missed connections despite is a series of 11 polaroids for orchestra.

I imagine the work like a collage of found photographs (from the boxes of mismatched polaroids you might find in a vintage store or at an estate sale) stitched together to create a new narrative of other people’s stolen memories.

As I scan through the boxes of anonymous pictures, I realize that they represent intimate moments in time that someone wished to remember: loved ones, a favorite vacation spot, a sporting event, a sunset— common household objects, roadside signage, a crime scene, a mnemonic, and so on. The context in which these photos were taken, along with their meaning, is lost. Out of human nature to order the disordered, I assign and impose my own meaning — my own story — to these found memories. They become my family, my lovers, my time, my memories. They become my nostalgia.

Like the polaroids-in-a-box analogy, my piece stitches together 11 musical ‘images’, some of which are related, some of which are not. Alone, each of these images gives a simulacrum of a musical memory, place, or time. Together, they create a new narrative, a new story, a new life. I have given each of these an arcane title, not to enforce any kind of particular illustration, but to give the listener the latitude to wander — to instill their own interpretation to the music.

They are (in order):
Manhattanhenge • West Side Petrichor • Meconium Alpha • Grey Moss Collodion • The Algebra of Need • Pitchblende & Yellowcake • Halstead & Cicero: Panhandler of Dreams • Lincoln in Aspic • Meconium X-Ray • Craspedia Globosa • …exploding like spiders across the stars and in the…

missed connections despite

When I Dream, Some Letters Fall Out Of My Mouth To Make a Word (for string trio and electronics) was composed for the International Contemporary Ensemble in the fall of 2013. Like my other recent pieces, I have chosen to explore cinematic and literary genres (most recently the western and the noir) in something I like to call “novella form” — Americana that is unapologetically direct, insincerely nostalgic, keenly self-aware, and outrageously maverick in display.

In this piece, stories (fictitious and non-) have been lifted from a collection of imagined shorts about the city of Chicago; in other words, lifted from memories of Chicago I never had.

PROGRAM:
I. No. 41. The Long Count
II. No. 89. Save Ferris
III. No. 04. Vr
IV. No. 112. L’Inconnue de la Seine

When I Dream Some Letters Fall Out Of My Mouth To Make A Word

Aokigahara (Sea of Trees)

Vin Music (2018)

Galactic Sunrise Opener

Bruges Symphony Orchestra.  VC, Conductor

Michael Jackson — Part 3: ON THE EQUILIBRIUM OF TIDES

Michael Jackson — Part 2: AGAINST THE ONSET OF SENESCENSE AND THE DISINTEGRATION OF BODY

The Facts and Dreams of the World According to Michael Jackson – Part 1: Prelapsarian California

A History of the String Quartet in its Natural Habitat — Part 3: I am the Gospel and the Gun

A History of the String Quartet in its Natural Habitat — Part 1: Upon the Death of Valdemar Poulsen

A History of the String Quartet in its Natural Habitat (Complete)

(i am a devil) pissing into the sunset with a raincoat in my hand

Chain Black Cadillac

MEN, for solo percussionist playing an array of 12 bass drums.

Jasmijn de Vries, percussion

Inspired by the renegade eloquence of the American vernacular, the music of composer Vincent Calianno “blurs the boundaries between fine art and popular culture” (VICE), through kaleidoscopic colorings, muscular rhythms, extreme stasis and motion, while curiously investigating new musical possibilities through new practices and obsolescent technologies. His musical catalogue for the concert hall, theatre, cinema and new media explores the interplay between live instruments, electronics, and visual media.

Vincent Calianno

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