In the poem Violent Waters, Meg Nezaj captures the incomparable loss of emotional purpose; a woman, striped of her world, trapped in every sense of the word and under the blessing of a starlit sky forces her own freedom.

My life so dim, I no longer sing. 
Serving a family, not my own 
In this strange foreign land. 
Recruited as a maid, treated as a slave 
Brutal beatings outnumber my pay, 
I'm voiceless without a name!

My life in the open sea, 
Dark sharks encircle me. 
I think of my hungry children 
So I keep my head up; carry on. 
Waves high enough to wipe me away 
Yet I'm still here, day after day!

Desperate and unprotected 
Exhausted in violent waters, 
I thank the sun who dried my tears 
And kiss the stars goodnight, 
There is no other way out 
I take my last breath here!

Violent Waters

Then The Echo Goes

It is almost impossible to avoid writing music for Korean traditional instruments while studying at the University of Hawaii.  The accessibility of the performers in conjunction with their abundance allows composers to explore these new sound worlds without too much intimidation. The title itself comes from a elevator conversation with a pansori singer.  I was playfully bemoaning the lack of practice time in the one practice room in our building due to the large influx of musicians.  She was quick to note that pansori singers don’t practice in practice rooms, but rather scream at waterfalls, to which she asked, “can you find me a waterfall?”


Can You Find Me A Waterfall?

In my first collaboration with Jide Nezaj, Violent Waters,  I was commissioned for a charity concert titled Kiss the Stars Goodnight: A Concert for Human Trafficking Awareness.  The work was heavy in content, and the music reflected that with thick textures and disjunct homophony.  In our second collaboration, we consider the emotional state of mixed race peoples in cultures unaccepting of them.  I borrow the same timbres and sound worlds from our first work together to create a new experience for the listener.

Treading through dry land, I dream of turbulent rain
to wash out confusion and pain.
Drench my feet into the Earth to feel, to belong.
Like a rock on the seabed never reaching the shore
like a fish tossed above the heavens
displaced; like a frozen stream, defeated.
Like a mango covered in snow, how will it’s beauty be told?
Like an olive tree planted in sand, how will it grow?
I open my eyes and all I see, mixed races all staring at me
yet I dream of distant sounds

Dreams Of Turbulent Rain

The title of this work comes from a lecture by Mas Kodani-sensei of Kinarra Taiko.  It embraces the concept that the very intention of achieving enlightenment is to consistently attempt the impossible.  To forget that hanging a giant brass bell in the sky is impossible is analogous with the exercise of meditation and releasing the ego.  With my first piece for shakuhachi, I wanted to create an aural experience that was ethereal and ambient, but at the same time very present.  I purposefully wrote this with my performer’s compositional aesthetics in mind, with a detachment from the need for extensive melodic content and an emphasis placed on the timbre of the instrument.  Accompanied by temple bowls placed throughout the hall, I hope to create a listening experience that is new and interesting for the audience.

Hanging Kansho In The Sky

Noise Play I, premiered in 2013, was an experiment in instrumentation and rhythmic layers.  I borrowed patterns from basso nova, modern Japanese taiko, and Afro-Cuban music to create a fun experience for both performers and audiences.  In this continuation, I carry over the idea of allowing percussionists to choose their own instruments, the only limitations being that they must belong to four families for each percussionist: an aerophone, 5 membranophones, 4 long-envelope idiophones and 4 short-envelope idiophones.  An expansion of the theme of freedom and mobility is included in this iteration through solo sections which lend themselves well to the three taiko performers who are premiering this work.

Noise Play II

For a few years now I’ve kept a little notebook of weird things people say.  Sometimes they’re freudian slips or simple comments that seem far more profound out of context.  In a lesson with Professor Womack, he commented on my lack of sleep with the comment, “bah! Who needs to dream, anyway?”  Me, thinking it quite profound, sought to use it as a title.  My only hope is that my friends and colleagues do not read this and begin to filter what they say to me.

This work explores the integration of signal amplification and overdrive in graduation with a classical guitar.  A technique employed often by folk/indie guitarists, in a western art setting I found it quite effective.  This is achieved with the combination of three isolated sounds: one, a dry signal unaffected; two, a wet signal using an overdrive pedal followed by a volume pedal, effectively controlling the amount of “wetness” in the sound; and three, the sound of the guitar itself.  


Who Needs To Dream?

Performed by Duo Yumeno March 2018 at Orvis Auditorium in Honolulu, HI.

Turtle And Crane (for koto and cello) by Thomas Goedecke

for percussion trio
2013

Steven Logan, percussion
Ethan Ahmad, percussion
Thomas Goedecke, taiko

In my never ending quest to bring taiko to the western art stage, I began exploring sounds and rhythms that would be pervasive.  The impetus to create this piece was twofold: one, I began looking at many works by Reich, and was inspired by the versatility and flexibility of his percussion works and two, I had found an almost meditative appreciation for the “noise” that comes from multiple performers playing similar drills in different times.  Because of this research, I wanted to create a piece that could be played by any three percussionists playing any five membranophones and four non-membranophones of their choosing.

For this particular performance, we chose toms, congas, mini beer kegs, woodblocks and, of course, taiko and temple bowls.


Noise Play

for flute (picc.), brass septet, two percussion and taiko ensemble
2010

Rachael Yorkes, flute/piccolo
Anne Marie Cherry, horn
Matthew Otto, horn
Thomas Martin, trumpet
Matt McConnell, trumpet
Chris Grijalva, tenor trombone
Mark Miller, bass trombone
Michael Murrin, tuba
Will McVay, percussion
Matt Howard, percussion
Blaine O’Brian, taiko
Thomas Goedecke, taiko
Jason Ballman, conductor

Performance in Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall, 2013

Program Notes

I began writing this piece around 4 months after joining USC’s Kazan Taiko, a Japanese drumming group. I was immediately drawn to the choreography and grace of kumi-daiko performance and knew I had to write for the ensemble. I felt that writing for taiko would be even more interesting if I could showcase its interaction with western instruments. The approach to music is so different in these ensembles, and this is what inspired me to write this piece. “Wataridori ya kakine” roughly translates to “migratory birds and boundaries.” The title is inspired by a quote by conductor Benjamin Zander, who said “a melodic line should be like birds ignoring the fences that lie beneath them.” Originally I had the title tori ga fensu o mushi suru which translates as “when birds disregard fences,” however, it can also translate as “ignore the bird fence.” The change to wataridori ya kakine was a poetic choice, as well as a choice for clarity. Migratory birds, in this case, capture movement and the visual aspect of birds in flight in one word. Kakine, the word translated as ‘boundaries’, has a variety of uses in the Japanese language. Kakine infers both to boundaries in the sense of fences, hedge rows and walls that line the properties of homes, and is defined as a barrier, an obstacle to overcome whether it be physical or mental.