About the Music and the Composer
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The Sun Rising for baritone voice and chamber orchestra (13:00)

Ecstatic music for an ecstatic poem by
John Donne.

 

The Flight Attendant for mezzo soprano and chamber orchestra (6:45)

A preview of my opera-in-progress, set on an airplane 2 days after 9/11.

 

How Many Times? for viola, piano (optional), and recorded sound (15:45)

Real-world and musical spaces for (mostly) solo viola.

 

Bagatelles for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion

Six short compositions ranging from sparse and programmatic to dense and abstract.

Comment or Question?
reharmonizer@an-earful.com

 

How Many Times?

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How Many Times? was written in 2001 for violist Jonathan Bagg. The accompanying recording was assembled from samples of Jonathan playing, recordings I made of my wife and me speaking, and samples taken from BBC sound effects CDs (crowd noise at a soccer game and at a party, footsteps, etc). Some of the samples were digitally manipulated. Only basic playback equipment is required (CD player or equivalent, amplifier, and speakers).

The general theme I had in mind as I wrote was modes and spaces of human interaction. Each of the six parts of the piece takes up a different aspect of the theme in a way that is either quite concrete (because it is based on the sound of a particular kind of space) or quite abstract (because it has to do with the "space" of music).

The first few sections of the piece deal with specific sonic spaces, starting with the loudest and most public and moving to quieter and more intimate. There is, first of all, the sound of a crowd at a soccer game, and the music reflects the frenetic, massed energy of all those people. Then there is a large party, and smaller groups of people talking, and finally "quiet"—the sound of people not talking, at which point the music for viola becomes free-floating and meditative.

Dovetailed with the series of spaces is a little playing around with the music of question and answer in everyday speech. The second half of the piece takes up this thread and generalizes it, as I consider the kinds of dialog that happen in musical "space." Among other things (many of them quite hard to put into words), there is a dialog between kinds of viola music, between long lyrical phrases and little pecking phrases, between dancing and singing.

The viola is joined by piano for the last part of the piece. In the genesis of the composition this had a relationship to the overall theme. The piece was written to be premiered at a recital Jonathan gave with his son, a very talented pianist who was about 14 at the time. So, at the end of the piece I had in mind both family "space" and the kind of musical dialog typical of chamber music. If the occasion arises I'd like to make a version of the piece that doesn't require a piano.