All The Little Spots In Its Geography - for violin, cello, saxophone, sine tones, and live electronics (SuperCollider)

"The majority of All the little spots in its Geography is, with a few exceptions, formed to create one large, constantly evolving drone.  Performers should emphasize the practice of listening (as prompted in various movements) to construct a feedback loop (both  symbolic and literal) between electronics and acoustic sound, wherein a performer's instrumental output has an effect on their aural  input and vice versa. Other otoacoustic emissions and phenomena, such as acoustic beatings and difference tones, should always  be emphasized to the greatest degree possible. The point is not to directly and clearly demonstrate any single phenomenon, but rather,  to openly explore and lean into the possibilities, boundaries, ambiguities, tensions, and otherwise otherworldly conditions of their  production.   To create an interactive, dynamic performance environment, much of the score design in All the little spots in its Geography takes  influence from the architecture of and conceptual frameworks in programming environments such as SuperCollider. From movement to  movement, environments are built by defining data sets, parameters, paths, routines, and other behaviors. Please pay close attention  to the conditions that constitute each movement, and execute these environments with agency and purpose."       

Performed and recorded by the Wet Ink Ensemble. Music composed in 2021.

All The Little Spots In Its Geography, performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble

Conductor, Edo Frenkel 
Orchestra, Eastman School Symphony Orchestra (ESSO)
Music Composed in 2017

Prelude Of Panels, for full orchestra

Recording Performance, Viola Quartet.
Music Composed in 2017.

The other's body was divided:  for four bowed string instruments and live electronics

"This rig is called a crawfish and is wrought from iron and goes hin and yon. It conducts itself upon four speeding wheels. It shears front and behind, if one kindles munitions then it shoots before it steel buckshot as a hail, wherewith one smites low the foes. One may make this rig either big or small, as one will deem" --Hans Talhoffer

Talhoffer's Crawfish imagines one such rig; a motley, kinetic rig of instruments, electronics, water, cardboard, and more.

Conductor: Edo Frenkel

Flute, Toriana Rose
Clarinet, Aaron Lee 
Tuba, Brett Copeland
Keyboard, Sean Calhoun
Piano, Corey Silberstein 
Percussion I, Gordon Fry 
Percussion II, David Yun 
Violin I, Raina Arnett 
Violin II, Shannon Steigerwald

Talhoffer's Crawfish (performance recording)

Momenta String Quartet and the Cornell University Gamelan Ensemble.

Ludic Circles was originally composed for the Momenta String Quartet and the Cornell University Gamelan Ensemble (a dedicated ensemble of professors and students from a wide range of disciplines at Cornell University). As a result of this confluence, much of Ludic Circles utilizes a series of games, triggers, and proportional notation as a primary vehicle for the delivery of musical material. Through a series of six (literal) games performers explore various physical motions (often circular) on their instruments utilizing an array implements (standard and nonstandard) ranging from playing cards to wire brushes. At its core, Ludic Circles is about games, choreographies, and non/metric divisions of time.

Ludic Circles is to be performed exclusively without a conductor. 

Music composed in 2018.

Ludic Circles, for string quartet and gamelan ensemble

Performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). 

Double Bass, Lizzie Burns 
Contrabassoon, Rebekah Heller 
Bass Clarinet, Joshua Rubin 
Fish, danionella fish

RECORDING = WET SIGNAL ONLY. 

Study for String Instrument, as the name implies, is a mobile piece that may be played on any string instrument. Different discrete versions of the Study for String Instrument may be rendered on any string instrument and any instrumental combination. In this particular iteration, Vocalise, the double bass plays through Study for String Instrument as if they were playing a solo, acting as an aural guide for the bass clarinet, contrabassoon, and electronics, who move through structured, aleatoric material to fundamentally emulate, occasionally augment, and rarely contrast with the double bass. The aim is a large hybrid instrument (as defined by the double bass). All electronics are constructed from live processing of the instrumental signals and samples of danionella fish vocalizations (samples are from Rose Tatarsky's lab recordings at Cornell University and are recorded with hydrophones).

Music composed in 2018.

Vocalise, for Double Bass, Contrabassoon, Bass Clarinet, Live Electronics, and Danionella Fish

Performed by Fifth House Ensemble.

Violin, Charlene Kluegel 
Viola, Sixto Franco 
Cello, Herine Coetzee Koschak 
Alex Goodin, Double Bass
Piano, Katherine Petersen

A Corpus Resounding is conceived of as a single instantiation of corpus-based concatenative synthesis (CBCS) implemented acoustically. The corpus itself was compiled from the composer’s own output over the past three years, pulling from completed compositions in addition to excerpts from sketch books. Concatenation was performed intuitively, linking and connecting a diverse constellation of musical material into a single, resounded work.

Music Composed in 2018.

A Corpus Resounding [Excerpt], for piano quintet

Performed by the TAK ensemble. 

Simple Music, as the title implies, was composed in an effort to constrain and limit musical gesture, pacing, and expression. Simple Music is written without any large-scale teleology. Rather, the materials of Simple Music exist as a bricolage of fixed, sonorous objects, each presented with local level variations. No dynamic in Simple Music exceeds a pianissimo (a deeply subjective measurement (volume as opposed to amplitude)). No pitch in Simple Music is predetermined (a conscious decision in the binary between notational styles (prescription vs description)). All techniques in Simple Music focus on the "inbetween" moments of instrumental and vocal sound production (the sliding hand, the quivering fingertip, the clicking tongue (as opposed to discrete pitch events)). Ultimately, the breathing sounds of Simple Music float, flow, and flutter. Feel free to simply listen to the room.

Music composed in 2019.

Simple Music, for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, and soprano

Performed by Dal Niente 

Michael Lewanski, Conductor 
Tara Lynn Ramsey, Violin
Sarah Plum, viola
Chris Wild, Cello 
Mark Buchner, Double Bass
Ann Yi, Piano 

A Corpus Resounding is conceived of as a single instantiation of corpus-based concatenative synthesis (CBCS) implemented acoustically. The corpus itself was compiled from the composer’s own output over the past three years, pulling from completed compositions in addition to excerpts from sketch books. Concatenation was performed intuitively, linking and connecting a diverse constellation of musical material into a single, resounded work.

Music Composed in 2019

A Corpus Resounding, for piano quintet

Performed by Dal Niente

Jesse Langen, Ben Melsky, Emma Hospelhorn, and Mark Buchner.

Photograph by Stephen Hennessey.

Music Composed in 2019

Study For String Instrument 2: Concomitant Designs, for four performers, bass, and live electronics

Video (recommended): https://youtu.be/vqCoZBj1geQ

For four performers and double bass. 

Performed by Unheard-of//Ensemble

Performer 1, Ford Fourqurean  
Performer 2, Matheus Souza 
Performer 3, Daniel Anastasio
Performer 4, Issei Herr 

Music Composed in 2019.

Study for String Instrument 2: Living Room, for four performers and double bass

Glitch Glitch is a fixed-media piece that serves as a documentation of a process-based programming intended for real-time, octophonic realization. In this sense, Glitch Glitch is an individual capturing of a process wherein an infinite number of variants are possible. Throughout Glitch Glitch, audio files are retrieved from a library, sampled and used in wave table synthesis, and finally, spatialized ambisonically. The library consists of thirty-four synthesized audio files made in SuperCollider and are retrieved in groups of four at a rate of approximately one group every four seconds at the start of the piece and one group every fifty milliseconds at the end of the piece. Ambisonics are utilized not only for their qualities in spatialization but also for their potentials in mixing, considering aspects of proximity, volume, and EQ. Every component of Glitch Glitch (from the original audio files in the library, to sampling, processing, and spatialization) is intended to highlight and emphasize aesthetics of glitch, gradual change, and saturation. 

Sage Hall, 2020. Part of the "When Machines Rock: A Celebration of Robert Moog and Electronic Music" festival.

Glitch Glitch, for octophonic fixed media

Performed by the Festival Chamber Orchestra:

Flute, Juliana Pepinsky
Oboe, Emily DiAngelo
Clarinet, Amy Zuidema 
Bassoon, Daniel Hane 
Horn, Elijah Zelaya 
Trumpet, Frank Campos 
Trombone, Ryan Zawel 
Tuba, Matthew Murchison 
Piano, Richard Valitutto
Percussion, Simon Bjarning
Violin I, Henry Smith 
Violin II, Avner Finberg
Viola, Madeline Schatz-Harris
Cello, Tayana Wooton

Conductor, James Spinazzola 

Audio Recording, Sergio Cote

Production & Creative Help: Joshua Biggs, John Eagle, Han Xu

Personal Note: 

In the fall of 2019, immediately prior to composing the thing itself, unfolding, my creative output consisted almost entirely of developing a practice in electroacoustic improvisation and completing a series of digital sound installations. Coming from a background in music composition, the opportunity to focus entirely on improvisation and sound installation came as an exciting, new creative venture. Both practices had been in my artistic periphery for quite some time and I had never been able to singularly focus on them. At the same time, I hoped to learn more about the development and codification of the composer, the performer, and the musical work as concepts. Articles such as Lydia Goehr’s Being True to the Work served to elucidate the genealogical development of the musical work while also highlighting some of the potentially pervasive consequences of its construction. Within that context, the request to write a piece (of a fixed duration and form!) appeared antithetical to the other work I was creating at the time.
In this vein, the thing itself, unfolding is a purposefully constructed, self-aware ‘Stück’. It is a work of a fixed nature, an object composed for performers to realize on a proscenium. Yet, in the construction of this object, its core components are built from the sounds and techniques of my improvisation and installation studies. The creative process was enacted not in a solely theoretical domain, but instead was an attempt to ‘re-realize’ my improvisation and installation practices in a fixed form, and to reconcile the positionality of ‘composition’ with these more personal forms of music-making.
the thing itself, unfolding is a rendering of musical practice in improvisation and sound art codified into a piece of fixed length, form, and technique. A thing existing as itself with the capability to be unfolded or enacted. A score meant to be performed. An object-cum-verb.

the thing itself, unfolding - for sinfonietta and fixed media

D.M.A. Cornell University, current 
M.A. Eastman School of Music, 2018
B.M. Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music, 2016

Miles Jefferson Friday

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