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.