Commissioned by Stephen Ai
Supported by Harvard University’s Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund
Dedicated to Stephen, Annie, and Timo, with love

Premiered by Maxwell Hinton, November 14, 2023 in Taplin Auditorium at Princeton University

When I first encountered the sprawling and obsessive beauty of Laurie Spiegel’s music, I was amazed by its experimentation, technical craft, and deeply realized spirituality. Most moving to me was how intensely alive it all felt despite being entirely electronic. Contemplative at turns and pulsatingly rhythmic at others, her work was suffused with an organic sense of discovery: listening to her music, I felt as though I was hearing a master improviser discover a new set. 

I myself frequently improvise at the keyboard as I compose. After playing for long enough, though, my jam sessions almost invariably return to the transparent harmonies and voicings of the church hymns I grew up accompanying. Despite their ascetic nature, these songs, too, felt alive to me. Their ritualistic manner, instead of alienating me, often invited me into a place of meditation. 

Hymns After Laurie Spiegel was written during a very emotionally tumultuous time. To ground myself during the composition process, I considered two hymns that have been especially meaningful to me - Abide With Me and Nearer, My God, to Thee - and sought to place them within the spacious grandeur of Spiegel’s cosmic soundscapes. This piece is dedicated with much gratitude to pianist and commissioner Stephen Ai, as well as my dear friends Annie Hart and Timo Andres who introduced me to Spiegel’s music in the first place. I have much love and admiration for all of them.

Chamber Music

Hymns After Laurie Spiegel, for solo piano

Spirare II (2023) for vibraphone, marimba, and two pianos

Op. 6

A short composition I wrote in January, 2017, here peformed by Plexus. Stefan Cassomenos (piano), Monica Curro (violin) and Phil Arkinstall (clarinet).

Evolve

My senior recital. Find the visual elements here (below).
Music by Ben Bisogno.
A BIG - "THANK YOU!" to:
Words and Voice - Taylor Burgess.
Flute/Imitation Shakuhachi - Stefanie Proulx
Alan Sweet - Bass Clarinet
Clayton Tomson - Bass
Shannon Civic - Piano
Yifan Li - Percussion
Yule Cara Han - Violin

Recorded by Joseph Falco (Yogi)

First Light

While practicing the biwa, a traditional Japanese instrument, that I first learn about in Takemitsu's November Steps and am now playing with at my research school in japan, I made a few tracks. I threw them together and woolah! something that could be used as a pallet for a future piece of music. Kinda. The name comes from my appreciation of the very sounds of the words.

Biwa Boi

I improvised this small piece while thinking about how to write a musical that is participatory and works with similar mechanics I have experienced in improv and live action role play. It is dedicated to my friend Naomi; may she ever be my valentine.

This piece was written during a large mecha battle in central Kyoto. If you listen closely, you can hear children reacting in the background to the apocalyptic scene.

Too Many Stairs

Snow Pond Music Festival 2018

Performed by Maya Bennardo

Disquiet Dreams for Solo Violin

Voxman Concert Hall

Outside the Window (String Quartet)

Keisuke Ito (koto), me (bicycle), and Naruse Hatsumi (makimono) put this piece on. It came from a dream I had mixing the timber of bicycle spokes with tsume on koto strings.

The name of the piece come from a rehearsal at Nagaoka Tenjin Zendera, where ito-kun played koto on one side of a doorway and I (bicycle) on the outside.

At the Temple Door: Duo for Koto and Bicycle

a little preview of an upcoming work: colours (op. 20)
this is the second movement

pink 1

greys is a piece meant to explore and evoke a sound-world somewhat different than what we may be used to. It requires the performer to prepare their guitar, such that the frets do not create evenly spaced half-steps, like usual, but instead create unevenly spaced intervals that are between a half-step and whole-step. This is in a way a transformative process on the guitar—while the tone remains similar, the structure of how pitch is organized is fundamentally modified, both allowing for new possibilities while simultaneously disallowing the normal. Thus, it is meant, for both audience and performer, to thrust us into somewhere new, without option to return to where we once were. Old actions have new results.

Recording by Jay Sorce | http://www.jaysorce.com/
Premiered as part of the Hypercube Composition Lab

greys

Sofía Rocha (b. 1996 in Boulder, Colorado) writes music of uncompromising emotional intensity while exploring cognition, randomness, rhythm, and counterpoint within post-tonal frameworks. She writes for all manner of performing forces instrumental, vocal and electronic.

she/they

greys

Sofía Rocha

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