all the latest actualities
A Bird is an Alphabet Album Release
The official release of my third portrait album on New Focus Recordings.
CLICK HERE for more information and some sneak peeks, or just CLICK HERE for the official label page, with links to ways to purchase digital copies.
Fall 2023
As some of you saw on the Socials, I just returned from a wonderful premiere of 'Stevens Fragments' by the amazing Nuntempe Ensamble in Buenos Aires; it's a 20-minute, 9-movement mixture of my polyphonic ludism, texts sitting on the border between poetry and philosophy, and a mix of virtuosic bravura and meditative stillness. Nuntempe and I recorded the work, and I'll be sharing some of the movements over the next few months, teasing you with hints of their emerging plans for a US tour in 2025. Extraordinary players of stupendous virtuosity and beautiful souls.
On October 20th, I'll be up at Williams College for an encore performance of my work Floruit Egregiis, a bicinium for violin and cello; I studied with Jenny at Williams back in the early Neolithic, and it transformed my understanding of composition as navigating tensions between past and present, tradition and innovation, heritage and self. The piece adopts and transforms the interrelated masses 'Missa de Sancto Livino' by M. Pipelare and 'Missa de Sancto Job' by Pierre de la Rue, the first (and far from last) important component of her work. Williams remains a singularly important location in my life, where the idea of a life in music presented itself, and so I welcome every return, and another chance to work with Julian Muller and Muneko Otani.
And then the very next day, I'll be in NY for the premiere of some new songs for guitar and voice; the songs were commissioned by the great Bowers Fader Duo and set poems by Jennifer Chang, a former colleague of mine now at UT Austin. This set of three songs (Small Philosophies) address “Phenomenology,” “Logic,”, and “Epistemology,” speaking through them, but never about them; it has been suggested to me by some that that is kind of my thing... This is part of Oren and Jessica's annual presentation of new works, this year at the Tenri Cultural Center in Manhattan, 7:30 on October 21. Join us for another chapter in their exploration and affirmation of the powerful admixture of voice and guitar.
The 12th of November will find Carl Patrick Boleia playing my Praeludium at the newly revivified Spectrum, now housed at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Carl and I met just before the Pandemic, and he recorded Praeludium in the middle of the shutdown, he's excited to make it part of his first solo concert at Spectrum. Spectrum is a distinct cornerstone of contemporary music in New York, rough and ready, and always bringing new connections and voices together; I'm excited to see it at this new space further south in Brooklyn.
And to close out the year, December will see the release of my third portrait album on New Focus Recordings: The Bird is an Alphabet is an album of new settings of poems by American poets (Jorie Graham, BJ Ward, Wallace Stevens, Melissa Range, and Marlanda Dekine), each interrogating language, of the word, and its role in life, and in the creative life in distinct manners; the music draws upon art-song, medieval music, modernist chamber music, and the energy and freedom of hip-hop. I'm lucky to be joined, as I so frequently am with some wonderful partners: Robert Baker (tenor) and Molly Orlando (piano) perform A Book of Songs, with its evocation of European 19th-century art-song tradition with its imagism and heroism; Byrne:Kozar:Duo recording of 'Scriptorium ' puts forward a severe transformation of Medieval ars veterum practices, compounding the critical tone of the poems; counter)induction and the poet, Marlanda Dekine present Ars Poetica a large scale examination of life and the transformative and eudaimonic potential of craft and partnership.
March April and More
And at the end of March, there will be another tight cluster of performances, as counter)induction and Marlanda again perform Ars Poetica twice, first at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia on the 30th of March and then on the 31st at George Washington University/Textile Museum, where we'll work with the poetry students and composers as well.
The transition to summer holds still more to come; in April, Liz Reid will a New England premiere of Deixo | Sonata for viola and piano, by Elizabeth Reid in Montpelier, Vermont, and I will then stay up in the northlands for a residency at McDowell. And there will be premieres of Partita # 2 for guitar, and of more motets, performances of A Book of Songs, new quartets in Argentina, duets in the Appalachians, and more!
February and Early March!
February and March will be similarly packed. I’ll be in Chicago for a performance of sgraffito by Gregory Oakes (cl) and Marianne Parker (pf) on 26 Feb, at Epiphany Music. This performance will be performed on a quarter-tone clarinet, a new instrument designed by Greg with Wolfgang Lohff and Birgit Pfeiffer, clarinet-makers in Copenhagen. It’s a piece of contrast and sharply drawn lines, with ferocious lines contrasted with suspension and color.
The week before, Avimimus will perform three of my motets at Mount Saint Joseph University in Cincinnati; this will be a partial premiere of roughly the first quarter of my Book of Motets, which is becoming a larger and larger project month by month, and for which grand plans are emerging for next season (that is what the young people call a teaser!).
THEN on March 12th, Camilla Hoitenga will be performing my solo flute piece, Wegmarken, in Bielefeld, Germany; Camila is one of the leading flutists of her generation in Europe, and in the pandemic, I wrote this meditation on the mountains and their birds,
January Events
January is going to be a wild ride: On 26 Jan, there will be the premiere of Scriptorium, a setting of poems by Melissa Range, Prof of Creative Writing at Lawrence University that I wrote for Byrne:Kozar:Duo during covid. It's a serious, dark piece, displaying the virtuosity of Corinne and Andrew, and the rich historicality Ranger’s poems.
Then, on the 27th, I'll be in Pittsburgh with counter)induction and Marlanda Dekine for a performance of Ars Poetica at the Warhol Museum and masterclasses with grad students at the University of Pittsburgh.
And then, on the 28th, the premiere of A Little Suite for Joe or The Affable Euterpe by its dedicatee, Joe Gascho, a dear old friend and wonderful musician at the University of Michigan.