'Mosaic' is a horn concerto in five movements, composed in 2010.  This is a concert recording of the performance with the Albanian Radio-Television Orchestra in Tirana, Albania, March 21, 2013-- with Bujar Llapaj, guest conductor, and Oliver de Clercq, guest horn soloist.

"Mosaic was inspired by the idea of creating a dreamscape, with the solo horn as the central character: the one experiencing the dream. I was interested in exploring the idea of dreaming as a means of processing ideas and information, but at the same time, being aware that dreaming is not a process over which we have the same degree of control as we do over our conscious thoughts. Just as real-life information and experiences are filtered and transformed through the dreaming process, several motivic ideas recur and are transformed throughout the various movements. The piece is structured in five movements (attacca), beginning with the lower strings emulating the slow breathing of one falling asleep. The second movement is bright, with melodic reference to a pelog gamelan scale. The third movement begins with a duet between solo horn and solo cello, expanding outwards from the first three notes of Brahms’ famous Lullaby, and evolving into something much more intense at the climax of the piece. The fourth movement is a cadenza for the solo horn, leading into the fifth movement, which contains reference to an out-of-body experience." (programme notes: Elizabeth Knudson)

Orchestra score and parts are available for rental from the Canadian Music Centre:

https://cmccanada.org/shop/62956/

Arrangement for horn and piano is available through the International Horn Society:

http://www.hornsociety.org/marketplace/online-library#!/~/product/category=0&id=6957407

Mosaic (for solo horn and orchestra)

You are not separate from the universe. How could you be? The whole thing worked together to give rise to you through an unbroken chain of occurrences over billions of years, and the stuff you are made of comes from the same Great Whatever as everything else. Since the dawn of life on this planet organisms have been exchanging water and other elements back and forth through eating, drinking, reproducing and dying, and you are inseparably one with that dance.

And your own elements will not die. When your incredible heart stops beating and the stuff your amazing body is made of begins to come apart, your own molecules will simply continue the dance of the elements that has been going on for billions of years.

You won't die, you'll just return. Some elements born of stardust arranged themselves on two legs, looked around, experienced countless wonders, laughed, cried, fell in love, learned and unlearned, and then changed form, like a ripple ceasing its movement and becoming indistinguishable from the surrounding water. The water remains the same — it's just doing a different dance now.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Are Home

Written by Adam Borecki
Performed by Katelyn Isaacson and Eunghee Cho

A Superscription

Part of the Indigenous/Undigenous (I/U) Series.

Indigenous/Undigenous II (I/U-2) is the second in an ongoing series of my new works, in this case composed for orchestra. For each work in the new Series, the same text is translated into a specific Indigenous language. Indigenous/Undigenous II was composed in the Unami language (Lenape). From latin roots, “indigenous” basically indicates an origin from the land and “undigenous” indicates an origin from the water (as in ‘undulate’). In our modern nomenclature, the title teases living as a Native American versus not living as one (‘undigenous’ teases not-indigenous), but it is more properly understood as a common theme of being ‘of the land’ and ‘of the water,’ respectively. 

For the Series, the core text will be translated into alternate versions of Native American languages: We are of the land / We are of the water / The lands and waters are our relatives / We love them. In this way, each work of the I/U Series will forefront Indigenous languages to express a common Native American identity that values the earth and the waters as cherished kinship relations. 

As the Lenape often traveled and inhabited the New York and Manhattan, the second in the I/U Series celebrates the Lenape people and auditory beauty of their language. The text was translated into Unami by Jim Rementer. Indigenous/ Undigenous II was commissioned for the Harvard-Westlake School Orchestra of Studio City, California. — BMD

Indigenous / Undigenous II - Lenape

Here is a poet's voice notated for piano and other instrument.

Why I Hate Raisins - Natalie Diaz

Miłosz Wieliński - I violin, Wadim Zarych - II violin, Aleksandra Kiszka-Stefanek - viola, Julia Gniadek - violoncello

recording/sound: Przemysław Kunda, Ewa Majcherczyk

String Quartet - Żaneta Rydzewska (2016)

NDNs Ride NDNs

Taking Bach out of the museum and infusing his music with equal parts tradition, funk, whimsy, and fun, Emi Ferguson and Ruckus take you on a wild romp through some of Bach’s most playful and transcendent works. The album features new arrangements of Bach’s Flute Sonatas and Keyboard Preludes, orchestrated for baroque flute and the forces of Ruckus that include theorbos, baroque guitars, baroque bassoon, cello, viola da gamba, harpsichord, organ, bass, and even banjo.

07 - Emi Ferguson & Ruckus - Sonata In E Major BWV 1035 I. Adagio Ma Non Tanto

She had some horses

"Curling Water" (2020) - Music by Sierra Wojtczack, text by T.W. Evans
Written for Art Song Lab 2020

Steven Belanger - baritone
Corey Hamm - piano

Indigenous / Undigenous II - Lenape

Brent Michael Davids

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