A Most Perfect Blue, for Grand Organ
written for and premiered by Autumn, on June 11th 2023.
(I normally dislike writing extensive program notes, but these may prove helpful for your listen!)
This piece is (as the title alludes to) concerned with the notion of identity. The gentle chorale tune that serves as the basis for much of the thematic material in the work has found itself haunting me for the better part of a year, and A Most Perfect Blue serves as my attempt at exploring the possibilities inherent within the theme while also acknowledging my struggles with developing and contextualizing it. As the work proceeded, I opted to more explicitly transform the work into an intertextual document, making numerous references to pieces that carry sentimental value to both myself and the premiere performer, Autumn. The result of this is a series of attempts to contextualize and "complete" the chorale across the piece's four movements, to varying degrees of success. The overly grandiose climax of the finale (and subsequent denouements) is conceived as giving the theme a moment of glory before it eventually falls into nothingness, either leaving itself behind entirely or with only a faint echo of what it once was. 
The first movement, "Identit(y)(ies)" opens with two statements of the central theme (the second accompanied by a lyrical countermelody) before fracturing and disrupting itself with lush chords sourced from the finale of Messiaen's Nativitie du Seigneur, the materials developing and restarting time and again until a grand climax. 
Movement II(a), "Fractures" consists of a series of varyingly contextualized fragments, firstly developing the countermelody and eventually transforming it into Celes's theme from Final Fantasy VI. Slowly more fragments from movement one are reintroduced and recontextualized, never stating the chorale outright but often alluding to it.
II(b), "Complete in and of it/myself" repositions the chorale against a series of preexisting themes, one I wrote for an unpremiered podcast, a return of Celes's theme, the second movement of Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quintet (and his adaptation of it into a Waltz for the film Agony), culminating with an extended sequence pairing it with one of the most striking and heartwrenching passages in the organ literature, from Cesar Franck's Chorale No. 2 in B minor. Franck's ultimately affirming resolution is denied in this context, leading directly into...
Movement III, "Shattering | Mending," which opens with vicious low register clusters and high mixtures overtop, an oblique allusion to the ending minutes of Iannis Xenakis's Gmeeoorh. The Messiaen chords make their return, in tandem with cascading seconds that increase in intensity until massive clusters and glissandi override the texture. An increasing density of quotes and allusions proceeds throughout, including Koji Kondo's Saria's Song and Ganondorf themes, the finale of Louis Vierne's Symphony No. 6, and the B-A-C-H motif. At last, all these materials dissolve into frantic cluster glissandi and one final statement of the central chorale utilizing the full organ - this is followed by an apocalyptic cadenza and the performer's choice of endings: a nostalgic fadeout, or an impulsive leap into the void.

A Most Perfect Blue (2023, world premiere)

Alex Temple & Katie C. Doyle, Everything is named after something lost (2021–23)

0:00 — Prelude: The Mountain Speaks 
0:59 — Crags and Outcroppings
3:36 — Interlude 1: The Desert
5:08 — New Shapes
7:36 — Interlude 2: The Pleasures of Volcanic Activity
8:38 — Let the Rest of the World Go By
10:52 — Interlude 3: The Mountain Watches Us
12:40 — The End of Everything

Chatter:
Jesse Tatum, flute
Megan Snow, clarinet
David Felberg, violin
James Holland, cello
Luke Gullickson, piano
Live at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa FE, NM (8.26.23)

More info:
https://www.alextemplemusic.com/everything-is-named-after-something-lost

Everything is named after something lost (2023)

Making Them Louder

Trickster

Some Kind Of

Broken Record

Day 2 - Firmament (Ballard) 
As the stars peep out of the vast cosmos that was once a lifetime of nothingness, the phrase "and the sons of God shouted for joy" at His creation. Angels were often paralleled with stars as personal manifestations of God. The Baroque chording was inspired by the use of some Vivaldi in old 'Cosmos' episodes

Jack Ballard: keyboards, vocals

Day 2 - Firmament

On One

I make music in my free time because the regularness of everyday life is too hard for me…

Composer pianist, in love with jank, writing jank to increase the world's jank supply

"Little more than kitschiness, pretense, and vulgarity"
—Oberon's Grove

Meet Me At The Rave


Gesamtkunstrave is an environment created by one or more people, based primarily on music, that combines multiple media and art forms and takes place in real time in a specific location, involving the participants of that environment in the overall atmosphere, creating a complete work of art.
Music has no boundaries.

IG-
https://www.instagram.com/meet_me_at_the_rave?igsh=MjNjMzFwcmEzc2kw&utm_source=qr

SPOTIFY-
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7rzjBQhoKQZFU6BVwRDNqS?si=jj1kvgHWQ36TMAOMDeNvLw

YT-
https://youtube.com/@gesamtkunstrave?si=x0d3PvPosZphZNQ5

New tracks tagged #polyStylism