what i’ve gotten into…
short list
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Written in June 2023 for the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice
Skin explores a delicate sound world which seeks to create a tender exposition of the physicality of performance and engagement with space. Employing techniques which accentuate the tactile nature of percussion, skin seeks to engage in the delicate relationship between performer and physical space.
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Written in May 2023 for the JACK Quartet at New Music on the Point.
“i know the story of a rose.” is part of a series of works inspired by Clarice Lispector’s novella Agua Viva. This work in particular draws its musical nature from the intimate and delicate relationship found in the excerpt below:
“I know the story of a rose. Does it seem strange to you to speak of a rose when I am talking about animals? But it acted in a way that recalls the animal mysteries. Every two days I would buy a rose and place it in water in a vase made specially narrow to hold the long stem of a single flower. Every two days the rose would wilt and I would exchange it for another. Until one certain rose. It was rose-colored without coloring or grafting just naturally of the most vivid rose color. Its beauty expanded the heart by great breadths. It seemed so proud of the turgescence of its wide open corolla and of its own petals that its haughtiness held it almost erect. Because it was not completely erect: with graciousness it bent over its stem which was fine and fragile. An intimate relationship intensely developed between me and the flower: I admired her and she seemed to feel admired. And she became so glorious in her apparition and was observed with such love that days went by and she did not wilt: her corolla remained wide open and swollen, fresh as a newborn flower. She lasted in beauty and life an entire week. Only then did she start to show signs of some fatigue. Then she died. It was with reluctance that I replaced her. And I never forgot her. The strange thing is that my maid asked me once out of the blue: “and that rose?” I didn’t ask which one. I knew. That rose that lived from love given at length was remembered because the woman had seen how I looked at the flower and transmitted to her the waves of my energy. She had blindly intuited that something had gone on between me and the rose. That rose-made me want to call it ‘Jewel of my life;’ because I often give things names-had so much instinct by nature that I and she had been able to live each other profoundly, as only can happen between beast and man.”
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Written for the Berklee composer’s sinfonietta
Program Notes
Inspired by Clarice Lispector’s novella Agua Viva. (More to be written upon completion of expanded and revised version)
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Written for SPLICE Ensemble and in collaboration with electronicist Natalie Hogue featuring DSP electronics through MAX/MSP.
Program Notes
The title “HEAT DEATH” largely refers to the process of entropy, in which all things trend towards disorder. Likewise, much of this piece deals with sudden and random outbursts of energy, which culminate in a chasm of sound replicated and distorted through electronics.
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Original Score | Revised Score
Written on commission from the Rivers Conservatory for the week of contemporary music.
Program Notes
This piece is largely inspired by a book that I have recently been drawn to, Agua Vivà by Clarice Lispector. This novella explores an interesting and diverse style of writing and subject matter which challenges all logic and order, yet nevertheless hints at an underlying structure and chasm of symbolic and metaphorical depth. Lispector challenges her own understanding of self, what it is to be an artist, the cognitive mechanics of how we experience reality, how we alter and affect our surrounding environment, and what it truly means to live in the present moment.
The following is a favorite quote from Listpector’s Agua Vivà:
“The next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath... And to capture the present, forbidden by its very nature: the present slips away and the instant too, I am this very second forever in the now.”
It almost feels unjust to just pluck a quote out of the air from this book, however in these measly few words, we begin to understand what Clarice Lispector was hinting at about the instant. About what it means to capture what she described as the “is.”
It is the goal of this piece to try to capture the instant, and, however impossible, to suspend time even in the slightest as if an inhale suddenly halts in the chest and suspends midst the air turning around to exhale.
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Completed May 2022 for the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat to be performed by Isabel Lepanto Gleicher of the International Contemporary Ensemble and Kyle Flens of Ensemble Dal Niente.
Description:
i think i can move on now. is an introspective work written in the summer of 2022 drawing on a personal experience of identity, expression, and self-acceptance. Much of this work reflects on my experience as a gay, nonbinary person and the overall sentiment of the queer community. The piece began compositionally as an exploration of timbre and quickly became symbolic for navigation of self and the journey to inner contentment.
i think i can move on now. is an intimately exploratory piece reflecting overcoming self-hatred and self- detriment. Often when we talk about these issues it is deemed as “taboo” or to be dealt with yourself and not shared. However, I offer this piece as a means to converse about this innately sensitive and human emotion. To be so deep into self-hate is to be buried alive, and I seek to expose this in i think i can move on now. to serve as a reminder not only to myself but to my audience that moving forward is inevitable and the culmination of the grieving process. Of course, in this instance, I am reflecting on the grief I’ve experienced from realizing the gravitas of the self-detriment I was inflicting upon myself throughout, essentially, my whole life. This is not an easy process and is not easily learned. I hope that by sharing this, we can begin the conversation on this innately human emotion.
Read more here
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Written for members of the PHACE ensemble to be performed June 4th, 2022 in Vienna, Austria as part of the Vienna Summer Music Festival.
Description:
it will end explores the simple idea of the constant ascent of pitch and register from one extreme to another and uses dense polyphony to create a constantly morphing sound world rich in resonance and texture. The piece draws its name from the inherent emotive feeling of emerging from a muddy abyss to an awakening of light cascading down upon organic life. Similar to noticing the end of a tunnel and the sharp juxtaposition of the center of the tunnel and the opening which welcomes you into an airy crystalline environment.
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Written for a colleague of mine, Donnovan DaSilva, to be performed at the Berklee Society of Composers concert in April 2022.
Score | Audio (coming soon)
Description:
Ripple for solo flute, composed in March of 2022, explores a vast textural soundscape in constant juxtaposition of itself. I ask the performer to approach the instrument as if coming into and out of a space of direct and indirect contact, creating a sense of permeation and pulsation of texture and pitch through the structure of the piece. Ripple is greatly influenced by my deep fascination with ecological processes and transitory landscapes which date back to my experience in nature as a young creative. It is both equally inspired by the wind and the water, as if a gust creates a single riff on thick water.
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Read by Sound Icon on April 6th, 2022 at the Berklee College of Music featuring Jessi Rosinski on Alto Flute, Ashley Addington on Bass Clarinet, Lilit Hartunian on Violin, Steve Marotto on Cello, and Jeffrey Means as conductor.
Description:
Light Interacting with Water explores the sonic embodiment of the refraction, reflection, and absorption of light when coming into contact with water. This work is inspired by my observations of the interaction of water and light on the Charles River during twilight, just before the sun’s light finally dissipates. During these observations, I noticed the intrinsic patterns of reflection and refraction that form and produce a profoundly beautiful texture of metallic, glistening light. It is this transformation of light and water into metal that proves to be so profound.
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Read on Oct. 28th at the Berklee College of Music by the New Composers String Quartet featuring Gabby Diaz and Lilit Hartunian on violin, Sam Kelder on viola, and Joshua Gordon on cello.
Description:
Written in 2021, “Depth” explores a constantly evolving soundscape in which elements at play are in a state of perpetual growth and expansion. The main motif, initially introduced in the violin as an airy harmonic, is allowed to emerge and disappear in a multitude of different states whilst constantly being expanded and grown upon. Much of this piece deals with a sense of arhythmic time, as if you’re sitting in a forest and experiencing the cohesive random of the environment. This seemingly arhythmic sensation evolves too, with it slowly being bent into a homogenous rhythmic texture. These elements manifest and culminate into a pinnacle arrival point in which the ensemble is treated as a homogenous body. This arrival, large and striking, culminates in itself massive growth, until all is shattered and dissipated.
Textures and extended techniques used in “Depth” vary, but include: pink noise, percussive pizzicato, sul tasto, sul ponticello, harmonics, extreme bow pressure, additive/subtractive rhythm, and asynchrony.
