Remembering (2023)
Remembering is a piece that pours onto itself. Beginning with a thin, lonely, and unsure passage shared by the strings, the piece grows through one musical line attempting to recall what another has just done, spiraling forward in varied canon. Not until the climax of the piece, when each member of the orchestra plays together, is the theme fully in the foreground and piece realized, or “remembered”.
I took feelings of yearning, multi-directional pulling, lostness, and hope, and mixed them into a blurry cacophony of sound which I enjoy calling a “sound brick”. This texture uses repetition and anticipation to provide a layered, rich, and surprising sonic experience. Very intentionally, Remembering ends unanswered, and does not provide the satisfaction that the listener (and I) desire. Remembering is not intended to present a particular image, story, or physical thing. Instead, listening to this piece should be personal and intimate. I hope you find meaning by reflecting upon a memory or feeling associated that the music may evoke.
Remembering is written for full orchestra as a collaborative project resulting from a year-long fellowship with the Mississippi Valley Orchestra with director and conductor Ho-Yin Kwok. Also, thank you to Ryne Siesky, Mellissa D’Albora, and Benjamin Montgomery for acting as composer mentors during the piece’s conception and development.
Blind Alley (2021)
Blind Alley, scored for full orchestra, was written as a Masters Thesis for the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music. This piece aims to express the frustration and arduousness of a course of action that leads to no meaningful end. It features dense passages, dissonant and unsettling textures, and misleading moments of hope.
Sonder (2021)
Sonder, scored for soprano voice and piano, is a 4 movement song cycle written in collaboration with soprano and librettist Natalie Nelson who wrote the lyrics and premiered the work at Western University, Ontario. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sonder aims to communicate the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Sonder serves to illustrate the feelings of isolation caused by quarantine felt by each person across the world, the grief therein, and the ultimate emancipation from.
Twisted Thread (2020)
Twisted Thread is a conceptual piece aimed to embody a moving image of one tiny, unevenly coiled piece of fabric. The root compositional idea of this piece involves a spiraled, chromatic figure which can be traced throughout the piece. This spiraled chromaticism manifests in different fashions and instruments, representing a twisted thread. This thread constantly changes shape through elongating, shrinking, loosening, tightening, tearing, and connecting.
Two Minds (2017)
Two Minds was commissioned by Luther College for the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. This piece was played during Luther's Reformation Day Cantata alongside 4 professional commissions.
Two Minds is two dimensional. The name, Two Minds, is derived from the separation between woodwind and brass sections. This is to convey Martin Luther’s two minds – academic (woodwinds) and religious (brass). The second dimension lies in the ABA’ form of the piece. This is to communicate Luther’s initial frustration with the Catholic Church (A), the spread of his thoughts through his Ninety-Five Theses (B), and ultimately open a dialogue which ignites the Reformation (A’). The hymn-sounding material within the A section is intentional and elaborated upon throughout the piece, providing this work with a Lutheran contour.
Nostalgia (2015)
This is one of my earliest pieces. It exemplifies my taste for lush harmonies and reflective tonal sonorities. It is intended as a pedagogical piece for youth piano trios.
Disorientation (2018)
Steve Paxton, one of the founders of the dance form Contact Improvisation, defines the practice as, “...an evolving system of movement... based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one's basic survival instincts.” This dance form has captivated me, especially in its desire for and resolution of disorientation. Thus, my study of Contact Improvisation has provided me the conceptual roots for Disorientation.
This piece is scored for flute and electronics. The electronic track contains a mix of prerecorded flute sounds, synthesized instruments, and is intended to disorient the listener through blending the prerecorded flute sounds with the live performer. Disorientation is loosely based in Rondo form (ABACA) where the A section contains a tonally centered, lyrical theme grounding the ear. The B and C sections, however, are very interpretive, free, and disorienting to the ear. These two sections abruptly cut into the A section, disorienting the flutist and listener. Within these sections, it is obliged to the flutist to reorient with the electronics, matching its rate, volume, pitch, etc. Hence, Disorientation is a piece which puts into music concepts paramount of contact improvisation: free movement, momentum, gravity, and inertia.
Variations in D Minor (2017)
Variations in D Minor contains one theme and six variations, broadly speaking. The purpose of the piece is to push the performer with technically challenging arpeggios, articulations, rhythms, and scales while developing the theme from its original form to something reminiscent suggesting only small, rhythmic aspects of the original idea. The piece can be conceptualized in three broad sections: statement and elaboration of theme, reminiscence, and reiteration. The first establishes the theme and varies it slightly in a staccato, march-like fashion culminating with expansive, climactic arpeggios spanning the length of the keyboard. The listener is then introduced to a polychordal soundscape reflecting only the rhythmic components of the original theme. This drives forward into an aggressive, dissonant, and enraged presentation of the theme. This rage eventually settles moving into the third and final section of the piece: reiteration. This last variation places the theme in the bassline below an accompaniment moving upward from the mid-register of the piano. These roles intensify, pushing inertia forward towards one final reiteration and a rapid descent of a d harmonic minor scale.