Alex, this is beautiful. Thank you for sharing ❤️

schemes that offer us a sense of futurity (2021) - for amplified soprano voice, flute, clarinet, violin, and electronics

TAK Ensemble: Charlotte Mundy, voice; Laura Cocks, flutes; Madison Greenstone, clarinets; Marina Kifferstein, violin
Recorded at Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC, April 25, 2021
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more info + HQ audio here: juliozuniga.info/works/schemes_that_offer_us_a_sense_of_futurity.html

photo credit Emiliano Zúñiga

schemes that offer us a sense of futurity

Three Reflections (2020-21) for solo piano and synthesizer
Commissioned by Shaoai Ashley Zhang 
Performed by Shaoai Ashley Zhang at UC San Diego, May 2022

Three Reflections

Chamber Concerto (2022) in one movement 
for nine players and electronics

Live recording of the premiere at UC San Diego, May 2022

Michael Jones & Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang & Kyle Adam Blair, keyboards
Ilana Waniuk & Pauline Ng, violins
Alex Taylor, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

Chamber Concerto

Excerpt of Chamber Concerto (2022) in one movement
for nine players and electronics

Recording of the premiere at UC San Diego, May 2022

Michael Jones & Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang & Kyle Adam Blair, keyboards
Ilana Waniuk & Pauline Ng, violins
Alex Taylor, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

Chamber Concerto (excerpt)

Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474) Messe Se La Face Ay Pale
Arrangement by Marco Blaauw, for 6 trumpets and electronics

Recorded in March 2023, Cologne by Niklas Werani 
Edited and Mix, Niklas Werani and Marco Blaauw

Performed by The Monochrome Project

G. Dufay, Messe Se La Face Ay Pale for 6 trumpets and electronics

scamper (2023) for ambisonic fixed media

This is a binaural rendering — please listen with headphones

For other decodings of the ambisonic spatialization (stereo, quad, octophonic, etc.), or for the ambisonic source file, please feel free to contact me

scamper (binaural)

Performers: Steven Schick, conductor; Wilfrido Terrazas, flute; Ellen Hindson, oboe; Grace Talaski, clarinet; Kosuke Matsuda, percussion; Kyle Adam Blair, piano; Miguel Zazueta, Natalia Merlano Gomez, Alex Taylor, voice; Amir Norouz Nasseri, Ilana Waniuk, violins; Myra Hinrichs, viola; Peter Ko, cello; Matthew Henson, bass

Production assistance from Alex Stephenson, David Espiritu and Jessica Flores 

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Stylistically, Interviews resembles a collage: materials borrowed from Josquin, spectralism, Leonard Cohen, high modernism, elevator music, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Kyle Adam Blair, Appalachian folk singing, bits recycled from my own pieces, the recorded voice of my mother, my own songs and poems. But collage is generally creating something new out of things that come from different places, disparate things; this feels more like a multifarious reflection of my own musical and personal world – things that all come from, or at least have been absorbed into, the same place, a musical inheritance or accumulation. I’ve always felt slightly unsure of the relationship between all of the many aspects (personas?) of my music making – sometimes they feel far away from each other, held in different compartments – but here I feel I’ve found a way for many of them to coexist in one place.

Conceptually, I think of Interviews as more concerned with storytelling than with aesthetics. Or at least, Interviews represents an intersection between musical and personal concerns. In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, I undertook ethnographic research as part of my PhD coursework. For this I interviewed both my parents, Vicki and Trish, asking them all kinds of questions about their lives: what it was like for them growing up, how they came to terms with their sexuality, what it was like living through the politically tumultuous 1980s in New Zealand, how they went about starting a family, how it was for them when I came out. 

At the time, this was a really rewarding process of discovery and documentation, a way to learn new things about my family and where I’d come from, a way to feel connected to them across the Pacific during the enforced separation of the pandemic. Now, those interview recordings have other resonances. Trish was diagnosed with early onset dementia several years before we made the interviews; by the time we recorded them, her dementia had started to really affect her short term memory. Now, nearly four years later, her dementia is quite advanced, and many of those memories are gone for her. Looking back, the documentation of those memories is precious. 

The making of this piece has been both a way for me to hold on to that preciousness, those past perfect moments of connection, but also a way to process grief, the ongoing present of loss and change. In many ways Interviews occupies a threshold, between looking back and looking forward; it is both at once, acknowledging the messiness and multifacetedness of memory, not singular, smooth, or linear. I also see it as a small way of showing gratitude for both of my devoted, supportive, sensitive, beloved parents, and of celebrating Trish’s life.

Interviews (Live Recording)

Forgotten Song II (2024) for English horn, viola, harp, and optional stereo tape

Live recording at the RED NOTE New Music Festival, March 2024

Performed by members of Ensemble Dal Niente:
Andrew Nogal, English horn
Ammie Brod, viola
Ben Melsky, harp

Forgotten Song II

Bloom (2019) for string quartet

Commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and performed by the Flux Quartet at the New Mexico Museum of Art, August 2019
Photo by the composer (Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, spring 2019)

Bloom

Conor Hanick, piano

Galina Ustvolskaya, Piano Sonata no. 3 (1952)
Recorded live at Yamaha Artist Studio, New York City; August 2020
Audio mastered by Mike Tierney

Galina Ustvolskaya / Piano Sonata no. 3 (1952)

La Dori, Act II: Speranze fermate · Rupert Enticknap · Rupert Enticknap · Accademia Bizantina · Accademia Bizantina
Cesti: La Dori

℗ 2020 CPO

Released on: 2021-01-08

Artist: Rupert Enticknap
Orchestra: Accademia Bizantina
Conductor: Ottavio Dantone
Composer: Antonio Cesti

Interviews (Live Recording)

Alex Taylor, Composer

Recent comments

Christopher Clarino

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