2020. The year the pandemic began. The year George Floyd died and the BLM protests captured national attention. The year we trembled.

Shelter-in-Place was composed while locked down at the beginning of the pandemic. The work takes as its touchstone the following lines from Hamlet: “Oh God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself the king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” The single-movement work begins quietly though soon morphs into a needling anxiety. The tightly wound textures rarely break free until finally coalescing into a timeless space, with small gestures and tintinnabulations. The audience is not left there for soon the machine of the ensemble begins to wind itself back up, leading to faster and faster sections. Following the work’s climax, it returns to the opening gestures, as if returning to some mental prison, left to wait.

Shelter In Place

Ty Alan Emerson has been presenting music in Cleveland since 2000.  Following two terms as president of the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, he is currently the Director and Conductor of the Cleveland Chamber Collective. He has led the ensemble through dozens of concerts, featuring music by living Americans, and premiered several new works by Cleveland Composers, supported by agencies such as the Bascom Little Fund, Ohio Arts Council, and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
Emerson is an award-winning composer, who is frequently performed in Cleveland. Most recently, Emerson’s Shelter-in-Place, and Pan Songs received their premieres by the Cleveland Chamber Collective. In 2021 the Chamber Collective, in partnership with Inlet Dance Theatre, premiered Emerson’s dance work Caliban Ascendant. In 2020 his cross-over work Love and Other Missed-Spellings was premiered at The Bop Stop as part of the Collective’s “Music of America” program. Other notable performances have included ensembles such as The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, No Exit New Music Ensemble, Zeitgeist, ASSEM3LY, VERB Ballets, The Cleveland Duo with James Umble, and Quorum New Music Ensemble, as well as soloists Mary Kay Fink, John Sampen, Gary Louie, and Kirsten Taylor. 
His work has been featured at The Huddersfield New Music and Arts Festival in Huddersfield, England, New Music on the Bayou in Monroe Louisiana, Music at the Forefront at Bowling Green State University, NEO Sonic New Music Festival in Cleveland, the New Music Festival at Marshall University, CMI/SCI National Conference in San Antonio, New Music Festival at Louisiana State University, and the Resolution 2000 New Music Festival at Indiana State University SE. You can find his works on Sound Cloud and also on WLCV Radio’s “Fresh Innovations” hosted by Mark Satola.
His awards include: the ASCAP Morton Gould Award, the Searle McCullum Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony, two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council and the MTNA/OMTA Composer of the Year. 
Look for his latest work, OATH BREAKER, to be premiered April 2024.

Composer Ty Alan Emerson has been presenting music in Cleveland since 2000.  Following two terms as president of the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, he is currently Director for the Cleveland Chamber Collective. He has been commissioned by the Collective, No Exit, ASSEMB3LY, with other notable performances by Quorum, Gary Louie, and The Peabody Wind Ensemble. His work has been featured at music festivals from Bowling Green, OH to Huddersfield, England.  In addition to his work for the concert hall, Emerson has composed and arranged works for the stage including several shows with The Musical Theater Project in Cleveland, and a season with the Texas Shakespeare Festival. Notable awards include: MTNA/OMTA Composer of the Year, two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, and the ASCAP Morton Gould Award. Most recently his Prospero on the Beach was featured on a CD by ASSEMB3LY, available through Albany Records.