The second movement of Reed Quintet No. 1 "Heroes and Villains," by Elliott Grabill
Performed by the Civitasolis Quintet
Many thanks to:
Luis Gallo Quintero, oboe and English horn
Amy Humberd, Bb and Eb clarinets
Beth King-Bennett, alto saxophone
Ryan Pereira, bass clarinet
Robert Alexander, bassoon

II. Dark Money (Live)

The first movement of Reed Quintet No. 1 "Heroes and Villains," by Elliott Grabill
Performed by the Civitasolis Quintet

Many thanks to:
Luis Gallo Quintero, oboe and English horn
Amy Humberd, Bb and Eb clarinets
Beth King-Bennett, alto saxophone
Ryan Pereira, bass clarinet
Robert Alexander, bassoon

III. Jeering Song (Live)

IV. Patty Cake (Live)

V. Elegy (Live)

Performance at the International Double Reed Society Conference July 2022 by the Paradise Winds Reed Quintet:
Tiffany Pan, oboe
Joshua Gardner, clarinet
Stefanie Gardner, bass clarinet
Patrick Murphy, saxophone
Joseph Kluesener, bassoon

the alphabet: ruin of silence • Paradise Winds

Limitation & Locomotion (2021) for reed quintet

Akropolis Reed Quintet
Tim Gocklin, oboe
Kari Landry, clarinet
Matt Landry, alto saxophone
Andrew Koeppe, bass clarinet
Ryan Reynolds, bassoon

Composers often say that limitation breeds creativity, and at first, that sounds rather nonsensical. Wouldn’t limitation prevent composers from having full freedom in their music, you might ask? In a sense this is true, but compositional constraints, whether self-imposed or externally imposed, actually force composers to get very creative in order to solve their musical dilemmas. In fact, it’s even said that the stricter the limitations, the more innovative the composer will have to be in order to produce a convincing result.

I decided to take this concept and run with it. While mapping out the form/structure for Limitation & Locomotion, I instituted specific constraints in each section. For instance, in one, I allowed myself to use only three pitches, and in another, I allowed myself to use only on-beat rhythms. Needless to say, writing this piece involved a lot of trial and error. At times, I felt like I was in the midst of solving a challenging musical sudoku puzzle.

Where does “locomotion” come into the equation? It was a word that came to mind as I thought about the driving force of much of the musical material in the piece. At many points, the music seems to be propelling itself forward almost mechanically in spite of the limitations I imposed, and that propulsion is something I thought a lot about as I wrote this piece. Also, Limitation & Propulsion just doesn’t have the same ring to it, right? Alliteration is awesome.

Limitation & Locomotion was commissioned by Pro Musica Detroit and Detroit Composers Project for the Akropolis Reed Quintet.

Thank you so much to Pro Musica Detroit and Detroit Composers Project for the generous commission, and to the incomparable Akropolis Reed Quintet for being such awesome collaborators and for their amazing performance! Huge thanks also to Dr. Cynthia Van Maanen for her guidance and support through the process of composing the piece.

This recording is from the world premiere performance of Limitation & Locomotion, which took place on Saturday, July 16, 2022 at Pro Musica Detroit's Akropolis Reed Quintet program in Detroit, MI.

Website: https://www.jonahcohenmusic.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonahcohen4799
Instagram: @jonahcohen.music

Image credit: Akropolis Reed Quintet/Jason Walker

For inquiries about this piece, please contact me at through my website: https://www.jonahcohenmusic.com/contact

Copyright Jonah Cohen 2021.

Limitation & Locomotion

Unequal Measure • Paradise Winds

Harlequin’s Escapades is commissioned by and dedicated to Voyager Reed Quintet. It is a playful, comic piece inspired by the antics of Harlequin, one of the principal stock characters of the Italian commedia dell’arte. He and is often portrayed as a facile and witty gentleman’s valet and a capricious suitor of the serving maid.

In the early years of the commedia (mid-16th century), the Harlequin was a zanni (a wily and covetous comic servant), and he was cowardly, superstitious, and plagued by a continual lack of money and food. By the early 17th century, Harlequin had become a faithful valet, patient, credulous, and amorous. This last quality often led him into difficulties from which he managed to extricate himself by cleverness and irrepressible high spirits. He was amoral without being vicious, and, unlike his fellow commedia servants, he did not hold a grudge or seek revenge against those who tricked or cheated him.
The work is playful, rhythmic and at times virtuosic portrait of Harlequin that show many facets of his zany personality.

Harlequin's Escapades For Reed Quintet

Calefax Reed Quintet, live performance of Purple blue, commissioned by Music Network for nationwide Irish tour, April 1999

live recording Music Network Tour, April 1999

Purple blue

Everything is Real is one of series of pieces that consider the relationship between live musical material and electronically produced music. This work has a sister piece, Everything is an Illusion. But in this case there is no electronic part; everything really is real.

What excited my about writing for Splinter Reeds is both their keen sense of ensemble playing and the variety of colours across the natural speaking voices of this instrumental combination. I tried to make use of both these qualities here wherein the instruments follow wide-ranging, interwoven lines to form a kaleidoscope of rotating colours that shifts repeatedly across the range of all the instruments.

Everything is Real  (for reed quintet)

Dimension: IV. Polygon

Dimension: III. Prism

Dimension: II. Sinusoid

Dimension: I. Ellipse

Three is the number of good fortune, and the pattern of three is deeply rooted in the structure of fairy tales – three wishes, three tests or three choices. In many religions, too, Three is also a sacred number, and in rituals most actions are preformed three times. We are all familiar with the three wise monkeys which represant a japanese pictorial maxim, embodying the proverbial principle "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". And furthermore only three basic colors are needed to mix most other colors. There would be many more examples but it is already clear: All good things come in threes!

So all I want to present in this short piece are my three wishes to the Civitasolis Reed Quintet:
Sound – Noise - Energy!

Vienna Reed Quintet:
Heri Choi - Oboe
Heinz-Peter Linshalm - Clarinet
Alfred Reiter - Saxophone
Petra Stump-Linshalm - Bass clarinet
Marcelo Padilla - Bassoon

IF I HAD THREE WHISHES (2020) for reed quintet

for reed quintet (oboe, B-flat clarinet, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and bassoon)

“oblivion” was composed for award-winning West Coast reed quintet Splinter Reeds during their 2021 residency with Western Michigan University. The piece was composed with abstract thematic direction during a period of burnout and writer’s block, but thankfully, I was thrilled with the results as I received part recordings from the brilliant performers and completed the mixing process. Today, it stands as a piece that reminds me to push through apathy and uncertainty, and to trust that my efforts are valuable.

For score perusal/purchase, please visit https://www.jdreevesmusic.com/scores/p/oblivion-2021

Recorded by Splinter Reeds in March, 2021.

oblivion (2021)

This is a live recording by Akropolis Reed Quintet at Sweet Briar College

mAEtAnYm (reed quintet and fixed media)

The Paradise Winds Reed Quintet at the 2022 International Double Reed Ensemble
Tiffany Pan, oboe
Joshua Gardner, clarinet
Patrick Murphy, saxophone
Stefanie Harger Gardner, bass clarinet
Joseph Kluesener, bassoon

Kalei (2024)

https://www.stump-linshalm.com

All scores are available at:
http://shop.apoll-edition.work/index.php?route=common/home

My name is Jadie (she/they) and I’m a Chicago-based artist specializing in composition and vocal performance. Although aesthetic interests vary, my music tends to live in a postminimal world with thematic focus toward identity, healing, and vulnerability in the concert space. Thanks for exploring/listening to my work :)

Roosevelt University '26 | Graduate Assistant, Composition
Western Michigan University '24 | Presidential Scholar in Music

Elliott Grabill is a composer and math teacher from Baltimore City.  He offers a unique perspective to the new music community, having “a lot to say, both musically and verbally,” according to Ron Beckett. 

Elliott Grabill’s music has been described as hauntingly beautiful, with flowery textures and bittersweet emotions.  His work has been performed by Pique Collective, Dark in the Song, the Washington Men’s Camerata, L'Abri Trio, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, and numerous solo artists, including Melissa Lander, Lynn Hileman, Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, Shawn Earle, Andrea Cheeseman, Hila Zamir, and Tae Ho Hwang.  Prizes include the Dark in the Song Prize, 3rd place in the Peabody Prix d’Ete, and an honorable mention in the Arcady Emerging Composer Competition.  He holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Virginia.  His film and dance collaborations have been featured at the Rosebud Film Festival, the Windup Space, the Athens Film Festival, Temple University, American University, and Dance Place.  

#classicalmusic
#electronicmusic
#composer

I'm a composer. I'm currently an associate professor of music and chair of the music program at Sweet Briar College in central Virginia. I have degrees from Appalachian State University, Brigham Young University, and the University of North Texas. 

My music is grounded in a fascination with visual art, textures, sound spectra, non-linear narratives, and extreme temporal manipulations, and it has been heavily influenced by studio techniques of electroacoustic composers. I've been commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Nova Ensemble at UNT, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Virginia Wesleyan University, and many amazing performers. I've composed two feature film scores—King Rat (2017) and HUM (2020), and my concert works have been performed throughout the United States as well as South Korea, and is available on the SEAMUS and Ravello record labels.

Check out additional pieces at my YouTube channel (link below).

Email me at jkharriscomposer@gmail.com

Thomas Adam Billings, an accomplished composer from Washington State, is renowned for blending the natural world's beauty into his musical narratives. A product of the Juilliard School and Mannes College of Music, and a current doctoral student at Boston University, Adam's work reflects his superior musical training. He gained prominence with his pioneering series of asynchronous woodwind trios during the COVID-19 pandemic and his tenure as Composer-In-Residence at Western Washington University. Internationally recognized, Adam's collaborations with esteemed ensembles and performances by notable artists amplify his influence within the music industry, making him a significant voice in contemporary music.

From rural County Down, Deirdre's work has featured at London’s Southbank, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Gothenburg International Chamber Music Festival, Orléans Concours International, 
The Wigmore Hall, London, The National Sawdust, Brooklyn, The Phillips Collection, Washington, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Symphony Space & Carnegie Hall, New York.

Recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Composer Award, London, in 2018, previous awards include a Director’s Choice Award from Boston Metro Opera’s International Composers’ Competition and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award. In December 2023, her work represented Ireland at the ISCM World New Music Days, Cape Town, South Africa.

Commissions and performances include works for Northern Ireland Opera, State Choir Latvija for Louth Contemporary Music, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Singers, Ulster Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Boston Firebird Ensemble, RTÉ Con Tempo, Norwegian Vertavo, Vanbrugh and Swiss Terpsycordes string quartets, Access Contemporary Music Chicago, New Music Dublin, pianists Andrew Zolinsky and Antti Siirala, Matthew Schellhorn, Jessica Chan, Chloë Hanslip & Danny Driver, Tasmin Little & Martin Roscoe, Dutch violist Elisabeth Smalt, Calefax Reed quintet, Irish artists Clíona Doris, Robin Tritschler, Carol McGonnell, Eamonn Mulhall, Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea, Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney, Elizabeth Cooney and Finghin Collins, Xenia Pestova, David Quigley, Concorde and the Crash Ensemble.

Former Composer in Association to the Northern Sinfonia’s affiliated Young Sinfonia, Deirdre was awarded an artist residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Her work has been incorporated by filmmaker, Des Bell, into three of his films, showing at the Dublin International Film Festival, Belfast Festival at Queen’s and Montreal World Film Festival. Collaborations have included new work with visual artist Jean Duncan and writer/ actor Richard Dormer.

Her music has been released on the Lorelt, Diatribe, Métier and RTÉ Lyric FM labels and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, Deutschlandradio Kultur and New York’s WNYC and WQXR.

cmc.ie/composers/deirdre-mckay
https://mckaydeirdre.com/

Hi, I'm Jonah Cohen, a composer, conductor, pianist, and cellist from Michigan! Feel free to check out my music on this channel, and for any inquiries, email jcohen0504@gmail.com. Thanks so much for visiting my channel!

New tracks tagged #Reed Quintet