The Thing in my Head Smiled

24 2 8

Frozen Blossoms was composed collaboratively with Liam Pram as part of APRA's inaugural Composition SongHubs in 2024. We spent a few days generating ideas, passing back and forth melodic, harmonic and rhythmic material before each forming our own interpretations into two distinct works.

Recorded by Jade String Quartet at Parachute Studios in 2024.

Frozen Blossoms

Song of the Colossal Nomads is a piece inspired by the song of the humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean of Colombia during the reproductive season. These majestic animals travel up to 8,500 kilometers from the Antarctic and southern Chile to carry out the process of gestation and birth of their calves.
In the piece, the whales song constantly accompanies this journey. In it, by means of different harmonic and melodic resources, the fluid movement of the water is represented, the coming and going of the waves and with them, the nuances of the marine life that surrounds these traveling giants.
This piece was commissioned by painter Fernando Lozano to accompany the art exhibition Portrait of the Sea at the Jasper Arts gallery.

Composer: Laura Pacheco Nieto
Recordings of whales: Nicolás Gutiérrez García
Clarinet: Renae Dishman
Saxophone: Nicholas Gomez
Trombone: Brian McDonie
Violin: Yue Ning Foo
Cello: Johanna Di Norcia
Contrabass: Anna Mears
Conductor: William E. Hawkins

Song of the Colossal Nomads for six instruments and electronics (2025)

One of 11 tracks from 'Action Vibration', a new LP coming summer 2025 by Joe Snape with a stripped-down Northumberland Radical Fun Group, based on the 2021 performance of the same name at Gateshead's Glasshouse International Centre for Music. For more, visit http://joesna.pe, and https://vimeo.com/660969072. 

Tom Put Millie In A Bin Bag When The Police Came

‘Hexagonal’ was written for saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone). The piece
takes a playful approach to working with various patterns of six, inspired by some of the most
common and beautiful patterns found in nature. The beehive, and the snowflake, for example,
and of course many flowers and leaves are all based on the hexagon shape. Transposing some of these visual ideas into musical phrases, and exploring some of the colour and textural variations in musical language, this piece is very much about enjoying the simplest pleasures that the natural world has to offer.

'Hexagonal' received its premiere (as an acoustic work) with the Cobalt Saxophone Quartet, at
the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, NY, USA, on November 16th, 2024.  The electroacoustic backing track was created in spring 2025.  The track takes its material from only two sound sources: a commuter train, along with some springtime birdsong— an interesting blend of the urban and natural elements of the soundscape in Vancouver, Canada.

Sheet music for this piece is available through the Canadian Music Centre:

cmccanada.org/shop/80689/

Hexagonal-Electroacoustic

Performed and recorded by Ensamble Aural in February 2025 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

La solitudine idillica (2016)

A 10-part suite for wind ensemble. 
“A Day at the Castle”.

Overture
Be out for a walk
Flirt with the maid
At the brooklet
Pantomime
Intoxication
Home sweet home
Dinner
Love scene
Finale

Suite for Winds No. 1

Why have we not had any direct encounters with aliens? One theory that stirs my imagination is the “Zoo Hypotheses” that more advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are just observing us (to learn, or for entertainment?), and we are being given the freedom to develop on our own without outside influences. Are we so benevolent with the life around us on this planet? We observe a lot in our voyeuristic social media culture, but what do we learn? How does that observation change us? Are the aliens observing us also learning from us? I wonder how many layers of observation are going on above and below us. Are we just a plaything for beings more intelligent than us or are we being experimented on like we experiment on those creatures we perceive as less intelligent than us? I wonder what Schrodinger’s cat observed in its box…

Zoo Hypotheses

Éloïse Daoust - The Acceptance of Sand for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, and Bassoon (or Cello)

Chamber Winds, Percussion, and Solo Baritone Sax

Polarities (World Premiere) (2023)

Dutch composer, arranger, organist and conductor.

Composer & Sound Designer for video games, podcasts and theatre

Luis Tenaglia (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 1986) has graduated in Composition (with honors) with Marcelo Perticone at the Luis Gianneo Conservatoire, Mar del Plata, and with Rosario Mirigliano at the Santa Cecilia Conservatoire, Rome, Italy, with honors (cum laude), with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Italian Government. Later he went on doing advanced studies under Giorgio Battistelli and Luis Bacalov at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italia, obtaining Diploma di Merito with the former.
He has obtained one of the three prizes at the Txistu Composition Competition EHTE 2024, special mention at the J. C. Paz composition prize of Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Culture Secretary of Argentina Republic), in 2012 and 2016, and special mention at the 5th. Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition (Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien, Austria), in 2022.
His compositions have been performed in different festivals, theaters and halls of Argentina, Bolivia, Greece, England, Italy, Lithuania and Switzerland by different ensembles (JACK quartet, dissonArt ensemble, Imago Sonora ensemble, Thirty Fingers trio, Ritual trio, Nuove Triospettive, Ensamble Aural), orchestras (Mar del Plata symphonic orchestra, Oxford Sinfonietta), and soloists (Alda Caiello, Iris Oja and Valentín Garvie).
In 2017 he has founded the Ensamble Aural, an instrumental group dedicated to the contemporary music, specially interested in the music of young composers around the world.
From 2016 to 2025 he served as a Professor of Composición III, Análisis de la Música Contemporánea II, Instrumentación y Orquestación II and III, Taller de Sonidos y Medios and Contrapunto I at Luis Gianneo Conservatoire.

I work as a scientist for a living & am a hobbyist composer writing in a few different styles. I recommend headphones. All of my music is released under a Creative Commons Attribution/Noncommercial license.

My bandcamp page is getting out of date again, but some older albums there can be downloaded for free or for a name-your-own price donation.

If anyone wants to try performing any of this stuff on real instruments please send a message and I can provide scores. Not sure how playable some of it is for human musicians though.

Unsolicited messages asking me to listen to your latest song will lead to you being blocked unless if I know you well and we've interacted a lot.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for visiting!

Elizabeth Knudson is an internationally award-winning composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal & electroacoustic music, and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.  

For a more detailed bio: http://www.elizabethknudson.ca/bio/
To request purchase/rental/loan of sheet music, please visit the Canadian Music Centre website: https://cmccanada.org/composer/elizabeth-knudson/

My musical Odyssey continues to grow, with 6 CD's of 2012 Stories on transformation, sound healing and meditation practice and improvisation performance and facilitation. At the center of my journey is music for the higher purpose of peace and healing between people and Mother Earth. I am grateful to have received so much recognition for this music including Rome Prize (2010), Guggenheim (2008), Fulbright (1997), and Wurlitzer Foundation (2007 and 2009) Fellowships; 2 Global Music Awards (Innovation in Sound and Mixing and Editing); Sounds Electric ’07 Competition (Dublin), EMS Prize (Sweden), Citta di Udine (Prize ex aequo, Italy) international prizes, and performances all over the world. I perform internationally and am available for booking small and large groups and venues.  I teach at the University of Missouri at Kansas City where I received the 2008 Kauffman Award for Artistic Excellence. In 1994 I completed the Colorado Grand Slam after climbing all 54 of Colorado's 14,000 ft peaks. I now enjoy surfing the unknown and catching all the things I missed getting to all those summits…

Joe Snape (1989) mixes conventional and homemade instruments with light, text and video to make unusual and emotive performances. His work has been presented at places like The Kitchen (New York), Café Oto (London), and Wonder Site (Tokyo), and also at places like the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg) and Aldeburgh Music. The Quietus calls Joe’s music ‘goofy, melancholy, irreverent fun – very, very singularly itself.’ Fluid Radio thinks it’s ‘joyous and beautiful’, and one time in The Guardian Nico Muhly called it ‘organized, disorganized fun’. In front of a small audience, AACM trombonist George Lewis described Joe’s work as ‘some seriously unartful sh*t,’ and everybody agreed. Joe is a former UK Young Artist, has been nominated for the Arts Foundation’s Creative Producer fellowship, and has helped commission new work from over twenty young artists and composers on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a recipient of the 2021-22 Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Award for Artists in Composition and was a 2020-21 composer-in-residence at the beautiful Sage Gateshead.

New tracks tagged #chamber music