De Profundis 
(for Soprano, Choir and Orchestra)
by Andrea Montalbano

Finalist at "Sacrarium - Composer Competition" 8th edition - KLKNewMusic

Performance of March 14th, 2024 at Lviv Organ Hall - Maria Magdalena Church - Lviv (Ukraine)

Adriana Chuchman (Soprano)
Lviv Chamber Choir - Choirmaster: Inna Torbych
KLK Symphony Orchestra - Conductor: Roman Kreslenko.

Event promoted and recorded by KLK New Music.

De Profundis

Half-Time (A Basketball Intermezzo)
________________________________________

Half-Time captures the thoughts and feelings of a basketball team at the halftime, rather than any actual playing. It is more about reminiscences, hopes, frustrations, and the numerous other feelings that most likely flood players at intermission, when the game is not over yet.  

It is in five short sections (there are five players on a team), with the “bouncing ball” note A (also in a rhythm of five) appearing in most of them. The phrasing in the first section makes uses of rhythms derived from famous Celtic player jersey numbers (33 [3+3] for Larry Bird, 34 [3+4] for Paul Pierce etc.). This is followed by a section featuring a “wedge” motive, then a slow middle section featuring a dialogue between a cantabile espressivo melody and sottovoce harmonics, followed by a fast rhythmic scherzando section, and a concluding driving groove with a short coda.  

While embedding jersey numbers in the opening section was a conscious choice, the rest of the piece was mainly the result of an unconscious process. I had heard Andy Wen’s beautiful saxophone playing at a conference and we discovered our mutual love for basketball. 
I marveled at the fact that, though from San Antonio, he was a devoted Celtics fan (I call Boston home). I wrote the piece for him and initially called it Sonatina, until it dawned on me that what I had written had to do really with the game’s half-time. It is a musical intermezzo, so it can be played as an independent piece, between other pieces, and can even be repeated in the course of the same recital program. 

This is a live recording of Andy Wen playing at Messiah College in Harrisburg, PA on Nov 1, 2023

© Michele Caniato 2023

Half-Time

Movimenti intrecciati
(for string quartet)
by Andrea Montalbano

Revised version of the piece for the Composer Symposium 2024 - Festival Guimarães Clássico - Guimarães (Portugal)

Performance of August 13, 2024 by the Quiron Quartet for the Final Concert of the Composer Symposium 2024 - Festival Guimarães Clássico - at the Convento de Santo Antonio dos Capuchos - Guimarães (Portugal)

Movimenti intrecciati

Echoes and Refractions ........................................... Michele Caniato 
I	(west) 
II	(north) 
III	(east) 
IV	(south) 

Duration: 15:00 I: 2:30, II: 2:10, III: 5:00, IV: 5:20

Echoes and Refractions: 

Planets, stars, and weather have helped guide human and animal meanderings across the Earth for millennia. Advances in technology in the past century have expanded the means by which people find their way around. Human activities have also brought major upheaval to the climate. 
I explore here the myth-laden cardinal points beginning with the West and ending with the South (West, North, East, South). Each movement is a tribute to the beauty and awe of natural phenomena we humans have enjoyed, celebrated, and feared worldwide, since our beginnings. 

Given the current environmental crisis these natural events can no longer be taken for granted. Unexpected weather can come to us in atypical seasons, in unusual places. While certain age-old realities persist (the sun is still perceived by people on Earth as setting in the West), in our times cardinal directions may not be guiding a pilot, an astronaut, or a person with GPS. 
Each movement comes to a close with an echo that refracts fragments of its music, veiling what we just heard with uncertainty. 

The last movement “South” culminates in a festive celebration of rhythm and song, adding the vertical axis of earth and sky (that parallels our two-legged stance). It also ends with “echo music,” with the vibraphone leading us somewhere unexplored. It perhaps adds to the six directions traveled (West, North, East, South, Below, Above), one further path: the movement inwards.

© Michele Caniato

Echoes and Refractions for percussion quartet


Half-Time captures the thoughts and feelings of a basketball team at the halftime, rather than any actual playing. It is more about reminiscences, hopes, frustrations, and the numerous other feelings that most likely flood players at intermission, when the game is not over yet.

It is in five short sections (there are five players on a team), with the “bouncing ball” note A (also in a rhythm of five) appearing in most of them. The phrasing in the first section makes uses of rhythms derived from famous Celtic player jersey numbers (33 [3+3] for Larry Bird, 34 [3+4] for Paul Pierce etc.). This is followed by a section featuring a “wedge” motive, then a slow middle section featuring a dialogue between a cantabile espressivo melody and sottovoce harmonics, followed by a fast rhythmic scherzando section, and a concluding driving groove with a short coda.

While embedding jersey numbers in the opening section was a conscious choice, the rest of the piece was mainly the result of an unconscious process. I had heard Andy Wen’s beautiful saxophone playing at a conference and we discovered our mutual love for basketball.
I marveled at the fact that, though from San Antonio, he was a devoted Celtics fan (I call Boston home). I wrote the piece for him and initially called it Sonatina, until it dawned on me that what I had written had to do really with the game’s half-time. It is a musical intermezzo, so it can be played as an independent piece, between other pieces, and can even be repeated in the course of the same recital program.

This is a live recording of Andy Wen playing at Messiah College in Harrisburg, PA on Nov 1, 2023

© Michele Caniato 2023

Composer Michele Caniato writes chamber, orchestral, vocal, piano, and jazz music. His works have been performed nationally and internationally, including in the USA, Canada, Italy, Finland, and on Italian National Radio.

He was the winner of the 2019 Orchestra Composition Contest at the 53rd Contemporary Music Festival at Indiana State University, a finalist in the BMI Foundation/Charlie Parker Composition Competition in New York, and semi-finalist for the American Prize, and has received Fulbright, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Jasper Whiting Foundation grants, and residencies at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), and Escape to Create (FL).

Michele received a doctoral degree in composition from Boston University where he studied with Lukas Foss, and trained also at the New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. He has been a longtime member of the faculty at Fitchburg State University. Caniato is an ASCAP member and his music is distributed by Subito Music.

Half-Time

Michele Caniato

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