Mélopée

Although this movement has lighter moments, it starts and ends with intensity. As with much of my work, there is an interest in integrating the shadow side with the ego.

Bassoon Concerto No. 3 Mov. III (2024)

String Orchestra of Brooklyn and Toomai String Quintet
R Carrick conductor
From Cycles of Evolution CD, New World Records
http://www.richardcarrick.com/adagiosSO.html
Score available from PSNY

10 Adagios For String Orchestra - Adagio - Trancendent Coda

My recording session for string orchestra.

LOVE ANIMATION!
and WALTZ!

After The Rain

I composed this melody in the summer of 2002. Someone asked me to write it for a wedding, though I can't remember who, and I know I didn't attend a wedding that summer. The piece was never performed. I recently arranged it for string orchestra and piano.

It is very short. I didn’t care to expand it. It’s weak, but I’m not inclined to make adjustments. It is what it is.

I call it “Vanishing Strain.” This is cryptic. "Strain" can mean many things; it's both a noun and a verb. "Vanishing Strain" may even sound positive, since a "strain" can be something painful. However, "strain" is also an archaic word for the "sound of a piece of music." Hence, "Vanishing Strain" serves as a metaphor for losing something beautiful. 

The fact that it was written for a wedding adds a further layer of meaning to it. I am thinking of Rochester, the male protagonist of Jane Eyre. His story—at least up to chapter 28—is one of the most heartbreaking I’ve ever read. Jane takes up employment at Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where she tutors Rochester's ward—a little French girl named Adèle. She describes Rochester as being ugly. Their conversations begin like a verbal tennis match or game of chess. They go head to head, wit to wit. It takes some time, but she falls in love with Rochester. His feelings for her appear to be ambiguous. He treats her well, though he sometimes seems to belittle her. At one point he nearly calls her "my darling," but he stops himself. He is the only one who calls her "Janet." What seems sure, though, at least to everyone (including Jane), is that Rochester is set to marry Blanche Ingram—a beautiful woman (Jane describes herself as not being beautiful) who cares only about Rochester's estate. Jane is jealous but handles her jealousy the same way she handles everything else: with the utmost dignity. It is incredible how Brontë has crafted a character such as Jane, who is so human and yet much more remarkable than everyone else. 

Rochester tells Jane that he will indeed marry Miss Ingram, and that he will send Jane to Scotland because there will be no place for her at Thornfield once Ingram becomes Mrs Rochester. But that was just a test to see how Jane would react. Rochester reveals that he loves Jane as much as she loves him. He proposes to her and Jane accepts. 

But the wedding is a disaster. It is disrupted by the revelation that Rochester is already married to a woman named Bertha Mason—the schizophrenic and violent woman (thought to be Grace Poole) with the cackle that lives at Thornfield and who tried to murder Rochester in the middle of the night. The reader sensed that Rochester had been hiding something. He had revealed some things about his past—none of which was happy—but there was more to be told. At the wedding and its aftermath, it came to light. 

Rochester tries to explain everything to Jane, who is crushed, shocked, and initially numb. Rochester reveals that he was essentially tricked into marrying Bertha, not knowing she was mentally ill. Apparently, he couldn't divorce her, and the fact that the marriage was never consummated meant nothing. She lived with him and he provided for her, obviously tolerating her violent outbursts. This was Rochester's life. Women either spurned him because he was ugly or they wanted him only for his money. Rochester did have casual sexual relationships (with Adèle's mother, for instance), but these meant nothing to him. Rochester is a deeply lonely man. In Jane, however, he finally met the one person who truly understands him—who sees him for who he is, who cares for him, just as he sees and cares for her. He begs Jane to stay with him. She refuses. Rochester falls upon his couch in despair. Jane quietly says goodbye to Mrs Fairfax and Adèle, and departs; she breaks down in tears in the carriage.

A "vanishing strain" is a music that isn't fully heard—just like my piece wasn't heard at the wedding, just like the unlived life of Rochester and Jane in that moment.

Vanishing Strain

DASEIN for String Orchestra

Night-Thoughts (2013/14) - for string orchestra and live-electronics

Re-arranged from original instrumentation on occasion of a school assignment. Originally arranged for solo Soprano (with lyrics) and piano and now re-arranged for string orchestra. Realized entirely with Cinematic Studio Strings and Cinematic Studio Solo Strings (first chair application).

Photo courtesy of Nathaniel Silvius © 2018
© 2018 Zachary Horner Music

Under The Same Sky

String orchestra remix of Run Away / 9 and Three Quarters by TXT.

Run Away TXT - String Orchestra Mix

Winterscape

Kuan He, composer,currently lives in NYC. Kuan composed for concert, film  and chamber music.

Alessandro Baticci (Milan, 1991) works at the interception of music and technology. 
As a composer, flautist and electroacoustic performer, Alessandro is active internationally in the field of contemporary music and sound art. Alessandro is also serial entrepreneur, inventor and product designer. He developed various electro-acoustical instruments, digital control and mapping systems, sound libraries, as well as sound and ergonomic solutions for acoustic instruments. Alessandro holds lectures and workshops in various universities across the world. He pursued studies in composition, flute, sound engineering as well as multimedia art in Milan, Vienna and Graz.

Alessandro is a Luzern Festival Academy Alumnus, fellow of Akademie Musiktheater heute by the Deutsche Bank Stiftung and Fellow of the Bogliasco Foundation (2022). His work has been rewarded with prestigious awards, such as the Staats-Stipendium of the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport (2021), the Publicity Award of the SKE Cultural Sponsorship (2022), the Theodor Körner Prize (2022) and the ERSTE Bank Composition Award (2023). 
Alessandro is founding member of The Black Page Orchestra, as well as co-founder of the composer-performer duo Nimikry. His recent compositions include commissions for Lucerne Festival, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Staatsoper Stuttgart and Ensemble Phace.

Music Composition Major at Texas Christian University, Class of 2017

Undergraduate student at Colorado State University graduating in 2026.

Composer | Orchestrator | Music Prep | Producer
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MA in Orchestration | Univ. of Chichester

Listen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc2ZSg8tk9JAgywynM3uhXQ

Richard Carrick, a Guggenheim fellow, writes music of spatial depth and robust stasis, characterized by continual development and the evocation of profound human experiences. Described both as "charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness" and "organic and restless" by The New York Times, Carrick's music is influenced by his multicultural background and experiences as well as his commitment to inspire professionals, audiences and youth through composition. Carrick invokes inspiration from concepts such as symmetry, spatial dimension, and transformation, and composes through process, invention, improvisation, and the incorporation of multimedia elements.

His recent CD release, Cycles of Evolution, incorporates pieces commissioned and performed by the NYPHIL BIENNIAL, Either/Or, Sweden’s Ensemble Son, Hotel Elefant, and DZ4. Carrick conducts or performs on all works on this CD, which includes his 'apocalyptic' multimedia work for performers and video, Prisoner's Cinema. Carrick's first recording also on New World Records, the “rich, beguiling” (The New York Times) extended chamber composition Flow Cycle for Strings, translates psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' principle into sonic terms. Carrick's improvisation-based disc Stone Guitars garnered critical attention in both the new music and guitar worlds, causing American Record Guide to note 'it may change your perception of electric guitar'. 

Carrick’s latest premiere was String Quartet #2 - Space:Time, a Fromm Foundation commission for the MIVOS Quartet, and has upcoming premieres by pianist Marilyn Nonken and others.  A 2015 Gugak International Workshop Fellow, he is currently composing for Korean traditional instruments.  His music has been programmed and presented internationally at festivals including ISCM World Music Days-Switzerland, Mid-American New Music Festival, and Darmstadt Summer Festival, and performed by musicians including the JACK Quartet, Nieuw Ensemble, Sequitur Ensemble, Tony Arnold, Magnus Andersson, Steven Schick, Rohan de Saram, and others. 

Carrick is co-founder and co-artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, declared 'first rate' and ‘a trustworthy purveyor of fresh sounds’ by The New York Times, and winner of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. As conductor and pianist, Carrick has worked with many celebrated composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Jonny Greenwood, Chaya Czernowin, Elliott Sharp, George Lewis, Alvin Lucier, and Rebecca Saunders. Carrick conducting E/O's ambitious presentation of John Cage's Party Pieces brought together 125 renowned composers from around the world. 

Carrick recently taught composition at Columbia and New York Universities and has presented masterclasses and lectures throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. He is a cornerstone of the teaching artist faculty for the New York Philharmonic, through which he has mentored hundreds of young composers internationally. 

Born in Paris of French-Algerian and British descent, Carrick received his BA from Columbia University, PhD from the University of California-San Diego with Brian Ferneyhough, and pursued further studies at IRCAM and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague.  Recent works distributed by Project Schott New York. www.richardcarrick.com

Kenneth Lieberson is a composer of symphonies, concertos, ballets, cantatas, tone poems, opera, chamber music, songs. His music has been heard on National Public Radio, at The Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, Queens College, NYU, Stony Brook, CAMI Hall, Merkin Hall and at high and middle schools. His B. M. and M. M. are from Juilliard. He also earned an M.B.A. at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Mr. Lieberson has also written two novellas, dozens of short stories and hundreds of poems.  He illustrated some of these.

COMPOSITEUR | COMPOSER

corteel.anthony@gmail.com

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