Sonata No. 1 "Antithesis"

Commissioned 2021 by the University of South Carolina Wind Ensemble

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

"Technically supreme. Delicately sensitive playing. A perfectly blended ensemble." -Chamber Music Bern
This distinguished ensemble, in residence at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., presents a program that includes a world premiere of a Symphony Space commission by Marjorie Merryman, plus the Beethoven Trio in G Major, Op. 1 No. 2; Mendelssohn Trio in C minor, Op. 66; and Dina Koston's "Piccolo Trio."
The program&nbsp;begins with Associate Artistic Director and composer Laura Kaminsky moderating Underscore, a conversation with composer Marjorie Merryman .
&nbsp;

Marjorie Merryman, Echo - Raphael Trio

The message resounding in this piece is an appeal for equity and inclusivity. 

One of the effects of resistance is an attempt to dissolve barriers of discrimination. The goal is to have walls crumble; the fall of the Berlin Wall is such a poignant memory for the commissioners of this piece – the wall’s dissolution provided much needed harmony. This piece serves to remind us that we humans, in our beautiful diversity, are equally one.

When Apathy is Betrayal_FULL 60 minutes!

Conscious Streams experiments with unexpected and abrupt changes to mess with a listener's expectations in a (hopefully) humorous manner. Here is my program note for the piece:

You know that thing that authors do where they just write out their thoughts in an endless stream without really thinking about what comes next and often they form very long run-on sentences or have sudden changes that don’t really make sense like BAM there’s a cat in my office and he’s chasing a grasshopper.

I may or may not have just been playing Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defúnte before I started this piece and I just really love that work and wanted to write my own pavane but then I got to thinking “well, I tend to write a lot of serious music and this is no different so what if I also tried to make the audience laugh” and then things got very Webern-y and when things get very Webern-y in a piece that is already pretty Ravel-y you know you’re in for an emotional rollercoaster so buckle up folks and get ready for a ride. Lettuce.

Conscious Streams was written for the 2022 Brevard Summer Music Festival and was premiered on August 5th, 2022, in Parker Concert Hall by Alex Tedrow (conductor), Alexandra McGuire (flute), Aaron Lipsky (clarinet), Noel Medford (violin), Elliot Wells (cello), and Ting-Ting Yang (piano).

Conscious Streams, Op. 25 (Pierrot Ensemble)

Each year, approximately five-hundred billion plastic cups are used, of which roughly six billion end up in landfills. ...grind... attempts to symbolize the faulty business and political ideologies that ultimate contribute to a lack of environmental sustainability through the destructive morphology of a single sound source: a plastic Keurig coffee pod hitting the floor. 

...grind... was inspired by Donkey Coffee's Fair Trade Coffee initiative and their continued commitment to Zero Waste.

...grind... (8.1 channel fixed media)

Jellyfish

mAtrix[Blue]ooM

Initially, this piece was an etude study into a new theory I was devising. As I was finishing the work, my anxieties resurfaced during the Black Lives Matter protests following the aftermath of George Floyd's death by Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. I am not a Black person, but as a person of color with a traumatic history with white supremacy, I am hurting for the black community. 

The title is meant to catalog my confusion in such devastating, semi-Orwellian times. Bloom - a term used to describe diminishing returns on the accuracy of semi-automatic guns. [Blue] - those we've anointed our guardians of justice. 

Performed and Recorded by Jacob Mason 
http://www.jacobmasonpianist.org/

rynejsmusic@gmail.com
www.rynejsmusic.com

Picture: Richmond, VA protests

mAtrIx[Blue]ooM (Two Quarter-Tuned Pianos)

"glass, evaporate[d]"

Within the first month after its premiere on "A Night of Robert Black" (with pianist, Lindsay Garritson), my piece "lips evaporate" for double bass and piano received several performances and recordings all around the United States. While mixing and mastering the recordings, my curiosity spiked after accidentally displacing certain tracks within the mix session. "glass, evaporate[d]" is the self-plundered amalgamation of this experiment. 

Performed and recorded by Jacob Mason
http://www.jacobmasonpianist.org/

"refract" by Jacob Mason
https://ja-cob-mus.bandcamp.com/album/refract?fbclid=IwAR3MEq0buAtzIdwqlfoJKaLNHgXT6mpXeM5WGxBsOxuNMDaw1Le3nKUS9TA

Picture: "Universal Tears (CGI)" by Rob Bryant, Jr
https://www.behance.net/robbryantjr

rynejsmusic@gmail.com
www.rynejsmusic.com

Selected for programming at the 2021 Society of Composers, Inc National Conference

Selected for presentation at the 4th annual Research on Contemporary Composition Conference (October 25th, 2020)

glass, evaporate[d] (Three Quarter-Tuned Pianos)

Rain Chain

Wesley Thompson is a composer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist from the coastal town of Fairhope, Alabama. Drawing from eclectic influences such as 20th century classical music, heavy metal, and video game soundtracks, Thompson explores the blurring of boundaries between the categorical tools called “genres.” A love of improvisation, born from his piano studies, is also integral to his compositional style.

As a pianist, Thompson filters everything through his unique manner of improvising that melds diverse pieces of music together into extended sets or suites, as exemplified in his album "Improvisations and Arrangements."

Thompson's compositions have been performed by artists as diverse as the Beo String Quartet, Transient Canvas, and Aaron Petit. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in composition at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

Conscious Streams, Op. 25 (Pierrot Ensemble)

Wesley Thompson

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