2nd Collection of Essences and Ephemera: OneiroStation

The Collections of Essences and Ephemera contain both excerpts (essences) of pieces - sometimes just a short melody stated once - as well as complete shorter pieces (ephemera). The 2nd collection features selections from OneiroStation, an opera I worked on during 2001-2005 before abandoning the project. The music presented here was arranged for unaccompanied piano(s) in 2007-2008. It amounts for roughly half the material in my completed drafts. The opera went through several arrangements and orchestrations, re-writes of the libretto, and even varying numbers of characters.

1st Collection of Essences and Ephemera:
gifts, sacred works, musical abortions, solitude, dried fruit, word-stripped songs, sentimentalities, and music for children, shadow-play, film, stage, tunnels, and miscellaneous other vacancies

The Collections of Essences and Ephemera contain both excerpts (essences) of pieces - sometimes just a short melody stated once - as well as complete shorter pieces (ephemera). The 1st collection contains pieces composed between 2000-2004. Those not written for unaccompanied piano(s) were arranged in 2008. These are largely light, fun, spontaneously-created pieces, some of which served particular extra-musical functions. They are more traditional than most of my other work.

Everything... is a 7-movement piece of electronic music. Like Summa de Nada, it draws from my sonic experiments and compositional etudes but the rock songs utilized are subjected to more experimental treatments and there are only a few minutes in the work in which any vocals are present.

Interestingly, some of the materials found on Everything... were created for earlier (out-of-print) collage pieces and albums so the end result is partly a collage-of-collages, in places a 3rd generation alteration of the original recordings.

Of Knowing Others builds upon the improvisational and melodic vocabulary I developed in composing For Melinda Rice. The title is take from a quote attributed to Confucius: "I do not fear that others do not know me; rather I fear it is I who does not know others." I think it applicable to musical collaboration, particularly improvisation.

Of Knowing Others was composed for theremin and violin and has not yet been premiered. (Theremin is an early electronic instrument that is controlled by the performer's proximity to antennas controlling pitch and volume.)

For Melinda Rice is a violin piece with two layers. The first features a collection of written materials that Melinda improvised with. The written materials all have a specific type of function or application within the piece. These improvisations take place atop multi-track recordings of the violin which create a droning "super-instrument".

The piece also represents a huge leap in my development of an individual approach to scales and melody, featuring materials slowly derived from a long study of extended modal systems, bitonality, and polychords.

This recording is from violinist Melinda Rice's live performance on Jan 22, 2006.

Composed for a concert of new short works performed by Cassia Streb (viola) and April Guthrie ('cello). A quick study for techniques I developed further in For Melinda Rice.

A series of experimental scores in which the performer improvises different elements of the pieces. While every performance should be different, these structured improvisations are intended to produce variety within a recognizable and simple piece. My interest was in creating pieces in which the most interesting feature would be what was "left out" of the score. These "Neo-Post-Primitivist Compositions" were partially intended as a mockingly simplistic reaction to the music, polemics, and nonsensical pseudo-philosophical jargon of my peers heavily influenced by French "deconstructionism".

A setting of a poem by Mazarine Treyz. The performers begin and end each phrase together but intentionally drift rhythmically in-between.

Soprano Kris Wildman
Piano Danny Holt
'Cello Aniela Perry

A setting of an Emily Dickinson poem. One of five such pieces used in a collaborative project with five filmmakers, all different in character but joined by the theme of solitude (the title of the collaboration). Interestingly, the original vocal line (which contained the words of the poem) was moved to the 'cello part and the poem's stanzas are not sung in the final version piece.

Soprano Kris Wildman
Piano Danny Holt
'Cello Aniela Perry

Summa de Nada is largely drawn from the same sessions as Junesong but the pieces (some collaged and others free-standing) are arranged into 4 suites.

Listening suggestion: While I sometimes listen to Summa de Nada as an album from start-to-finish, I often prefer to experience the four distinct suites in a particular way. I always listen to the suites in order and listen to each suite in it's entirely. However, I may imagine my experiences in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, or even weeks between listening to each individual movement as part of the composition.

Junesong is a assortment of sonic experiments, compositional etudes and psychedelic rock songs structured in 3 movements (previously released with 4 movements; I have since combined the 1st and 2nd).

A piano piece featuring some unusual uses of Schoenberg's 12-tone compositional method. The result is a piece that isn't always atonal and has many dramatic contours.

A Walk... features my first use of a process I call collapsable form. This minimalistic technique appears in a few of my compositions. The piece is scored for synthesized acoustic guitar.

This one is pretty; it's my mother's favorite of my pieces. It's scored for synthesized bells. Ripple uses minimalistic rhythmic techniques in a free way and contrasts them with rhythms borrowed from jungle/drum-and-bass electronic dance music.

Abstract electronic music.

Relics was a collection featuring some of my first collaged music and also many early experimental etudes. The rock songs used in the collages had a much heavier "industrial" sound than previous recordings. I may post a few tracks from the collection in the future but currently I've removed it "from print" and have re-collaged some of the pieces in newer works like Everything Will Make Sense and Teenage Daydreams.

Seasick Landbound was my first piece outside the realm of rock music. It brings together techniques developed by many of the experimental composers who I was just beginning to study. It's not my most subtle piece but is generally one of my most well-received pieces.