From Darkness We Awaken (for violin, violoncello, alto saxophone, prepared piano, vibraphone, and percussion)

Commissioned by Virago

For violin, violoncello, alto saxophone, prepared piano, vibraphone, and percussion

Score and Recordings will be available late 2021/early 2022.

I composed From Darkness We Awaken in the middle of what has proved to be the most chaotic period of time that I've ever lived through. As I write these words we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed millions, a fascist is attempting to consolidate power in the United States, mass protests are erupting across the country to affirm that Black Lives Matter, and a mounting climate crisis is threatening to destroy us all.

Against the backdrop of these intersecting crises, another personal upheaval occurred for me: in March 2020, my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child. Now, in October, we're less than two months away from our baby's arrival.

Of course, we couldn't be more excited. But while 2020 continues down its intensely toxic path, in our house it's been eerily quiet. We've essentially been in quarantine since March, rarely venturing out, terrified of what a Covid-19 infection could do for our growing baby. We've thrown our pent up energy into preparing our home, our hearts, and our lives for the arrival of a new human. It's a strange juxtaposition, to be simultaneously balancing so much joy with so much fear.

The one thing that has kept me relatively grounded in this unique moment has been writing this piece. I've worked quicker than usual, immersed myself in it, and put my whole self into it. As I progressed deeper into the piece, I observed it taking on more and more of a central role in my well being. I started to notice myself using this piece as a forum for processing these transformative changes. From Darkness We Awaken became a proxy for my emotional preparations for the next phase of my life — a diary documenting my personal metamorphosis. It became an avatar for an awakening of sorts: for myself, for our future baby, and hopefully for our society.

From Darkness We Awaken works to bring together several concerns that have been central to my creative practice for years — namely, the tension between composed and improvised music, and a desire to blur the lines between these two dispositions. This piece started as a series of vignettes for solo prepared piano that were structured improvisations. When I decided to transition it into a chamber piece, one of the chief concerns was to retain the open, improvisational quality of the original while utilizing the wider coloristic palate made available by the introduction of new instruments.

I'm grateful to BethAnne Kunert, Sofia Carbonara, Wesley Hornpetrie, and Meghan Rohrer of Virago for commissioning this work. Their collaborative and open attitude has given me permission to completely be myself, without a second thought.

Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver II: We Shake With Joy (for baritone saxophone and piano)

Published as part of the Dualisms collection (below.) We Shake With Joy starts on page 14.
Recording available here. Purchase the score here, or the whole collection here.

Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver
For baritone saxophone and piano
Video features Kaleigh Wilder (baritone saxophone) and Michael Malis (piano)

Premiered at Strange Beautiful Music XII, September 2019.

We shake with joy
We shake with grief
What a time these two have, housed as they are in the same body

-Mary Oliver

When I read this beautiful poem in the summer of 2019, it immediately arrested my attention. I was drawn to its inherent contradiction — the idea that we can be simultaneously full of joy and full of grief. Furthermore, the poem seems to assert that that contradiction is not only possible, but necessary: that living this contradiction is an integral component of the human experience. With Two Devotions, I sought to write a piece that captured these two opposing dispositions.

Movement 2, We Shake With Joy, is an exuberant and joyful dance. Employing techniques such as hand claps and other percussive effects, both players are almost constantly playing as the music becomes increasingly ecstatic. The result is a trance-like groove that persists onward throughout the entire piece, morphing subtly as the tonality shifts incrementally. My hope was to capture a feeling of a cup overflowing; of abundance; of pure and real joy.

Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver I: We Shake With Grief (for baritone saxophone and piano)

Published as part of the Dualisms collection (below.) We Shake With Grief starts on page 11.
Recording available here. Purchase the score here, or the whole collection here.

Two Devotions — in memoriam Mary Oliver
For baritone saxophone and piano
Video features Kaleigh Wilder (baritone saxophone) and Michael Malis (piano)

Premiered at Strange Beautiful Music XII, September 2019.

We shake with joy
We shake with grief
What a time these two have, housed as they are in the same body

-Mary Oliver

\When I read this beautiful poem in the summer of 2019, it immediately arrested my attention. I was drawn to its inherent contradiction — the idea that we can be simultaneously full of joy and full of grief. Furthermore, the poem seems to assert that that contradiction is not only possible, but necessary: that living this contradiction is an integral component of the human experience. With Two Devotions, I sought to write a piece that captured these two opposing dispositions.

Movement I, We Shake With Grief, is slow, somber, and aching. It features the piano and baritone saxophone in duet, with the pianist alternating between playing the keys of the piano and plucking the strings of the piano. This section culminates in a pizzicato improvisation from the pianist while the saxophonist repeats a simple figure.

The pianist then places a chain, bells, and other metallic objects on the low strings of the piano. My goal with this section was to capture the inarticulate wail that often feels like the summation of grief. Grief is messy. Grief isn’t rational. Grief can be all-consuming. In this sense, this section was intended to be unformed, misshapen, and full of anxiety. The piece ends with the pianist whistling into the soundboard of the piano; a question without any answers.

Five Card Draw (for one or more players)

Published as a part of the Dualisms collection (below.) Five Card Draw begins on page 5.
Recording available here. Purchase the score here, or the whole collection here.

Five Card Draw, for one or more players
Video features Thom Monks (percussion) and Michael Malis (piano)

Premiered at Strange Beautiful Music XII, September 2019.

Five Card Draw uses a deck of playing cards as its score. The players work their way through the deck, alternating between fixed and improvisational roles.

I’ve used playing cards often to generate pre-compositional material for various compositions of mine, drawing rhythms, pitches, and form from their numerical and spiritual properties. But Five Card Draw is the first time that I've used cards as the score itself. Often, standard musical notation can act as a buffer between performers and the music they create. But by distancing musical notation from the performance of the piece, Five Card Draw forces the performers to more directly embody the musical processes at play. In this way, Five Card Draw puts forth a basic premise: that a musical composition can be made with anything; even a deck of cards, found in a kitchen drawer.

Rather than outlining specific notes and rhythms, the instructions for Five Card Draw outline a procedure which musicians should follow. These instructions lay out the rules for how the piece works, but leave the interpretation of those rules up to the performing musicians. The rules can be adapted and modified to fit the ensemble, which may be different from performance to performance.

The deck of cards are separated into two stacks: number cards and face cards. Rhythms are derived from number cards according to the process laid out in the score, and players of pitched instruments have the option of using those rhythms in conjunction with predetermined pitch sets.

The face cards are used to divine improvisational inspiration, using the cards' tarot analogues as creative sparks. The players work through the deck, alternating between fixed and improvisational roles.

Quiet Times (for violin and viola)

Purchase the score here.

Since shelter-in-place orders went our across the United States in March 2020, our lives have been altered dramatically. Many of us have mourned. Others are navigating a lack of access to basic resources. Many more are facing significant financial hardship, and all of us have had our day to day schedules thrown into upheaval.

Since this paradigm shift began, I've been taking solace in quiet. Quiet has been a comfort to me -- its uncertainty and potentiality seems so much more honest than many of the noises that tend to express themselves the loudest.

As its name implies, Quiet Times is a quiet piece. It's private music, written for an era in which we've all been asked to retreat into our homes. My goal was to tailor this piece to the scale of a small room. Some of the notes might only be audible to the performers. I hope it inspires others to slow down and find peace in the quiet that we're experiencing as part of our new normal. Perhaps, if and when life returns to what we used to consider normal, we can remember our current quiet and bring some of it with us.