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for trombone and piano - 5'×
trombone sonata
As my first work featuring solo trombone, my goal was to write a fun and approachable composition while referencing other composers and their respective artistic signatures: the first movement alludes to Paul Hindemith’s rigidity and Igor Stravinsky’s humor; the second to Francis Poulenc’s unabashed sappiness and Sergei Prokofiev’s grandiosity; and the third to Offenbach’s Can-can, Franz Liszt’s Grand Galop Chromatique, and Conlin Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano.
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for two bassoons - 8'×
lipstick rhapsody
This work’s title comes in two parts: Lipstick references Trace Peterson’s musings on trans identity in her poem “After Before and After:"
I can find the edge
of the cunning, supposedly
clear window that
divides us from the world
of Michael Kors, that
divides a kiss from
its aftertaste.
Rhapsody references the work’s episodic form. The first section is like an internal monologue: disjointed and dysphoric. The second section unleashes a pent up energy, swirling around in chitter-chattery counterpoint. The third section curls inward, concluding in a dark lament.
Slow music gives way to fast music and then slow again. However, every section is in the same tempo (Fast but slow), a superposition of my excitement to quickly understand my identity and my hesitancy to make it known. -
for two pianos - 13'×
mozschubartsibinsky
In a distant future, entertainment scientists will create a monstrous, five-headed android made from organic materials. This ultimate musicking machine will be powered by an advanced AI program trained on symphonists from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This android, Mozschubartsibinsky, will have taken its name from five ancient composers who, to this future society, have become obscure and even forgotten: Mozart, Schubert, Bartók, Sibelius, and Stravinsky.
Recently, contemporary scientists have stumbled upon transmissions from this distant future leaking from a wormhole. Among the thicket of garbled sounds and blurry images they received a staticky audio file of what we now believe is music written by this Mozschubartsibinsky. I was hired by the government to transcribe, interpret, and reassemble this music for further study. I have taken a few liberties in piecing together what sounds to be a mix of musical approaches. This piece may give us insight into a future world where humans have lost interest in original music-making and mastered artistic imitation through artificial intelligence. -
for flute and piano - 5'×
phantoms
Back at the start of 2021, I knew I wanted to write a set of pieces for flute and piano based on sea music: shanties, boat songs, and the like. This was probably motivated in part by Tiktok’s sea shanty craze.
Skip to fall 2021 and I am asked to participate in the University of Indianapolis’s Communiversity theme, Moby Dick. I admit that I had not yet read the classic, but thought this to be the perfect opportunity to dive in. It took twelve chapters to realize the weight of this undertaking.
Given that I had only a short period to write a composition inspired by the work, I opted instead to watch the John Huston’s 1956 movie and read a collection of academic papers on the work’s symbolism. One such paper pointed to the word “phantom” and its multi-meaning use throughout the text. “Phantom” can of course represent the all-white and elusive Moby Dick, or Fedallah and his cryptic crew who appear lifeless and speak little as if floating aboard the Pequot as ghosts. Most interestingly to me, however, is that “phantom” can reference the restlessness in life that even in death is unquenchable. This drew me to the source and inspired my writing most.
My response to Moby Dick is inspired quite literally by this multi-dimensional understanding of “phantoms.” You will hear a capricious form that moves slowly then dances on whim like an untraceable specter. And there is still plenty of sea music to be had: the opening whistle tune that calls out from top the ship, the jaunty jig at the climax of the work, and the folksy ending that sinks to the depths, passing by reefs, joining the Pequod in its watery grave. -
for flute, clarinet, and marimba - 6'×
lightning bugs
The little bugs with lights for butts—scientifically known as Lampyridae, colloquially known as fireflies, glowworms, or lightning bugs—are disappearing. Recent studies have suggested that anthropogenic light pollution may be one reason for their dwindling population.
These friendly summer beetles rely on their bioluminescent bottoms to communicate with one another. Scientists have observed that bright lights from cars and buildings may be causing them to desynchronize, leading to reduced opportunities for mating.
Lightning Bugs tells the wordless story of a group of lightning bugs who find one another, dance together, and desynchronize. -
for oboe and piano - 13'×
follies
I was commissioned to write a set of variations on the infamous la folia, a feat attempted by many composers through the centuries (some successfully so). I was asked to modernize the old progression, and I must admit that while I did that in my own way, much of my approach is rather traditional. However, as with most of my music, the formalist starting point for this piece gives way to unique solutions to old problems.
Follies’ eleven variations can be heard as a three-part, fast-slow-fast form. The first part is centered around standard musical forms: a prelude, an etude, a concerto, and a fugue. Prelude on an olden theme introduces the la folia progression. As the piano churns, Eh-tudes recycles the same four-measure oboe line at progressive speeds, as if the oboist is practicing a passage from an etude. Porcelain figurine of a virtuoso is a kitschy micro-concertino with a few twists and turns. And Fugetta for no-one comes from a former teacher’s claim that “No one writes fugues anymore,” to which my response is “here’s another.”
The second part is a trio of pastoral watercolors inspired by "kenopsia," or the “eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.” (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows) The first panel of this triptych, Hymn to a clock in an empty church, sets a peaceful scene of a disturbingly vacant bethel. Idyll by the ghost of a shepherd is a poetic folk tune that mixes elements of la folia with the 12-bar blues, the 20th- century counterpart to la folia. And Songbird’s eulogy to the last king puts the listener outside the church where a bird sings atop the steeple, overlooking an unattended royal funeral.
The third part is autobiographical as it explores my mood cycling, moving through anxiety and grandiosity to the eventual dysphoria. Follies concludes with a catatonic coda, Fata organa, or “a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room.” (The Dictionary of "Obscure Sorrows).
La folia also opened a door to semantic connections that inspired my approach. A folly is both a foolish act and an ornamental building which implies function without needing to be functional, like a statuesque structure for viewing, a trifle. Many of these variations are just that: picturesque monuments to an ancient world. -
for bassoon and string quartet - 11'×
concertino
Mezza-Sonata is a truncated version of the familiar three-part sonata-allegro form. The exposition comprises two themes: the first is melancholy with its long phrases, falling chromatic lines, and undulating accompaniment; the second is more driving and dramatic with its constantly shifting key centers and anxious tremolos. The mezza (“half”) of this movement starts in the development, which wanders off in its own direction, overtaking what would have been the recapitulation and skipping directly to the coda—ignoring the sonata procedure.
Marcia funebre quasi un ballo (“Funeral March like a dance”) was written the evening following the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. This movement’s title is a reference to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, which carries the inscription Sonata quasi una Fantasia (“Sonata like a fantasy”). Additionally, the mood and meter—a processional in 3/8—references the slow movement to Schubert’s late A major Piano Sonata.
Rapsodia Maniacale (“Manic Rhapsody”) is both a capricious response to the previous two movements and a rumination on the shifting moods I experienced during a mixed manic-depressive episode. -
for viola and piano - 8'×
chakohnne
I first started writing Chakohnne back at the University of Michigan as a brief collaborative effort with violist, Immanuel Koh. I’ve since forgotten the reason why we first worked together, but the short time we did resulted in a sketch of music that constantly revisits my mind. And with 2019 being my year of tying up loose ends, it seemed fitting to revisit this music and give it a proper send off.
The form is fairly free, moving from variant to variant in an organic way—although there is not much in the way of connective material between each part. The opening establishes the harmonic and melodic world from which the rest of the work derives, like the theme of a set of variations.
The first variant remains in the same tempo, now with slightly more activity. Here the piano shadows the viola, echoing each of the viola’s two-note gestures just after they are played.
The second variant picks up the pace with a churning accompaniment from the piano and a sighing three-note motive from the viola.
The third variant continues immediately where the second’s intensity is at its greatest. This variant breaks from the overall formal constraints established by the opening, reaching a kind of conclusory end. The piano follows with a solo variant: a single line of music, 12 chords, slow, without tempo, diminishing from fff to ppp over the course of one minute.
The viola responds soon after with a lyrical answer, spanning its mid-register to it highest limits. The viola returns to earth alone with dancing pizzicati, recalling the opening music. The piano joins in the and the two conclude the piece with a slight shift in tonality. There may be something slightly surprising about the ending. This type of formally-disjunct, lyrical coda has become somewhat of a trademark of my music in recent years. -
for flute and violin - 6'×
elegies
Elegies is a grotesque rendering of the macabre and the sublime. Dead Dancing is a set of variations on Dies Irae, shifting through various moods, from the capricious opening to a rough little demon dance. Souls Singing was written at the start of quarantine. I remember it being so quiet. Quiet outside. Quiet inside—the interminable quiet. InBetween is a bit of a cryptograph—a whispered study in supreme stillness and intimacy.
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for two wind instruments - 15'×
partita
A baroque-inspired dance suite was the obvious continuation of a courante I wrote for Pamela Ajango and Heidi Radtke in late 2019. I added an allemande and a sarabande and finished with a giga, an Italian version of the French gigue. A prelude opens the set, in the tradition of some earlier keyboard suites and the later and greater partitas of J.S. Bach, no doubt the reason for the set’s name. Partita was premiered at the North American Saxophone Alliance 2020 Biennial Conference.
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for two pianos - 6'×
bagatelle
The earliest version of this music was for string quartet in summer 2016. Scherzo was part of a reading at the Colorado Music Festival and was then premiered in New Haven the following fall by members of the Yale Philharmonia. I was never truly satisfied with that version of the piece and knew I wanted to breathe new life into the material eventually.
This new version abandons bowed strings for hammered strings, opening new textural and dynamic paths for the music to take. Much of the harmonic and melodic material has remained, besides a few adjusted transitional moments, while the orchestration is virtually remade new. -
for seven instruments - 9'×
dance portraits
Each portrait is in some sort of triple meter, making use of idioms commonly heard in various romantic-era genres: the grand backbeat of the Brahmsian Waltz; the lyrical lull of the Schubertian Barcarolle; and the weighty accents of the Chopinesque Mazurka.
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for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano - 15'
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for violin and piano - 22'×
violin sonata
The first movement of Violin Sonata was written with great enthusiasm for Elly Toyoda after we performed Markov’s third rhapsody on her degree recital. Most of the movement was written over spring break 2016 and premiered a month later on the NMNH concert at Yale.
The performance was acclaimed by my colleagues, many asking if I intended to add complementing movements.
The second movement was premiered one year later at Yale. We were then asked to complete the work and give the premiere at the 2017 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Given the work’s positive outlook and sunny demeanor, and given that much of it was written over two spring breaks and is a stylistic culmination of my early period, I have taken to labeling it my “Spring” Sonata, a reference to Beethoven’s Op. 24. -
for oboe, bassoon, and piano - 12'×
trio variations
Given my propensity to arrange, reimagine, and improvise on other people’s music, it’s not surprising that I also enjoy writing variation cycles. Trio Variations is built on an original theme and a set of variants stylized after the baroque, the romantic, jazz, pop, and 20th century Americana.
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for saxophone quartet - 4'
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for two cellos - 6'×
pas de deux
Pas de deux was written for Victor Hull and Eric Hague for a collaborative project between the University of Michigan composition and cello studios.
The music violently swirls, synchronizes, caresses and consoles, and in the final moments of the work, embraces. -
chasmfor cello and piano - 4'
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fanfare for the forumfor two antiphonal trumpets - 1'