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

you have forgotten your own name
we are sleeping right now
you don’t remember me
I’ve known you forever 

like an unremembered dream
we wander under this swirl’s spell
Each day I cry for you
Why won’t you listen to me?

your love misplaced, entranced in dream
you believe it to be gold 
how starved you are for me
come back to me and I will receive you

We have never truly parted
I am always with you
I never forgot you
when you forget me 

If I counted how many times
we have met using pebbles 
every planet in the universe 
could not carry them

few are the atoms in all the stars 
compared to the times we have met
yet you still can’t remember
your own name

Fantasia for Lumatone and Voice in 31edo (live)

2024. for percussion, machines, feedback systems, transducers, and acousmatic sound. Cullen Faulk and Matt Teodori: percussion and machines, Isaac Barzso: electronics. recorded at the University of Texas, 11.15.2024.

photo by James May (https://jamesmaycomposer.com)
score available at: https://issuu.com/isaacbarzso/docs/barzso_sandpaper-chalk-hungoutwet_full-score_2024

sandpaper, chalk, hung out wet || line upon line percussion

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

This prelude first grew out of a desire of mine to write a work that was heavily based in triadic harmony. I had been, for a lengthy period leading up to this, writing pieces that were mostly non-triadic in harmonic language, and felt a sort of innate need to write something in a dramatically different aesthetic than my other pieces. I decided to write a piece that was post-minimalist in nature, sharing its aesthetic with minimalism, but not aligning with the ethos of minimalist composing. Instead, the piece still exploits elements such as directionality of phrase and cadential movements. In the absence of functional harmony, however, movement of notes, color, interplay of independent arpeggiation, and contour lend the music its phrasing.

Prelude (four-hand version)

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

Sofía Rocha (b. 1996) writes music of uncompromising emotional intensity while exploring cognition, randomness, movement, poetics, and counterpoint through an eclectic set of frameworks.