Works

A series of generative audio-visual installations for the web. Best viewed on a computer rather than a phone. Click the mouse and move to orbit around the virtual space. Headphones recommended. Created to accompany the release of the Sunspots album.

WEBSITE:

A series of analog synthesizer solo works. Sunspots 1-3 were released on the album "The Language Of..." in 2014, and Sunspots 4-9 were released as their own double-LP album on Carrier Records in 2018. A video was produced for Sunspots 9 in 2017. The project also includes an audio-visual virtual web installation, described above.

ALBUM LINK:

First performance by Tilt Brass, So Percussion, and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) in October 2017 at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ.

Wave Fanfare is a collaboration between Jeff Snyder (composer), Axel Killian and Ryan Luke Johns (robotics artists), and Jane Cox (lighting designer). It was created to celebrate the opening of the new Lewis Arts Complex at Princeton University.

Axel Kilian created a robotically controlled pendulum hanging between the three buildings of the Arts Complex, which held a massive stage light to point through the skylight windows and swing back and forth. Ryan Luke Johns built a machine to create waves in the reflecting pool above the skylights. Jane Cox designed the lighting inside the performance space, which followed the cues of the music. Laptop Orchestra members carried portable speakers and used mobile phones as instruments, moving around the audience to spatialize the sound, and each Laptop Orchestra member also wirelessly controlled a single stage light, coordinated with the amplitude of their own sound.

First performance by Toneburst Laptop Orchestra in March 2017 at the Wesleyan University Chapel in Middleton, CT.

This piece was written for the organ at Wesleyan University and Toneburst Laptop Orchestra. I had the idea of creating a system where the organ could "listen" to itself and then try to play what it heard - a kind of instrumental feedback loop. My original conception for the piece was for the organ and a single performer controlling the stops on the organ to guide the feedback toward different harmonic areas (since the complexity of the timbre ends up creating more complex harmonies in the algorithm I designed). When Paula Matthusen asked me to write for Toneburst, I realized that the piece would be more interesting as a concerto. The work now opens with my original concept, except that the control of the organ stops is distributed throughout the ensemble. Eventually, the electronics performers join with their own versions of the same feedback algorithm - listening and chiming in with what they hear in the room, exploring the sonic space.

Since the piece is generative, and based on feedback, it will be completely different each time.

AUDIO:
Rehearsal with Toneburst Laptop Orchestra

Some different versions of the piece. Organ alone, experimenting with the algorithm parameters

First performance by Sonnambula in March 2017 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

The Earth and the Eye was written for Sonnambula. I was particularly interested in exploring the lower registers of the instruments, and the possible voicings of triadic harmonies within that context. There is a section in the middle that I imagine as a kind of palimpsest, where there is conflicting material within the viols, as though the foreground music has some translucency and other music is partially showing through. While writing the music, I was thinking about the writings of Giordano Bruno, an Italian Renaissance thinker who is part scientist, part philosopher, and part magician. He wrote a text called "On the Composition of Signs, Images, and Ideas" and I was reading the English translation, which was surprisingly edited by the experimental composer and Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. Bruno writes early in the work: "Because the eye sees other things, it does not see itself. Yet what is the nature of the eye that so sees other things as to see itself? It is that sort of eye which sees all things in itself, and which is likewise in all things." This seems to be using the eye as a metaphor for the mind, and suggesting that the mind can not analyze itself impartially. I liked this image, and it fit nicely with the image of the "the Earth and the Eye", which are the two things Bruno places at the center of "the Atrium", a strange geometrical graph that he uses to organize the symbols he discusses. In taking this as my title, I think of the Earth as objective reality, and the Eye as the mind's limited ability to perceive it.

First performance by Princeton Laptop Orchestra in February 2017 at the Princeton Art Museum in Princeton, NJ.

This is an animated notation piece for an open instrumentation. It was written for PLOrk in 2017 and can be performed by a combination of acoustic and electronic musicians. The graphic score is realized using the p5 javascript library. The conductor changes the image components live to guide the course of the piece. For instance, the conductor can add and remove rings (performers), planets (pitches), and ticks (percussive sounds) at will. The color of the lines conveys which of five possible pitch gamuts is used. Moons are played by the same performers that are handling the planet they orbit around.
Thanks to Drew Wallace for additional programming on this piece.

You can run the conductor patch in your browser by clicking here (it's javascript). Read the pdf score to learn how to control it via keyboard commands.

VIDEO:

SCORE:

First performance by Wet Ink Ensemble (Eric Wubbels, piano, and Josh Modney, violin) in September 2016 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

Lynes was written for Josh Modney and Eric Wubbels. The title comes from a theoretical concept in Babbitt's music, "lyne," a term that's close to "phrase" or "melody" but more specifically means each instance of the 12-tone row (in any transformation). In working on this piece, I thought about how to bring my usually more intuitive aesthetic into a dialogue with the kinds of processes that drove Babbitt's music: exhaustive permutation, symmetry, structures within other structures. I generated material keeping these concepts in mind, and used those basic processes to organize them. Then I turned to my own more instinctual processes to cull melodic phrases and harmonic structures from these Babbitt-inspired lynes into a finished form that no longer resembles Babbitt on the surface, but subtly carries his influence throughout.

First performance by Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) in April 2016 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

Ghost Line uses webcams as instruments, with the pixel data from the cameras interpreted as audio waveforms. The performers alter the sound by moving within the frame, or by processing the video stream (altering the x and y resolution, adjusting the focus, or changing the speed or direction of the image scan). Resonant just-tuned sonorities devolve into aggressive clusters of noise, producing a masterful mix of patient harmonic changes and dense, frenetic timbral shifts.

This piece appears on the album Concerning the Nature of Things, released on Carrier Records in 2018.

VIDEO:

SCORE:

First performance by PLOrk in November 2015 at Grounds for Sculpture Museum in Hamilton, NJ.

Ice Blocks was initially developed as part of a workshop organized by the International Contemporary Ensemble, teaching middle and high school musicians in NYC about creating graphic notation (scores that use symbolism outside of the Western notational conventions). A notation example that I made for the workshop proved inspiring to use in performance, and I turned it into a piece for PLOrk. It uses generative animated graphic notation created independently for each player, but networked to a common tempo subdivision. It allows for coordinated performance across a large distance, and the original presentation had the players spread all through an art museum.

VIDEO:

First performance by Gallicantus in October 2015 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

Text excerpted from the Sibylline Oracles. Greek text from Die Oracula Sibylline, edited by Johannes Geffcken (1902). English translation by Milton S. Terry (1899).

This piece reflects my interest in combining disparate musical elements that have a strong effect on me. This my second work where I have attempted to combine the “brother duet” style of close harmony from American country music with a more modal pitch vocabulary suggestive of Renaissance music; it’s a combination I find especially fascinating. It’s the first piece I’ve written that also attempts to integrate elements I admire from Bluegrass gospel music, and I hope I have done them justice. One example is the use of a three-voice triadic texture with a fourth voice adding melodic ornamentation that overlaps the chords, as I’ve done in the “Astra gar…” section of this piece. I’ve chosen an excerpt of the Sibylline Prophesies that retells parts of the Book of Revelation (re-cast as a Greek prophesy), with some images that I find striking to contemplate. Thanks to Gabriel Crouch and Janet Downie for their help with the Ancient Greek pronunciation.

First performance by students in the SOSI Summer Institute in August, 2014 in Princeton, NJ.

This piece was written for So Percussion as a quartet for Drumboxes, an electronic percussion instrument I began developing in 2014, in combination with traditional acoustic percussion. The musical material was generated entirely by a custom-designed algorithm, run several times with different input parameters. The complex hockets push at the edge of our perceptual pattern recognition abilities, entering an uncanny valley of almost-human organization.

This piece appears on the album Concerning the Nature of Things, released on Carrier Records in 2018.

First performance by the International Contemporary Ensemble in March 2014 at the Stone in New York, NY.

This piece was co-composed with Sam Pluta, commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble for the ICElab commissioning program 2014. A new arrangement of this piece was recorded in the studio in 2018 and released as a self-contained album, Modules , on Carrier Records in 2019.

VIDEO:
(original 2014 performance. I am playing the JD-1 keyboard/sequencer and Sam Pluta is playing the Manta with his own custom software)

AUDIO:
(excerpts from 2019 studio recording)
Pavan
Galliard
Estampie
Rondelay
Alman

SCORE (for my half of the compositions):

First performance by Mivos Quartet with Susan Alcorn in April 2014 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

Substratum, written for and performed by Susan Alcorn and Mivos, is perhaps the first use of the pedal steel guitar (generally found in country music and the “sacred steel” gospel tradition) paired with a traditional string quartet. Harmonically reminiscent of Stravinsky, Feldman, and late Ligeti, the piece develops like an intricate root system, with the voices slowly twisting and intertwining as they search the musical space.

In 2019, I wrote a new arrangement for small chamber orchestra and pedal steel, which was performed in Austin, TX by Density512 and Bob Hoffnar.

The video below is of the original version, performed by Susan Alcorn and Mivos, with video direction by Caroline Key.

This piece appears on the album Concerning the Nature of Things, released on Carrier Records in 2018.

VIDEO:

SCORE (original version):

SCORE (2019 chamber orchestra arrangement):

First performance by the Princeton Laptop Orchestra in April 2013 at Taplin Auditorium in Princeton, NJ.

This work uses the mobile capabilities of PLOrk (both technological and physical) to dwell upon the sounds and tones between dreams and reality.

The software for the iPads is a custom PureData patch, running on the MobMuPlat platform (by Daniel Iglesia).

VIDEO:
(strobe warning)

First performance by Sideband in 2012 in Baton Rouge, LA.

"In roast you are a guest of the ducks - go dream!" – attempted translation of the Sitovo inscription, written in an unknown script

This piece is written for an ensemble of instruments designed and built by the composer (the same group of instruments as Concerning the Nature of Things, but with a set of six Forceboxes added and the Birl removed). The music is inspired by examples of writing that have been discovered but never translated, ranging from intentional codes to ancient scripts for which the spoken language is unknown or cannot be identified.

The piece is structured to suggest to the listener something of the mystery and wonder of these undeciphered writings, strange ancient texts which must have meaning but for which the key has been lost. The unbalanced form, with the majority of the activity happening before the halfway point, to me suggests the incomplete fragments of stone tablets that have been broken off in unpredictable ways by the elements. The melodic fragments perhaps represent the “crib”, elements of the undeciphered text with some familiar structure that could suggest the meaning. In deciphering ancient texts, often a structural similarity to known languages provides the key to understanding the nature of the language. However, these melodic fragments seem incomplete, and the chords that follow are similarly unresolved and masked by decay. Ultimately, it is only a fleeting glimpse into a culture that will forever remain foreign to the listener.

This piece appears on the album Concerning the Nature of Things, released on Carrier Records in 2018.

First performance by Eric Wubbels at Rock Hall in December 2011 at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

This piece was written for the Magnetic Resonator Piano, an instrument invented by Andrew McPherson.

First performance by Wet Ink Ensemble May 2009 at St. Peter’s Church in Chelsea in New York, NY.

This piece was written in 2009 for an ensemble of invented instruments. All the instruments use electronic sound sources; their sound, however, resonates from their own acoustic chambers so that each instrument has its own specific voice. Sonically, the influence of early Renaissance music, particularly the works of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, and of late Medieval Ars Subtilior can be heard. Perhaps less recognizable is the influence of American country music. The vocal harmonies tend to follow the tonal rules I have inferred from transcribing male/female country duets of the 50s through the 70s. The entire piece is written in a form of extended just intonation, in which all intervals are tuned exactly to whole-number ratios. The use of this type of tuning system in Europe dates back at least to the Ancient Greeks, and it allows the use of consonances and dissonances can be more subtle and interesting than those we are used to hearing. Unfortunately, just intonation is generally considered to make modulation into different key areas difficult. My instruments attempt to solve this problem by enabling a flexible pitch system where the retuning necessary for modulation (or for quick access to more esoteric intervals) is simple and accurate.

The text is by the early Renaissance philosopher/occultist/scientist Paracelsus. It combines excerpts from his strange alchemical text “Concerning the Nature of Things” (in which he lists off various materials and explains to what they owe their “life” or “death”) with a passage from his “Letter to the Athenians” (in which he outlines a pantheistic philosophy of the structure of the universe). Thanks to Amara Magloughlin for help with the Latin translation of the Paracelsus text.

This piece appears on the album Concerning the Nature of Things, released on Carrier Records in 2018.

First performance by Wet Ink Ensemble in October 2008 at Roulette in New York, NY.

This piece appears on Wet Ink Ensemble's debut album, New Works for Small Ensemble, released on Carrier Records in 2009.

First performance by Wet Ink Ensemble with the composer on electronics in May 2007 at New York Quarterly Meeting House in New York, NY.

First performance by Eric Wubbels (accordion) and Matt Hough (electric guitar) in January 2007 at Symphony Space in New York, NY.

Commission for Timetable Percussion Trio; first performance in September 2006 at Tenri Cultural Institute in New York, NY.