notated music
I've collected my notes-on-paper work, together with some of its documentation (usually video), below. You can find scores for sale here, and recordings in various places. (New Amsterdam, One More Revolution, etc.)
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Of and Between (flute, clarinet, piano, electric guitar, double bass, 2020)
I wrote this piece in response to Judith Schaecter’s stained glass work entitled “The Battle of Carnival and Lent,” after spending some time with it in Rochester, NY, at the Memorial Art Gallery. Among the things I find remarkable about Schaecter’s piece is the way that it supports and rewards my curiosity about changing the scale of watching. Of and Between imagines an analogous kind of hearing. We are on the surface of the music, but then broaden our listening gaze to the larger gesture. Or we are listening on a larger-scale level, but some color or surface move pulls us in. Back and forth, accumulating some sense of the whole picture, the whole claim. I’m grateful to fivebyfive for commissioning this piece and for their advocacy for my music in general. |
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Correspondence (speaking percussionist, 2019)
This piece, commissioned by a consortium consisting of Abby Fisher, Katelyn King, and Alexv Rolfe, sets the text of an imaginary letter to my father against quasi-breaks for percussion instruments and deconstructed drum set. |
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Acoustobot (percussion ensemble, 14- and 20-player versions, 2018)
This large percussion ensemble piece reimagines an old percussion/laptop quartet, Electrobot, for acoustic instruments. It was basically Yumi Tamashiro's idea. SoSI participants premiered the piece in Princeton, and then Baylor took it to PASIC. |
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Home Body (voice, hammered dulcimer, kick drum, hi hat, 2016)
David Degge asked me to write this music and text, for his commissioning push to create new concert works for hammered dulcimer. We workshopped early drafts at SoSI, and then he premiered the piece at Carleton College in 2016. It became the first release on One More Revolution Records, on an EP alongside Symmetry and Sharing. My writing process involved walking through the Cowling Arboretum singing into my phone. |
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Daily Decrease (Prepared Digital Piano, 2015)
I wrote a short study for Dan Trueman's Mikroetudes collection, a part of his larger Nostalgic Synchronic project. You might investigate his mind-exploding etudes that inspired my little piece. |
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Symmetry and Sharing (Singing Percussion Quartet, 2015)
I made Symmetry and Sharing specifically for Mobius Percussion. They requested a “bot,” referring to a series of percussion pieces I’d created that traffic in grooves broken up and distributed among the players as well as constantly shifting underlying pulses. This is not that. The members of Mobius have a special interest in using their voices, and their vocal ranges just happen to map onto those in traditional SATB (Soprano/Alto/Tenor/Bass) part writing. Knowing this, I made what might be the world’s first SATB vocal percussion quartet. Through the text, they ask us to let go of our day-to-day preoccupations, our need to make our beds or make sure our watches run. The requests intensify, though, into more emotionally fraught territory, until we’re being told to disentangle ourselves from the traumas that drive us. I wanted to make that intervention feel like generosity and not intrusion. The ensemble plays tuned metal pipes and wood slats, deconstructs two drum kits and shares a vibraphone, singing in four independent parts all the while. I am in awe of their ability to do this, and honored by their willingness. Video by Four/Ten Media. |
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Blackened Chamber (Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello, 2014)
I wrote this piece with Deafheaven's Sunbather in my ears, though the connection to that record seems clear only to me and a few other imaginative listeners/players. Redshfit gives this premiere at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, CA. |
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Forms of Practice (Solo Percussion and Electronics, 2014)
I experimented in this piece with a novel approach to notation, using visual representations of the sound files triggered by the controller keyboard. Brandon Bell commissioned the piece through a Presser Grant, and premiered it at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, TX. |
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Concertpop (Solo Percussion and Electronics, 2014)
Lusha Anthony asked me to make something for percussion and electronics, and gave me all of this great pop music as a reference. Here's the result of chewing all of that up, as well as thinking through the ways my solo performance setup might translate into notated work. Thanks to Lusha for a great performance and to Chris Salvito for the wonderful videography. |
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Flight School (Piano Solo, 2013)
In an electronic music seminar at the University of Michigan, where I studied from 2000-2002, I remember a colleague presenting what he described as THE definitive Detroit techno track. (I’ve since looked for it, but I fear that my memory of the piece is warped to the point that I wouldn’t even know it if I heard it.) The piano break really made an impression on me, though, how it brought you to a kind of clearing but stayed insistent and propulsive at the same time. Flight School was written as a way to capture the spirit of that break. Guy Williams, who commissioned this piece, was on his way to Florida to train fellow aviators after writing the check, hence the title. The wonderful pianist Kate Campbell helped me immensely as I worked through the draft stages, and Mike Williams inspired me to revisit the original middle section. I’m grateful to Andrea Lodge for giving the premiere performance and for starring in the video. |
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Electrobot (Percussion/Laptop Quartet, 2012)
The idiosyncratic instruments I've built and approaches to playing them I've developed were conceived for my own solo performance. This group of ambitious students at the So Percussion Summer Institute gave me the surprising, unimagined opportunity to expand into ensemble writing. They're reading a score that doesn't look like it sounds, and playing 2-octave MIDI keyboards to trigger samples that I created by recording myself playing old synths and step-sequencing beats. The New York director/choreographer/filmmaker Mark DeChiazza developed the projection idea, visually amplifying the small movements on the keys that become large gestures in the sonic space. |
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Babybot (Percussion Quartet, 2011)
This doesn't look like a drum kit quartet, but is actually very much conceived of as one; I substitute a different material (wood, metal, glass, etc.) for each position on the kit and then lay the instruments down on a tabletop. The very last note of this performance, by students in the 2011 So Percussion Summer Institute is miraculous, a high water mark for sure. Thanks, Clara! |
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Polybot (Percussion Quartet, 2010)
Below you'l find audio of the premiere performance by students in the 2010 So Percussion Summer Institute. The diagram shows the setup: it's basically two drum kits built off of a single bass drum with pedals on both heads. The video is of a nice performance by Joseph Gramley's students at the University of Michigan. |
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Octobot (Percussion Quartet, 2009)
Here's the premiere of my first percussion quartet and the initiating piece in the "Bot" series. So Percussion gives this performance at Princeton University. |
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Trust Fall (NOW Ensemble, 2008)
I wrote this for NOW's residency at Princeton. The writing process experimented with using a software sequencer rather than a notation program in order to generate ideas that I later formalized on paper.
I wrote this for NOW's residency at Princeton. The writing process experimented with using a software sequencer rather than a notation program in order to generate ideas that I later formalized on paper.
Fall Down Five Times Get Up Six (Piano, 2008)
This piano solo was written with Ravel's "Sonatine" in my ears, very much in awe of its elastic and fluid harmonic language. Francine Kay gives this performance at Princeton.
This piano solo was written with Ravel's "Sonatine" in my ears, very much in awe of its elastic and fluid harmonic language. Francine Kay gives this performance at Princeton.
Diamorphosis (Orchestra, 2002)
This collaboration with Dr. John Psarouthakis is the direct result of waiting tables. Long story.
This collaboration with Dr. John Psarouthakis is the direct result of waiting tables. Long story.
Music to Accompany Revolution and Music for Strings and Interference (Orchestra/Fixed Media, 2000)
One of these pieces is a kind of aggressive wrecking of the other. Listening to the Berkshire Symphony's recorded performance of my Music to Accompany Revolution, I was drawn to all of the imperfections: coughs, programs rustling, that sort of thing. I started to imagine what it would be like if I amplified these interruptions, made them huge. "Music for Strings and Interference" is the compositional end result of that thought process.
UPDATE: Music for Strings and Interference is getting a commercial release, so you can't listen here anymore, alas.
One of these pieces is a kind of aggressive wrecking of the other. Listening to the Berkshire Symphony's recorded performance of my Music to Accompany Revolution, I was drawn to all of the imperfections: coughs, programs rustling, that sort of thing. I started to imagine what it would be like if I amplified these interruptions, made them huge. "Music for Strings and Interference" is the compositional end result of that thought process.
UPDATE: Music for Strings and Interference is getting a commercial release, so you can't listen here anymore, alas.