Three Frozen Preludes (2021) for solo piano
Yoon-Wha (Yuna) Roh, piano

[live recording in Pullman, WA, April 2023]

"Three Frozen Preludes"(2021) aim to express the quality of small scenes and captured timeless moments. “As in amber suspended,” “Unfiltered light,” and “A flowing stream midwinter” each reflect on the simultaneously static and ephemeral nature of perception and existence.

1. As in amber, suspended
2. Unfiltered light
3. A flowing stream midwinter

You can check out a scrolling score video of Three Frozen Preludes at https://youtu.be/34iADi7ipXM

More about my work can be found at https://linktr.ee/scottblasco

Three Frozen Preludes (2021) for piano

Fixed media electronic works

Queen of Heaven is a large-scale composition for piano and electronics, cast as five meditations on the Virgin Mary. Each of the five movements is set in musical materials that both subjectively and symbolically express the composer’s study and experience of scriptural, liturgical and iconographic sources relating to different aspects of her unique place in Christian theology.

The first movement, “Hail, Holy Queen,” imagines the greeting of the Virgin by the hosts of angels, in enormous, sonorous and terrifying voices. The second and fourth movements each take their inspiration from titles for Mary: “Full-of-Grace” from kecharitomene, the Greek word of greeting spoken by the Archangel Gabriel in Luke 1:28; and “The-One-Who-Gives-Birth-To-God” from Theotokos, an ancient liturgical and devotional epithet. These two are divided by “The Unburnt Bush,” based on iconographic and liturgical sources that celebrate the prefiguration of the Virgin in the burning bush of Exodus. The fifth and final movement returns to the heavenly setting of the first, drawing its imagery from Revelation 12: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

Queen of Heaven was commissioned by pianist Kari Johnson, and is dedicated to the Most Holy God-Bearer and Ever-Virgin Mary.
  
  
  
MORE INFORMATION AND SCORE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE HERE: http://scottblasco.com/compositions/queen-of-heaven/

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Queen of Heaven

Put together using the multimedia controller software ianniX and an AM synth built in Max/MSP. Floating, bending layers of sound are mapped to a series of objects in ianniX's 2D space.

Miniature (2014)

NIGHTMUSIC (2021) for oboe and electronics
Keri McCarthy, oboe

Nightmusic (2021) is a set of three lyrical meditations for oboe and electronics. The melancholic “Half-light” opens the work with a lingering, lamenting melody reflecting on the desolation I have often associated with twilight. “Adrift” expresses the time-suspended state between wakefulness and sleep with a languid solo line laid over a warm bed of gentle bells and resonances. The pulsating harmony and low, lulling melody of the closing movement, “Oblivion,” evoke the quietude and forgetfulness of sleep.

Nightmusic was composed as a gift to my WSU School of Music colleague Keri McCarthy, who has been a wise and invaluable mentor and a wonderful friend to me. It is my hope that I can reflect back to her some of the generosity of spirit she has shown to me and to all of her students and colleagues.

You can check out a scrolling score video of Nightmusic at https://youtu.be/n1zuwHKA03Q

More of my work can be perused at https://linktr.ee/scottblasco

Nightmusic (2021) for oboe and electronics

Three Frozen Preludes (2021) for solo piano
Yoon-Wha (Yuna) Roh, piano 

[live recording in Pullman, WA, April 2023]

"Three Frozen Preludes"(2021) aim to express the quality of small scenes and captured timeless moments. “As in amber suspended,” “Unfiltered light,” and “A flowing stream midwinter” each reflect on the simultaneously static and ephemeral nature of perception and existence.

1. As in amber, suspended
2. Unfiltered light
3. A flowing stream midwinter

You can check out a scrolling score video of Three Frozen Preludes at https://youtu.be/34iADi7ipXM

More about my work can be found at https://linktr.ee/scottblasco

Three Frozen Preludes: 1. As In Amber, Suspended

Three Frozen Preludes: 2. Unfiltered Light

Three Frozen Preludes: 3. A Flowing Stream Midwinter

CLOUDS, LIGHT is the fruit of a series of private improvisations I did in April 2016, throwing a variety of simple sounds through a tangled web of sixty-five or so delay lines to see what they would do (this we call “research”). I liked the results of one in particular enough to return to it sporadically over the next six months, pushing and pulling and prodding it until I figured it was really time to call it done and move on to the next big project. The thick haziness of the beginning gradually rises and clarifies until it gives way to a quiet, delicate, warm interlude. The work closes resubmerged in the dense murk, the brief glimmer of light through the clouds passed into memory.

This track is a stereo mix of the 8-channel version.

Pentecost

Clouds, Light (2016)

A simple, resonant gesture, bending heavenward. A plea.

Miniature (2016)

THE DEEPS articulates a single gesture divided into three contrasting sections, drawn from a recorded sample of boiling water. Though the source material is never completely obscured, it is filtered and altered in order to bring into super-real relief its contrasts and textural drama, evoking more profound imagery than its rather mundane beginnings might suggest.

This recording is a stereo mix of the 8-channel version.

The Deeps (2017)

Live premiere of Part 1 of "One Day as a Thousand Years," performed by R. Andrew Lee at Washington State University. November 13, 2017. A complete recording is available from Irritable Hedgehog Music: irritablehedgehog.bandcamp.com

Ordinary Time II 0:00-2:16
Advent 2:16-7:28
Nativity 7:28-12:42
Epiphany 12:42-16:07
Ordinary Time I 16:07-19:07

"One Day As a Thousand Years" is a work for piano and electronics, cast in two large sections following the Christian liturgical calendar. The church year is cast in two broad arches, centered on the two pivotal mysteries of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. The first flows from Advent through the Nativity to Epiphany, the second from Lent through Holy Week and Easter to Pentecost. Beyond their particular Christological import, what unites them is a shared structure: a period of waiting, followed by a crisis point of Divine action, and finally an expansion into the world. In the Incarnation, the "local" Divine event of Christ's Nativity takes on universal significance in the celebration of Epiphany, which proclaims his birth as not only for the salvation of Israel, but for all the world. Likewise the Resurrection, which finds its universalized expansion in Pentecost, the descent of the Spirit on a small band of followers who then carry it out into the world. The symmetry and union of these two spans is deepened by their focus on birth: the birth of God as a human being in the Nativity, and the resurrected Christ as "first born of the dead" –– the former as the Divine becomes man, the latter as the way is opened for man to become Divine.

One Day as a Thousand Years

Buy studio version

One Day as a Thousand Years, Part 1: Advent–Nativity–Epiphany (premiere performance)

Pre-release mix of my new spatial audio work Transfiguration, the final version of which will be included on an upcoming release from Irritable Hedgehog Music, "Pentecost."


Transfiguration is the second of a planned triptych of meditations on the interactions, the comings-and goings-and-union, between the tangible and spiritual worlds. The gospels relate the Transfiguration as the visible illumination of the depth of reality veiled in flesh in the person of Jesus: “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.”

Like its companion piece, Pentecost, Transfiguration is crafted from a simple sound source (in this case, a one-second contrabassoon sample). Following a pen-and-paper sketch, the work blooms from muted simplicity to a rich, layered texture before returning to a single tone, now flush with the afterglow of its brief metamorphosis.

Transfiguration

Transfiguration (2018) PRE-RELEASE

Queen of Heaven is a large-scale composition for piano and electronics, cast as five meditations on the Virgin Mary. Each of the five movements is set in musical materials that both subjectively and symbolically express the composer’s study and experience of scriptural, liturgical and iconographic sources relating to different aspects of her unique place in Christian theology.

The first movement, “Hail, Holy Queen,” imagines the greeting of the Virgin by the hosts of angels, in enormous, sonorous and terrifying voices. The second and fourth movements each take their inspiration from titles for Mary: “Full-of-Grace” from kecharitomene, the Greek word of greeting spoken by the Archangel Gabriel in Luke 1:28; and “The-One-Who-Gives-Birth-To-God” from Theotokos, an ancient liturgical and devotional epithet. These two are divided by “The Unburnt Bush,” based on iconographic and liturgical sources that celebrate the prefiguration of the Virgin in the burning bush of Exodus. The fifth and final movement returns to the heavenly setting of the first, drawing its imagery from Revelation 12: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

Queen of Heaven was commissioned by pianist Kari Johnson, and is dedicated to the Most Holy God-Bearer and Ever-Virgin Mary.

Hail, Holy Queen!

Full-of-Grace (Kecharitomene)

The Unburnt Bush

The-One-Who-Gives-Birth-to-God (Theotokos)

The Woman Clothed With the Sun

These four songs are excerpted from music written for a production of Bertolt Brecht’s epic play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In the context of the play, they are all sung by the heroine, Grusha Vachnadze, a servant girl working in the governor’s kitchen at the time of a bloody coup. In the confusion, the murdered governor’s infant son is left behind by his horrible mother, who is more interested in which dresses she can save. The child is found and rescued by Grusha, who flees the city, hunted by soldiers who wish the child heir dead. Over the course of her travels and travails, Grusha falls in love with the child, finally claiming him as her own. The Song of the Rotten Bridge, Lullaby, and Song of the Child reflect a progression from her loving and claiming the child, to seeing in him a future of redemption for the sins of his father. In the second song, Song of the Center, Grusha sings of her fiancé Simon, who has been conscripted into the military to fend off the invading armies. 

The music for The Caucasian Chalk Circle was commissioned by the Dordt College Theatre Department. The texts are from Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of Stefan S. Brecht’s translation of the original play. Where the original play indicated titles (Song of the Rotten Bridge, Song of the Center, and so on), they have been retained in the score. 

Texts used by permission.

Song of the Rotten Bridge

Song of the Center

Lullaby

Song of the Child

Composer, percussionist, and guitarist. Ears wide open. Recently a professor of composition and music theory at Washington State University, currently catching my breath.

Lots more here: linktr.ee/scottblasco

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