Notturno for String Quartet (2025)

The wonderful Friction Quartet commissioned this piece from me in 2016. Here they perform it live in its second performance, at the SFFCM Presidio Sessions.

Photo credit to http://sealevel.climatecentral.org

second performance

A Sleeptalker Describes the Rising of the Seas

Percée is a reflection on the time in my life that I went through the “soundless” years. The loud, chaotic, and disorderly improvisation elements in the piece are ongoing themes throughout the work. In those chaotic sections, there exists moments of void, meaningless sound, and silence; which sometimes attempt to stop the chaos.  
Well organized segments of silence, on the other hand, provide refreshing moment to the audience in the midst of the chaos. In A traditional sense, in classical music, silence appears to be perceived as an awkward/boring moment for the audience, or functions as a moment of tension, rather than evoking a feeling of curiosity and beauty.  In that sense, I wanted to explore silence as a musical material that can have various meanings and expressive qualities through many variations of its use. I also wanted to challenge the audience to stretch their capacity to perceive silence as an organized idea rather than just an accident or a meaningless happening.
A few years ago, I composed “Sound of Soundless” for the victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy; which was premiered in Seoul, Korea by the violinist Eun Moo Heo and Ensemble Pan. In “Sound of Soundless” I wanted to express that, although the surface of the sea where the ferry sank was placid and tranquil after being submerged, I could feel the victims that were buried deep down in the sea. I felt the massive sound of mourning from their muted souls, speaking loudly for help to reveal the truth of the tragedy.
Percée, in the same sense, has a great emphasis on the metaphorical meaning of silence. Silence (or a moment of soundlessness) can speak louder than sound.
As listeners hear this piece, I hope they will have an opportunity to encounter a moment of silence in their inner-world and experience a refreshing moment of breakthrough(percée) that comes within.

Percée for fl, cl in Bb, trb, perc, pn, vn, and vc (2018)

Alto saxophone and piano (2018)

Premiered by Philipp A Stäudlin and Yoko Hagino

The title, Jindo, is named after an island southwest of the Korean peninsula which gave birth to several important Korean traditional music genres (Pansori, Sanjo, Sinawi). Also, it is near the place where a ferry sank, taking more than three hundred lives, mostly high school students on April 16th 2014. The young students were writing text messages to their parents about whether they would be saved. Not many people were saved from the ferry even though those students and their parents were texting each other for several hours. The Korean folk tune, Jindo Arirang, is used in this piece.

This piece is dedicated to the victims of the ferry tragedy.

Jindo (2018)

Scott Hunter's impeccably constructed texts were conceived with the intention of being read by an online simulated voice that was purposefully archaic in its delivery – glitchy, devoid of tone or context, flat and relentlessly even in the rendering. While the idea of using an outdated technology to realize one's work might seem like a gimmick, it actually imparts a disarming poignancy, effortless in its delivery, yet also enduring in its impact.

The three poems of Hunter's that are set in Three Scented Candles mostly operate in an outdoor environment or inside the ethos of late night. Half-awake awareness of the mundane or specific momentary happenings, with moments of jolting revelation brought about by self-soothing pot smoking, are part of the very common experience of late night rambles through a quiet neighborhood when one gets to be alone with oneself - - their past and their dog, all part of a nocturnal ritual where the present slowly melts away as one readies for slumber. Three Scented Candles is 11 minutes in duration, and sets the following texts.

1 - Midnight Rose Meets Angel Of The Morning
2 - Dumpster Dive
3 - Marijuana Dogwalk (Take 3)

Thank you Charlotte Mundy & Miori Sugiyama - you are amazing!

Three Scented Candles for soprano and piano (2018) on texts of Scott Hunter

Requiem (2019)

I. Requiem aeternam
II. On Immortality (Thomas Hardy)
III. Out of the Deep (Psalm 130)
IV. To One in Paradise (Edgar Allan Poe)
V. I Heard a Voice (Revelation 14)

Commissioned by St. Peter's Church, NYC

Balint Karosi, conducting
Addy Sterrett, soprano
Kannan Vasudevan, tenor

The St. Peter's Choir and Orchestra

IV. To One In Paradise

"credo petrified" is for amplified solo cello. The piece was written at the request of Rhonda Rider in 2016. Here it is performed by Leighton Fong a Left Coast Chamber Ensemble concert April 29, 2023 in the Bayview Opera House. This is the fourth (and final) revised version.

Remembering family childhood trips to the Petrified Forest with my mother (long since dead), seeing stone trees (even longer since dead), makes me consider the unadorned ritual of forgotten deaths, of slow disintegrations, of ancient music created for worshiping ("I believe in one...") that is dying its own gradual death at a glacial pace, becoming sonic dust - casualty of a ritual set in motion by man and nature that eventually will have no one left to observe or participate in.     -KR

credo petrified for amplified solo cello (2016/2018/2020/2023)

Trotsky was killed with an icepick to the skull. It was actually an ice axe.

I recently read a short play, which begins the moment after the hammer strikes and becomes embedded into Trotsky's head, that proceeds to detail the thoughts and sensations, moment by moment he had as he remained conscious and confronted his assassins in order to question them.

Trotsky had to seek treatment at the hospital. He was operated on and died the next day from exsanguination and shock. Exsanguination is an extreme loss of blood.

His last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."

This piece was written in 2018-19 for and is dedicated to Jared Redmond, who is simply the best.

Trotsky's Icepick (a meditation) for solo piano (2019)

Meitar Ensemble: Roy Amotz, flute, Ori Wissner-Levy, violin, Moshe Aharonov, viola, Liron Yariv, cello, Guy Feder, conductor.

Notturno for String Quartet (2025)

William David Cooper

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