition to working closely with musicians, he loves collaborating with artists across discipline, and has worked with dancers, writers, puppets, and visual artists. He has been featured by numerous ensembles and festivals, including Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, West Edge Opera, the Sacramento State Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Mise-en, June in Buffalo, and the Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance Practice. His piano cycle, Under Moonlight, was recorded by Jai Jeffryes in his solo album, Amethyst, distributed by Naxos. 

Recent projects include an opera called The School for Girls who Lost Everything in the Fire, a work for socially-distanced soprano and ensemble, and several new solo and chamber works. His podcast, Reflections on Music and Nature, explores the intersection of this topic in the activist and philosophical sense through interviews with musicians. 

​Ryan completed his Ph.D. at University of California, Davis, where he wrote his dissertation on Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto through the lens of dreams and performance. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music and has held teaching positions at the Sacramento State School of Music and UC Davis. He resides in Boston with his partner and several furry animals. More information available at www.ryansuleiman.com.

Ryan Suleiman

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