LARGE ENSEMBLE

A Lost Winter (2024)

Instrumentation: for sinfonietta (1.1.1.1—1.1.1.1—vibraphone—piano—1.1.1.1.1)

Duration: approximately 8 minutes

Download the score here: A Lost Winter

Program notes:

A Lost Winter was composed during the 2023-2024 winter season, the warmest winter in U.S. history since record keeping began. Lost winters are characterized not only by warmer temperatures but by the lack of cold, snow, and ice. The distress of winter fundamentally changing is expressed in this piece. At the beginning, the flute represents an imaginary bird, calling for its expected winter conditions. The call eventually becomes an agitated and frustrated theme, broken down into small motives, and expressed throughout the ensemble. A middle section features searching and sustained solos from different members of the ensemble. The piece finally ends with a mournful lament, while the original bird call of the flute has been replaced by a more mechanical and artificial sounding motive in the piano, which gradually fades away into nothingness.

Lilliputian Arctic Deviation (2018)

Instrumentation: 1.1.1.1. — 1.1.1.0. — 4 perc. — piano — strings

Duration: 14 minutes

Download the score here: Lilliputian Arctic Deviation

Program Notes:

Lilliputian Arctic Deviation is a work for sinfonietta inspired by average snow and ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere. The Rutgers University Global Snow Lab records weekly snow extent averages for the Northern Hemisphere from 1967 until the present day. This work focuses on the summer months and uses musical materials to reflect two characteristics of the data collection: a significant decline in average snow extent from 1967 to 2015, and a transition from drastic yearly differences in the late 1960s through the early 1990s, to more consistent and predictable values in the late 1990s to 2015. Similar yearly average data values are reflected through shared musical materials. Data regions are grouped into eight regions, and data points falling within the same region share motivic, melodic, harmonic, and timbral materials.

FIXED MEDIA AND ELECTRONICS

Vignette #8 — Footwork: from gesture to rhythm (2023)

Instrumentation: for electronics (Max patch), bass clarinet, and dancer

Duration: approximately 8–12 minutes

This collaboration starts with an electronic soundscape compiled from bass clarinet motives and pedal tones, transcriptions of Dr. Sarkar’s singing, and reference recordings from the study of Odissi music. These fixed media sounds are controlled through a Max patch coded by the composer and performed through a laptop computer. Performers will improvise in real time throughout the performance, reacting to each other and the changing soundscape. After some time passes, a cacophony of sound floods the space. The dancer reduces the density of the sound by engaging a device which gradually strips away the cacophony, layer by layer, revealing an altered, undulating audio landscape.

Ambalangoda (2018)

Instrumentation: stereo fixed media

Duration: 5 minutes and 35 seconds

Program Notes:

Ambalangoda was created for the Cities and Memory Global Collaborative Sound Project. The source recording was gathered by Stephane Marin of Espaces Sonores. The source recording features sounds from a busy roadway in Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka. These source sounds are reimagined into a kind of daydream, one that quickly focuses on particular sounds, changes the perception of the passage of time, and remixes foreground and background materials at the slightest whim.

Urban Sky Glow (2016)

Instrumentation: for solo marimba and stereo fixed media or live electronics

Duration: approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds

Download the score here: Urban Sky Glow

Program Notes:

Urban Sky Glow explores how missing starlight returns to our lives as we reduce city lights. It acts as an interpretation of the levels of the starlight magnitude of one particular area of the night sky. The marimba musically represents the stars that are visible in the different magnitudes. After the first minute of the piece, four stars have been revealed: Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse, and the Hyades star cluster. As we move through the levels of magnitude, city light is reduced, more stars are revealed, and previously visible stars become brighter. The fixed media creates both a contrasting artificial light as well as extensions of the marimba’s starlight. As we travel through the magnitudes we also engage in two Dreams which are variations on the starlight materials.