A Presence for solo improvised piano and recorded sound 
Fromm Players at Harvard University, Creative Music Convergences curated by Vijay Iyer. 
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge MA. 
Friday, April 8, 2016

Courtney Bryan - A Presence

Regina Caeli, for SATB choir, by Julianna Horton.  Sung by the Worship Choir of Immaculate Conception Church, La Grange Kentucky.  Conducted by the composer; Lauren Pauley, soprano solo.  Performed Easter Sunday: April 1, 2018.

Regina Caeli (Julianna Horton-2018)

Written for and performed by the TAK ensemble on March 18, 2019.

The text for this piece is a poem written by Rev. Kimberly Wildszewski, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was raised in the faith. She is currently serving the congregation at the UU church in Titusville, NJ, where I worked as the church accompanist for several years. Each Sunday, I would spend part of the service improvising at the piano while Kim led meditations from the pulpit. We worked together effortlessly in this way: her words brought to life with my music, my music deepened through her words. After leaving the accompanist position in fall 2018, I asked Kim to send me a few poems to see if I might set one to music, and I know a god stood out to me immediately as the text I felt called to set. About this poem, Kim says: “I know a god is a reflection on reluctant theism and the way god has persistently shown up, released of the definitions, titles, personification, or dogma of traditional religion.”

Text:
I know a god I cannot believe in
Untamed, untethered
In my refusal

Still I feel it
Like a shadow having caught my body
At high noon

I have heard the name
It sings in silent places
Enough! I practice
Still I hear the name

I know a god, for soprano, violin, flute, clarinet, and vibraphone

A  tribute to participants of MathILy 2018

Triangles

Performed by Gabriela Godin (voice) and Margin Zheng (piano)

Text (by the composer):

There’s a river of flowing ripple
cascading in your soul.  
It streams from mother’s nipple,
it seeps through ancestral scroll.  

Its waters rush with passion
with light of joy, with grief,
with shivers of compassion –
a beauty beyond belief.  

The river knows not words
nor why it yearns to flow.  
Aloof from dictates of the herd,
it only its course will go.  

It beckons now behind your eye
and laps against hardened dams,
entreating the man of you to try
to be not wolf for once, but lamb.  

Today let not your tears be shy –
fear not the river flow.  
Cry for me; for when I see you cry,
I peer into your wetted eye
and see a man of truthful glow.

When I see you cry

I am a student at Haverford College studying music and mathematics. I am a composer and pianist passionate about the intersections of music and social justice.

When I see you cry

Margin Zheng

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