Premiered by the TAK ensemble at the Penn Sound Collective concert of graduate composers in March 2019.

Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Laura Cocks, flute
Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Ellery Trafford, percussion

Recently, two ideas I enjoyed exploring separately in my pieces were the notion of time, and playing with the Polish language. “Tik-Tak” combines both. I wrote the text in Polish because “tak” bears several meanings, including yes, such as, as if, as much, etc.; moreover, there are countless of sayings involving the word “tak”, few of them being used here. In regard to the notion of time, this piece is about time passing by mercilessly -- independent of, and indifferent to any of our human events and interactions. Any meaningful moment that we would like to hold on to, vanishes irrevocably. No matter what happens, time goes on, as if nothing had happened. In addition to presenting my personal take on time, “Tik-Tak” also contains “Tak”, the sound I wanted to use in this piece, given it was written for the TAK ensemble.

Tik - Tak for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, and percussion (2019)

I teach in US higher education (in a STEM field) & am a hobbyist composer writing in a few different styles. I recommend headphones. All of my music is released under a Creative Commons Attribution/Noncommercial license.

My bandcamp page is getting out of date again, but some older albums there can be downloaded for free or for a name-your-own price donation.

If anyone wants to try performing any of this stuff on real instruments please send a message and I can provide scores. Not sure how playable some of it is for human musicians though.

Unsolicited messages asking me to listen to your latest song will lead to you being blocked unless if I know you well and we've interacted a lot.

My music is written without the use of AI, though some of my older albums used jankier, older (pre-chatGPT) AI for album art.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for visiting!

Ash Graham (they/them) is a composer of contemporary music.  They seek to explore concepts of visceral energy, unconventional forms, and elements of humor by incorporating abstractions of familiar rhythmic idioms into their music.

Tik - Tak for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, and percussion (2019)

Ania Vu