ensemble: chamber orchestra (1[picc].1.1.1-2.1.1.0-2perc-strings)
duration: 10 minutes
written: fall 2019 - winter 2020
commissioned by: Durham Symphony Orchestra
premiere: April 10th, 2022; Durham, NC

more info: http://www.robertrankinmusic.com/no-name-in-the-street

Program Note:

       Reap they the field that is none of theirs, strip they the vineyard wrongfully seized from its owner. 
                           - Job 26:4

       As a life long resident of the Raleigh-Durham NC area, I was shocked that I had never heard about the history of Durham’s Hayti District. Founded as an independent black community after the Civil War, the Hayti District operated libraries, hotels, theaters, and a hospital becoming one of, if not the first, fully self-sufficient African-American community in the United States. Hayti continued to prosper throughout the 20th century until the 1950s with the urban revitalization of Durham which constructed the Durham Freeway directly down the middle of Hayti, splitting it in two. 
	
	My work, No Name In The Street, borrows its title from James Baldwin and is, in essence, about the history of Hayti. The piece begins with a long melodic solo line in the strings (based upon spelling the word HAYTI into musical pitches). This “Hayti theme” grows and fleshes out into a broad, sweeping statement. This moment is slowly taken over by the brass and winds which begin to distort and obscure the theme. The theme, now abstracted by the winds and brass, only occasionally can be heard. The piece reaches a great climax and is abruptly cut off.  The “Hayti theme” is now heard in its most clear and intimate form played by a solo string quintet. Slowly, over time, the theme begins to get erased by the orchestra, note by note, until one solo viola is left trying to sing out.

	No Name In The Street is, more broadly, about the erasure of history and communities and the importance of keeping the past alive even when forces greater than us attempt to eliminate them. 

WUNC, the local NPR station in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, published a magnificent investigation into the housing crisis: https://wunc915.atavist.com/where-we-live

No Name In The Street: for chamber orchestra (excerpts)

shit-post - dissonant city type beat with sub bass - use headphones :]

dissonance dance

Walking in the woods, with the scents of green summer leaves. You may find a lake, beautifully calm, and sunlight granules are shimmering on the surface. Sitting down nearby the lakeside, looking at the water that reflects the whole sky, clouds, mountains, everywhere. 

Time stops in your mind when the lake is bluer than the sky.

Premiered by Neave Trio
Composed by Yeeun Sim

When the Lake is Bluer than the Sky for Piano Trio (2023)

oberlin night sketches was conceived in collaboration with the clarinet and percussion studios at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

In writing this piece, I wanted to capture a walk I sometimes take in the dead of night in Oberlin, Ohio. I happen to work a second shift at a food place, so I usually get off anytime between 12:30 am and 2:30 am. During those early hours of the morning, Oberlin is completely empty: one car every 10 minutes, maybe one other person if even. It is eerily peaceful, but at the same time super-alive. You can hear your heart beat, the wind hitting the trees, raccoons scurrying across the street- in and out of the sewer, occasionally other students partying in the distance, etc. Oberlin by no means has the typical nightlife of other cities (actually quite the contrary, with very few places open after 9:00 pm and no clubs Oberlin is a little vanilla); however, to me there
is something super alive about it. The clarinetist and percussionist are in constant dialogue, and certain points in the piece have their own things to say. In sketching and preparation, I wrote a short little poem whose narrative structure the piece is designed around:

strolling through Oberlin in the dead of night,
3:00 am- not a human in sight
raccoons scurry in and out of the sewers;
back and forth across the street.
...silence becomes sound...
I can hear my heart beating...

oberlin night sketches - for clarinet and percussion

walking into the local club on a snowy winter night

Parigonyx

Emiliano Gavito, flute
Adam Starkie, clarinet
Sophie Wahlmüller, viola
Christian Lozano Sedano, electric guitar

Audio by David Bird

Program Note:

This piece’s title is culled from an eponymous work by the 20th century Catalan visual artist Joan Miró. I fell in love with Miró’s style of painting during my elementary school art class. We were assigned various exercises where we had to attempt to emulate salient characteristics of certain painters, using their work as a model for how to craft our own pieces. With Miró, I had so much fun trying to recreate (admittedly inexpertly) what I saw as bizarre, alien, stick-figure like beings in these swirlingly otherworldly environments. Revisiting his work now, I am able to more deeply appreciate the sense of mystery, abstraction, and intense spirituality in these paintings—both ancient and modern-seeming all at once. And yet, I still find them deeply playful and childlike as well, full of joy and unfettered exuberance. 

In my piece, I try to capture the experience of looking at this strikingly beautiful painting for the first time and gradually taking it all in in; first, as an incredibly rich and colorful composite, then honing in on specific shapes. Because of the abstract nature of the painting’s style, the viewer is invited to entrain and re-entrain to it visually. In the same way, the piece begins by presenting all of the musical material at once in a wild set of swirls and shimmers, and gradually zooms in on specific motives and interrogates them until, at the close, the composite of all these motives are viewed in a new light.

Ladders Cross The Blue Sky In A Wheel Of Fire (2024): for Collective Lovemusic

Premiered by Jihwan Yoon, April 14th, 2024.
Baltimore, MD

Recording edit: Yeonsuk Jung

Eternal Yellow (노랑무늬영원) for piano solo (2024)

for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, viola, and cello

Premiered by Earspace ensemble, January 27th, 2024.
Baltimore, MD

Recording edit: Yeonsuk Jung

The Archer for mixed quintet (2023)

Four Harmonies: Reflections of Monet - for mixed quintet (2024)

i: propulsive harmony
ii: tender harmony
iii: floating harmony
iv: dancing harmony

Four Harmonies: Reflections of Monet responds to a series of paintings of Monet which I recently saw at Musée D’Orsay in Paris. The paintings were of the Rouen Cathedral and, as is typical of Monet, he painted multiple variations on the Cathedral’s façade with different hues and shadings, and he titled them various “Harmonies” depending on the colors that are primary in the painting. What struck me was not so much Monet’s characteristic cycles of paintings, but the simplistic, yet evocative titling of these as “Harmonies,” particularly since the “harmony” is what changes while the subject stays constant. In Four Harmonies, there are four continuous movements which are all based on closely related harmonic material. In this way, the constant subject is harmony in the musical sense, while the evolving contexts of each movement are treated like unfolding colors as harmonies in a visual art medium, in an effort to create different shadings and explorations of a single subject. In this way, the piece becomes an approximation of a single subject based on multiple viewpoints, angles, or perspectives, as is the case for the Monet series. 

Four Harmonies was written for and premiered by the TAK Ensemble in April 2024. Recording Engineer, David Bird.

Four Harmonies: Reflections of Monet - for mixed quintet

Composed for Alex Johnson and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon.

Recorded and engineered by Christopher Willis.

and even the wall breaks

Dreaming Flotsam

Chicago-based composer and musical collaborator.

Ladders Cross The Blue Sky In A Wheel Of Fire (2024): for Collective Lovemusic

Benjamin T. Martin

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