An opera in 5 scenes for 8 voices and electronics.
Written in conjunction with the Contemporary Opera Lab.

Cast:
Wintermute: Sarah Kirsch
The First Other: Nick Urquhart
The Second Other: Darren Martens
The Third Other: Stephen Haiko
The First Muse: Susan Watkins
The Second Muse: Elizabeth Humphries
The Third Muse: Victoria Borg
The Fourth Muse: Susanne Reimer

Electronics: Zach Bales

Stage Director: Jo Leslie
Musical Director: Mel Braun
Librettist: Zach Bales

Premiered and recorded on January 13th 2014 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba.

W/mute

Written for the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.
Premiered by the UMSO February 10th, 2014

Forms Untidy

The first movement of Night Suite
Performed by Wes Rambo, Olivia Orton and Tristan Pearl
Text from Oscar Wilde's La Fuite de la Lune
Performed April 4, 2014 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba

Trio De La Lune

The second movement of Night Suite
Performed by Wes Rambo and Tristan Pearl
Text from Walt Whitman's A Clear Midnight
Inspired by Tristan: "You should write something with a bunch of ninths" 
Premiered March 13th in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba

Song Of Midnight

Heavily Bartok inspired, written many moons ago, but performed only recently.

Performers:
Violin - Viktoria Grynenko
Violin - Henry Liao
Viola - Geena Salway
Cello - LIsa Nazarenko

Performed April 4th, 2014 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba

String Quartet

The Son of God returns to Seville at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and is taken prisoner by the Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisitor seeks to show him his error in rejecting the three temptations presented to him by Satan. The text is adapted from Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Performed by Daniel Thielmann and LIsa Nazarenko on April 4th, 2014 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba.

The Grand Inquisitor (Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight)

This Sentence was inspired by Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room.  In his piece, Lucier uses the sound of his voice to generate the material of the piece. More important to my concept, the text he speaks is a technical explanation of how the piece will be created. I used this idea as a jumping off point for This Sentence, which uses only my voice as a sound source as I detail the construction of the piece and the processing taking place in real time.

Premiered April 4th, 2014 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba. 

Performed by Zach Bales (Me!)

This Sentence

Alas or (One of Two Literally) takes its text from Gertrude Stein’s From Four Saints in Three Acts, a standalone poem excerpted from the libretto (also by Stein) of Virgil Thomson’s opera. The text in Alas is set exactly as it exists in the original poem with no word repetition, omission or reordering. At first glance the poem seems fractured and fragmented, but as it unfolds, words, phrases and sentence structures become elemental in creating form. This aesthetic is an important aspect of the music as well. It seems complex and disjunct on the surface, but underneath it is made up of a few simple motives that combine to create a structure that closely mirrors the poem. 

Premiered April 17th, 2015 in Eva Clare Hall at the University of Manitoba. 

Performed by Paul Winkelmans (voice) and Kristy Tucker (bassoon)