Community Acoustics (2019)

Commissioned by Brenda and Steven Schick for the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra. First performance: Feb. 9 & 10, 2019, La Jolla Symphony Orchestra, Steven Schick, conductor. Mandeville Auditorium, La Jolla, CA.

Community Acoustics takes its name from the scientific phenomenon of sounds within an ecosystem organizing themselves into distinct register layers and interlocking patterns, enabling communication within species and overall ecosystem function. The piece reconsiders the typical roles of conductor, performers, and audience using aleatoric components and audience participation. In facilitating a collective act of occupying sonic space inspired by nature, it serves as a model for how we all might choose to exist in the world, in touch with our own needs, those of others, the natural environment, and the greater good.

Step! (2011)

Large chamber version for Alarm Will Sound.

First performance: July 23, 2011, Missouri Theater, Columbia, MO.

Orchestra version for Chicago Composers Orchestra.

First performance: Sept. 20, 2012, Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL.

I don't wanna dance (2020)

Commissioned by Chamber Project St. Louis.

This piece is informed by structural, rhythmic, and timbral elements of disco songs, waltzes, and other dance music of various types, and it comically evokes an introverted reticence toward dancing and other widely enjoyed social activities. The ensemble premiered this work on a program that featured my music, alongside my piece for two clarinets, Big Fish, on February 4th and 9th, 2020.

Cold Compromise (2019)

Commissioned by the Breckenridge Music Festival.

First performance: July 31, 2019, Tiny Porch Concert Series, Katie Briggle House, Breckenridge, CO.

Community Acoustics (2019)

Chamber version commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Premiered on the CSO's MusicNOW series on October 7, 2019, Harris Theater, Chicago, IL.

Community Acoustics takes its name from the scientific phenomenon of sounds within an ecosystem organizing themselves into distinct register layers and interlocking patterns, enabling communication within species and overall ecosystem function. The piece reconsiders the typical roles of conductor, performers, and audience using aleatoric components and audience participation. In facilitating a collective act of occupying sonic space inspired by nature, it serves as a model for how we all might choose to exist in the world, in touch with our own needs, those of others, the natural environment, and the greater good.

Foot Foot (2019)

Commissioned by the Spektral Quartet.

First performance: Spektral Quartet, June 15, 2019, The Hideout, Chicago, IL. The quartet also featured the piece on their "Once More, With Feeling" series at Constellation on August 14, 2019.

This piece is based on the song "My Pal Foot-Foot" by the 1960s outsider rock band The Shaggs.

We Don't Eat Dead Things (2017)

Commissioned by Ensemble Dal Niente with support from the Des Moines Civic Music Association.

First performance: April 22, 2017, Sheslow Auditorium, Des Moines, IA. The ensemble also performed the piece on their PARTY concert on June 3, 2017, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago.

This commission stipulated that the piece had to be based on music by the Des Moines indie rock artist Christopher the Conquered. The work is loosely structured after the song “I’m Not That Famous Yet”, with text culled together from the lyrics of almost all of his songs. It is a processional of sorts, with a single motive winding through the whole piece, forwards and backwards and through different transformations. It’s also an exercise in taking musical/stylistic, text, and physical objects out of context

Cog (2016)

For Third Coast Percussion.

First performance: May 7, 2016, Mary Galvin Recital Hall, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Version for two players commissioned by the Spectrum Ensemble.

First performance: May 4, 2019, Black Box Performing Arts Center, Denton, TX.

I wrote Cog within a year of beginning to identify publicly as male. Its compositional process helped me to make sense of much of the “noise,” from all sides and from within, that has been pervasive throughout my gender transition, and to begin to ascertain who or what I am and how and to what extent I fit into the world. The piece features a single line created by the four percussionists, with periodic sounds created by an electronic percussion instrument that fails to conform to the milieu established by the other timbres. Later, the electronic instrument initiates a longer sonic backdrop for the rest of the piece, which sheds light on the inner monologue behind its outbursts. Source material comes from auditory fragments of my life experience and creative output, including previous compositions, recordings of my voice, and music, TV, and movie samples.

Wilder Shores (2015)

Commissioned by Third Angle Ensemble. Text by Matthew and Michael Dickman.

First performance: June 21, 2015, Bang on a Can Marathon, Brookfield Place, New York, NY.

Michael Dickman describes his and Matthew Dickman’s poem Wilder Shores as “a kind of broken sonnet sequence of five fifteen-line poems, each section improvising on and adding a line to the poem that preceded it. In some way the poem is a love poem, or an obsession poem, or both all at once? A car accident? A beatbox?”

What most captured my inspiration about the poem was its rich succession and interplay of images; the way they are introduced and brought back, creating an inscrutable sense of familiarity, and the way they are chopped up and blended into a progressively finer and ever more disconcerting and vivid mix. I wanted to create something similar with the construction of the music. Musical ideas, once introduced, are recalled, fused, and fragmented, all intended towards a collectively fraught, shape-shifting texture.

Fountains and Cathedrals (2014)

Commissioned by the Bennington Chamber Music Conference.

First performance: Bennington Chamber Music Conference participants, July 23, 2014, Bennington College, Bennington, VT.

P.A.W. (2014)

For the 2014 CULTIVATE Festival.

First performance: Music from Copland House, June 22, 2014, Merestead Estate, Mt. Kisco, NY.

H#ck It! (2013)

Piano, ten hands: For the pianists of the 2013 Bang on a Can Summer Festival (Vicky Chow, Vicky Ray, Charlie Magnone, Jacob Abela, & Karl Larson.)

First performance: August 2, 2013, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA.

Flute, violin, contrabass, & piano: Commissioned by t8tes (Vicky Chow, Domenica Fossati, Andie Springer, and Lisa Dowling.)

First performance: September 4, 2013, Cornelia Street Cafe, New York, NY.

Zin zin zin zin (2012)

Originally written for the JACK Quartet.

Numerous performances by the Spektral Quartet all over the world from 2012-present, including the 2015 Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Concert Hall, New York, and the 2015 Ear Taxi Festival at Constellation, Chicago. Recorded by the Spektral Quartet on CHAMBERS (Parlour Tapes+, October 2013.)

Loosely inspired by the rapper Mos Def's wordless improvisatory flow at the end of the song "Double Trouble" by the hip hop group The Roots, Zin zin zin zin deals more generally with heterophonic group speech in hip hop and in general. It is inspired by moments where disparate vocal rhythms unexpectedly come together. It also explores the way that unison speech is never perfectly simultaneous, owing to different voices' natural variations in pitch, inflection, and emphasis.

Let It Begin With Me (2011)

Commissioned by David Wegehaupt.

First performance: David Wegehaupt and Stan Muncy, March 10, 2011, CCRMA, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Winner of the North American Saxophone Alliance Composition Competition 2013.

Step! (2011)

Large chamber version for Alarm Will Sound.

First performance: July 23, 2011, Missouri Theater, Columbia, MO.

Orchestra version for Chicago Composers Orchestra.

First performance: Sept. 20, 2012, Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL.

Groove III (2011)

For the 2011 New Music on the Point Festival.

Performed by Fifth House Ensemble on March 24-25, 2017 at Fourth Presbyterian Church and The Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL.

Groove III, part of a family of pieces that includes short solo piano movement Groove, solo piano piece Groove II, and mixed septet Groove Excursion, explores the repetition of a musical figure, while altering different characteristics; for example, duration, orchestration, or location of rhythmic emphasis. A musical motive becomes, rather than a stepping stone to something new, an object to be fully examined and experienced in its own right.

Four Ways... (2010)

Commissioned by Machine Project.

Performances periodically over the month of November 2010, Little William Theater, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. This work comprises four miniature duets, which can be performed consecutively or separately. It is one of over 100 works compiled by Machine Project for performance in the Little William Theater. The theater, set up in the coat room of the museum, accommodated two performers and two audience members for concerts of up to two minutes in length.

I. Blackbird Singing, for 2 accordions

II. Sunken Eyes and Broken Wings, for 2 violins

III. Dark Black Night, for 2 tubas

IV. Learn to Fly (This Moment To Be Free), for 2 clarinets

Groove Excursion (2009)

Commissioned by the Composers Conference at Wellesley College.

First performance by Embryonic NOISE!, May 27, 2009, Center for the Arts, Natick, MA.

Boston Night Prayer (2009)

First performance by Embryonic NOISE!, April 11, 2009, Temple Ohabei Shalom, Brookline, MA.

Elegy (2009)

Commissioned by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet.

First performance: March 8, 2009, Gibbes Museum, Charleston, SC.

Elegy was commissioned for a recital at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, given at the opening of an exhibit of American drawings and prints from the Great Depression and World War II eras, entitled "The American Scene on Paper." The work's melodic lines are collage-like, made up of notes contributed by several different voices emerging from the overall texture. I was trying to piece together the music the way a collection of art works depicting isolated scenes can piece together a general impression of a historical era. In this case, the desired mood is subdued but hopeful.

Babylon (2007)

Commissioned by Kyra Sovronsky and Keith Carrick.

First performance: May 14, 2007, Boston University, Boston, MA.

Big Fish (2006)

First performance: April 8, 2007, New England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble, Jordan Hall, Boston, MA.

Winner of the 2009 Margaret Blackburn Composition Competition and a 2008 National Federation of Music Clubs Emil & Ruth Beyer Award.

Mass Pike (2006)

First performance: ALEAIII, Gunther Schuller, conductor. Tsai Performance Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 10, 2006.

Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (2005)

Commissioned by Karin Bliznik.

Shuffled 'Notes from "A Guide to Drag Kinging"' (2018)

Commissioned by Pushback Ensemble. Text by Franny Choi.

First performance: September 9, 2018, Archway Gallery, Houston, TX. Performed in eleven venues across the US in 2018-19, including the Omaha Under the Radar Festival.

This piece shuffles the words of Franny Choi's prose poem 'Notes from "A Guide to Drag Kinging,"' with her permission, to facilitate new textual and musical meanings that align with my own experience of gender performance, gender transition, and finding oneself amid the myriad possibilities for gender expression. Over the 2018-19 season, it was performed at venues in Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Boston, and at the Omaha Under the Radar Festival.

In two parts:

I. Packing Instructions

II. On Crossing

'Outtro' from Everything Means Nothing To Me (2018)

Commissioned by Third Angle Ensemble, as part of an evening-length work created in collaboration with the Sleeping Giant Composers Collective. Based on the music of Elliott Smith.

First performances: April 12-13, 2018, Alberta Rose Theater, Portland, OR, with staging by Hand2Mouth Theater Company.

Album forthcoming on Jackpot Recordings.

The Best Place for This (2017)

Commissioned by the Quince Ensemble, with support from a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant. Text by David Ebenbach, Ali Shapiro, Erika Meitner, Phillip B. Williams, Tala Abu Rahmeh, jamie mortara, Emma Wilson, W.S. DiPiero, and Jeremy Schmidt

First performance: November 11, 2017, The Lilypad, Cambridge, MA. Performed by the Quince Ensemble at venues across the US in 2017-18.

The Best Place for This is an extended song cycle combining poems that share related themes along the lines of a search for one’s place: geographically, among other people, or within one’s own life trajectory and aspirations. The poetry presents varied perspectives on this search within the modern American cultural climate, touching alternately on loneliness, connection and its challenges, inertia, mundanity, and transcendence. The piece is a sort of exploration of whether fulfillment is attained in achieving life goals for relationships, position, and self-regard, or whether it appears only in flashes within an otherwise lifelong process of searching. Is there really a “best place?” Are we already there, and if so, how should we feel about that? Or will we each find it, eventually?

I am currently creating and recording a version of the piece for my own voice, using falsetto and baritone registers and older recordings of my pre-transition soprano register. This recording is supported by a grant from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission.

I/we (2016)

Commissioned by the Volti Choral Institute for High School Singers.

First performance: Volti Choral Institute for High School Singers conducted by Robert Geary, First Unitarian Universalist Center, San Francisco, CA, Nov. 5, 2016.

Text culled from videos made by LGBTQ+ individuals and allies as part of the "It Gets Better" and "Proud 2 Be" projects, as well as from various other public record articles and videos that quote members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Groove V: a little wild and a little strange... (2016)

Commissioned by the Pesedjet Trio (Carrie Henneman Shaw, Mabel Kwan, and Jesse Langen.)

Digression on Number 1, 1948 (2014)

Commissioned by Volti. Text by Frank O'Hara.

Frank O’Hara’s "Digression on Number 1, 1948" chronicles his viewing of the Jackson Pollock painting of the title, a transcendent expenditure of energy and material. It also depicts O’Hara, who was gay, leading a frowned-upon social life for the 1950s, and while at the height of his creative output, beginning to lose himself to alcoholism, finding solace in the work of his recently deceased close friend and creative ally. This solace is of a kind that resonates with me. He struggled, but in the sublime achievement of that painting, he found affirmation, and, in his own words, the “state of spiritual clarity” that for him underscored the purpose of art and of his own existence. I drew upon Pollock’s painting methods in my use of the choir, using a variety of vocal sounds, such as long tones, sighs, laughter, and speech, to evoke the painting’s three-dimensional, variegated texture. I also sought to evoke the poem’s shift from muted pain toward awe and self-affirmation.

Groove IV (2013)

For the Bang on a Can Summer Festival.

First performance: July 29, 2013, by festival participants, Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA.

Way Down Yonder (2013)

Commissioned by Singers on New Ground.

First performance: Castle of our Skins, March 18, 2016, Roxbury Community College, Boston, MA.

Also recently performed by Lucy Dhegrae, Cristina Buciu, Dominic Johnson, and Sara Sitzer, on the Gesher Festival, Wool Studio Theater, St. Louis, MO, August 17, 2018.

More background information can be found in this interview.

Space (2012)

First performance by the Dolce Suono Ensemble, May 19, 2013, Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA. Winner of the 2013 Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composer Competition.

Other performances include Kayleigh Butcher at the Resonant Bodies Festival at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, on September 7, 2017.

Labor Day (2011)

For Jennifer Beattie and Jillian Zack. Text by Erika Meitner.

First performance: June 17, 2011, New Music on the Point Festival, Leicester, VT.

Performed at many venues across the US and via livestream by Liz Pearse, 2018-2020.

Distillation (2005)

For the 2005 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Text by Jeremy Schmidt.

First performance: Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk, CT, June 16, 2005.

A Sonnet of the Moon (2004)

Text by Charles Best.

Look After You (2018)

Commissioned by Ammie Brod of Ensemble Dal Niente.

First performance: Washington University, St. Louis, MO, September 27, 2018. Performed at venues across the US in 2018-19, including the Milwaukee Art Museum and a "Dal Niente Presents" recital at Constellation, Chicago, IL.

In keeping with the theme of the body of work commissioned by Brod for her tour, the historical idea of memento mori across religious traditions, the piece considers concepts of self-discipline within its ethos, imagining an internal struggle to focus on death and afterlife while simultaneously experiencing life, and moving through one's life cycle, in real time. The music enacts this struggle through conflict between its own temporal past, present, and future.

bodies immutable (2018)

Commissioned by Noa Even. Interactive electronics and video by Jason Charney.

First performance September 3, 2019, Kent State University, Kent, OH. Performed at eleven venues across the US in 2019-20.

This piece is inspired by the evolution of the increasingly visible and thriving transgender community in the US, as aided by manifestations of support of each other and from allies. Tones played by the saxophone are recorded live and then re-enter the sound world, brought about by other tones, analogously to transgender individuals finding themselves able to live openly on account of each other’s presence. Eventually, musical territory is covered that the solo tenor saxophone cannot play on its own, exemplifying how the tones in the 'community' can make unprecedented progress once enabled by the existence of others. Abstract video footage of moving bodies, coming gradually into focus over the duration of the work, further serves the concept.

fly, into the light... (2013)

Commissioned by Todd Reynolds.

First performance: Janis Sakai, May 13, 2016, Chicago Civic Orchestra Composers Project, Buntrock Hall, Symphony Center, Chicago, IL.

Performance on the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's "Live at the Pulitzer" chamber series planned for March 24, 2020, and postponed on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Groove II (2010)

First performance: Ann Yi, February 18, 2011, Hertz Hall, Berkeley, CA.

Recorded by Phillip Bush, Bennington College, August 2014.

Ballad of the Mean Angry Jazz Hater Monster! (2009)

Commissioned by Danny Holt, with support from an American Composers Forum Subito grant.

A Cookie and a Blanket (2012)

For Michael Mucci. Commissioned by Longmeadow High School.

Shall I Throw Myself into the Arms of Faith?? (2020)

Commissioned by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

Streamed on March 29, 2020, as part of an online concert celebrating the orchestra's 100th anniversary. This piece is inspired by a recording made by Civic Orchestra musician Lindsey Orcutt of the contrabass part of the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. It also features recordings made by former Civic Orchestra bassist Brendan Fitzgerald.