i mourned you twice this week and will again tomorrow

Matt Evans - Percussion
Henry Fraser - Double Bass
Lucia Stavros - Harp
Lester St. Louis - Cello 

Composition + electronics by Lea Bertucci, 2021

Of Shadow And Substance (Excerpt)

Twas the night before Christmas
A short break from our jobs
More time to push buttons
And twiddle some knobs

But all of the sudden 
Came a raucous delight! 
The most perfect tone
From a patch point just right

Just then, who appeared?
Why, it’s Jolly St. Nick!
Sleigh lured by the sound
He hurried down quick

And what’s in his sack?
A sweet Christmas ham?
No, it’s Santa’s own rig
He’s ready to jam!

Semibegun #13 | Beep Boop Merrily on High 12222022

A collection of phone recordings of harp improvisations for meditative purposes, remixed and rearranged to push the boundaries of harp music.

Tracklist:

Sunshowers
Walking
Stampede
Aurora
Dusk
Fire
Frost
Gold
Comets/Stardust
Eclipse



[Audio description]
1. Sunshowers

Multicolored textures swirl in a repetitive daze, changing moods two times before dissapating


2. Walking

Ambling fingerpicking backed by appearances and disappearances of overtones blanketing the sound

3. Stampede

Rush of beating and clapping leading to ecstactic polyrhythmic circling

4. Aurora

Dusty counterrhythms crashing and shifting tones while leaving shadows of sound, before final melodic transformation toward brightness

5. Dusk

Echoing steps climbing into atmospheric fragments of sounds before colliding into rolling buildup and final explosion

6. Fire

Multioctave rhythmic playing leading to reversal

7. Frost

Cascading call and response of glittery, lightly plucked dustings. Intense storm of scratchy sound

8. Gold

Cycles of rising and remaining before fading away

9. Comets/Sundust

Unyielding pressure playing with how much to let go

10. Eclipse

Inversed beginnings with variations

Permanently Transient

Performance: United Instruments of Lucilin
Recording: Tritone Studios

"Draw" and "blow" are terms used to refer to breathing in and out in harmonica playing. Zoetrope VI is centered around the breathing patterns of the harmonica player (in this case the percussionist). The piece follows the speed with which they inhale and exhale, gradually speeding up as more and more blemishes are added to the texture by the other instruments in the ensemble. Eventually, a spinning sound image briefly forms from the musical mass. 

The "Zoetrope" pieces mix together disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs end up contributing to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation and repetition.

Composed September/October for Luxembourg Composition Academy 2023

Zoetrope VI: Draw / Blow (2023)

For choir and obbligato improviser; 
text from Lamentations 1:12 and "The Cry" by Denise Levertov, with permissions from New Directions Publishing

Commissioned & premiered by Khorikos with Charlotte Greve (alto saxophone), November 12, 2023, Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua, NYC.

The first line of Lamentations 1:12 is a question in the original Hebrew: “Is it nothing to you?” This is missed in the vulgate Latin translation into the widely spread "O vos omnes", but the question is more pertinent. Not only a call for help or pity, but implicitly a warning. Matthew Henry’s 1710 commentary puts it concisely: "Jerusalem sitting dejected on the ground calls on those that passed by to consider whether her example did not concern them. Her outward sufferings were great but her inward sufferings were harder to bear through the sense of guilt. Sorrow for sin must be great sorrow and must affect the soul.” Our sorrows now are certainly “great”, especially oriented towards a future whose imagination is inextricable from the specter of a more total destruction than ever before. Hence Denise Levertov’s poem, “The Cry,” which gives voice to that inward suffering through the very impossibility: “Nothing for eloquence / no rhetoric / fits / that unrendering” — paradoxically, it only made sense to try and work through this nothing, to sing in its face with the old and new words, to know your NOW only through what it could be, and choose accordingly with the ineffable escape route of sounds: the bird, the child, the choir, the saxophone. These real and poetic things, and the very efficacy of how they articulate themselves, are constantly shifting around uneasily over the course of this piece.

Is It Nothing

Performed by Erin Lesser on May 2nd, 2024, at Northwestern University.

Karaksa (2024), for alto flute and electronics

The world premiere of Pallor for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, and electronics. Commissioned by No Exit and played at Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University on November 30, 2018.

Pallor

Walter Zimmermann

Dialogue des deux Roses (Neue Version)(2011) ᛫ Neue Vocalsolisten, Meitar Ensemble ᛫

DNK Ensemble:
Seamus Cater, voice
Koen Nutters, double bass
Martijn Tellinga, sine waves
Dante Boon, piano

with:
Catherine Lamb, viola
Rishin Singh, trombone

first performance
KM28, Berlin
Feb 13, 2019

Dante Boon - the prayer's end (2015 / 2019)

Here are some excerpts of recordings of some of my compositions. I've concentrated on music which is not (yet?) available on CD or shared by others on YouTube, and which I haven't placed as downloadable material on my website (richardbarrettmusic.com).

Island (from CONSTRUCTION, 2011) for two improvising soloists and 8 instruments

Composition, improvisation, instrumentalization, realizations.

Is It Nothing

Zvibes

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