VORTEX SHEDDING...
For mixed quintet and computer. Based on street recordings of downtown San José, California. Premiere performance, San José City Hall Rotunda, April 20, 2024.
Aaron Lington, Baritone Sax
Catalina Barraza, Violin
Rayo Furuta, Flute
Michale Hernandez, Soprano Saxophone
Pablo Furman, Percussion & Computer
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Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin, Cello and Piano
Inspired by Argentine folk music.
Commissioned by the Composers Conference and Chamber Center, Wellesley, MA (revised version, 2022)
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Four Meditations for Solo Baritone Saxophone
Writtern for and premiered by Aaron Lington, Baritone Saxophone. Premiere: April 28, 2022
OBOE CONCERTO
Writtern for and premiered by Sherry Sylar, OboeAssociate Principal Oboe, New York PhilharmonicArticle About Sherry Sylar
- Suspiros y tambores (Sighs & Drums)
- Aire de milonga - breathless
- La comparsa (The Carnival Parade Troup)
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PASO DEL FUEGO
String Quartet & Orchestra
- Preludio y coral
- Triste
- Fantasía del bailarín
- Romance arioso
- Capricho a cuatro arcos
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PNEUMATIC VARIATIONS
Classical Accordion & Orchestra
Commissioned for the last concert of the 20th anniversary season of the orchestra and to showcase a virtuoso classical accordion player. Spokes, gears and cranks, air chambers and varying pressures, flywheels and levers, the machine grinds a spirited industrial metamorphosis. The accordion churns away freed from its inherent expectations in a ride of musical fancy. The music, loosely cast as a set of variations, is based in thematic material inspired by the action of instrument's bellows, its breathing apparatus and leading driver of the performing forces.
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CONCERTINO
Bandoneon and Orchestra
This was a commission for an accessible piece inspired by tango. The bandoneon is the musical soul of Argentina, land of city-scapes and pampas, of adventures, aromas, mate (green tea) rituals, nostalgia and introspective pessimism, lunfardo and perennial bar polemics. It is a land of noble history and disgraceful recent past. All these form a collective memory embedded in the sound of the bandoneon and come to bear weight on the inspiration for this work. At a personal level, this is reflected in writings by the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. He vacationed in Adrogué, a town in the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires where I grew up, and wrote about it in numerous occasions. It is a place of “bucolic houses and iron fences (quintas y verjas)” wrote Borges, “enveloped by the medicinal aroma of eucalyptus trees, that ancient smell; traced by tranquil labyrinth of canopied streets radiating from its numerous squares. A place to loose oneself in.” I remember loosing myself in, walking a different route each time while contemplating very important things, or nothing, according to the occasion.
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OBERTURA DE LA LIRA ENCANTADA
Fixed Media - Transformed Piano
A piano harp (from which the sound samples were extracted) provided the inspiration for the idea of a magical environment, deep inside the acoustical universe of the instrument (a lyre), in which the pianist touches every physical parameter and makes music unremittingly.
The idea is to extend, with the use of technology, the capabilities of a real piano which cannot repeat notes very fast, it cannot bend pitch, it has limited sustain capacity–once a key is struck the sound decays, and it is certainly not alive to be able to speak with the performer (the voice of the composer is filtered through piano sounds to make this effect).
All sound sources are from the piano that once sat in the living room of my house.
The idea is to extend, with the use of technology, the capabilities of a real piano which cannot repeat notes very fast, it cannot bend pitch, it has limited sustain capacity–once a key is struck the sound decays, and it is certainly not alive to be able to speak with the performer (the voice of the composer is filtered through piano sounds to make this effect).
All sound sources are from the piano that once sat in the living room of my house.
VOX CHORDAE
Chamber Orchestra
Koussevitzky Commission Award. The work is written in a more abstract style with focus on livery colors. In a surreal landscape string instruments dictate the sounding of musical ideas. The "voice (or call) of the strings" is an instrument inspired sound voyage. Melodies, harmonies, textures and gestures are presented through the perspective of the string instrument as if, in a fantastic rendezvous, the strings had taken controls
if the performance space, pick up scattered notes and revealed them through their idiosyncratic acoustical nature.
TRIP TO TWELVE TONE TOWN
Solo Piano
- A series of miniatures for children based on the tone row of Anton Webern’s 1924 Kinderstück. The work is intended to introduce the 12-tone technique to young audiences in a lighthearted manner. Commissioned and recorded by pianist Janis Mercer.
- Can you count to twelve? Requires the player to figure out how to sound all 12 pitches simultaneously without using the damper pedal.
- Retro Rock presents the tone row in reverse order and in a retro-music style.
- How far can you reach? Explores dynamic contrast, tone color, and extreme registers with two statements of the row that start around the middle of the keyboard.
Recorded on Centaur CRC-3771, Anton Von Webern, Complete Piano Music and the works that inspired them Janis Mercer, Piano
SUREÑA - MEMORIAS AUSTRALES
Violin & Electronic Sounds
- The musical material and titles of the five movements evoke blurred images from Argentina. The electronic part is made entirely or prerecorded events played by the violinist and treated through various processors and synchronized with the score.
- Cadenza y danza in moto perpetuo introduces a fiery violin and electronic ostinati. These are built from samples of corresponding violin phrases and processed through granulation with four resonators tuned to pitch material in the score. Rhythm and tempi are determined exclusively by grain length and rate across the samples used at any given time. Syncopations result from the random scanning of samples’ peaks and valleys. Percussive events are pizzicatos and knocks on the violin transformed into gross exaggerations of such typical string techniqu
- El colibrí mágico (The Magic Hummingbird). Electronic pizzicatos and tremolos perform a fluttering responsorial display with the violin
- Campanario de San Miguel, interlude for plucked bells and gongs. Processed pizzicatos and bowed harmonics improvise their meditative vision of a fictional carillon.
- Nubes de Magallanes - nocturno patagónico. Named after the famous explorer who chronicled them in the early XVI century these galaxies are visible only from the Southern hemisphere. The lonely vastness of the cold desert of Patagonia sparkles under the nightly glitter of the ‘Clouds of Magellan’ transfixed here by the violin.
- La milonga rota (broken milonga). A reverie of dancers with their feet in the air attempting to perform the intricacies of a difficult and sensual dance. The music is not what they expect. The rhythm is deconstructed and repeatedly interrupted by live and processed violin bursts. Granulation and spectral filtering of the violin make up the electronic part.
CD Recording Ghost Strings, Patricia Strange Amazon.comAlso in iTunes and Spotify
Performance of SUREÑA by Alex Shiozaki, violin.
Music of the Americas: Momenta Festival I
Ghost Strings, Patricia Strange Amazon.com
ETUDE
Processed Soprano VoiceErie Mills, Soprano
- The work is inspired by traditional liturgical texts. It is a contemplative and introspective exploration of the impressions suggested by the vocal rendition. All source materials are derive from the recording of Furman’s melody used to set the Latin and sung, unaccompanied, by acclaimed soprano Erie Mills (Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Vienna Staatsoper, English National Opera, San Francisco Opera are among her many performance stages). The voice and pandiatonic melody are treated to various technical and musical processes in an attempt to affect the perception of dramatic content. The work follows a loosely programmatic scheme modeled after the texts:
- Prologue of the Sabres of War
- Reflections
- Tu pauperum refugium refuge of the poor
- …Languorum remedium alleviator of weakness
- …Spes exulum, fortitudo laborantium hope for the erring, strength of the weak
- …Veritas et vita truth, life
- Interlude
- Postlude - pax in terra
CD Recording EAM-2006, Music from SEAMUS. Vol. 1
MATICES COINCIDENTES
Quartet & Electronic Sounds
Matices Coincidentes (converging colors) is scored for flute, clarinet, ‘cello, piano and electronic sounds. The title is derived from the use of perspective in painting and architecture where lines converge to give the illusion of depth. The principal idea concerns the exploration of timbral change of the live instruments when their musical lines coincide and fuse with the electronic sounds. Electronic sounds are used to transform the sonic characteristics of the instruments and to alter the perception of timbral amalgamation. FM synthesis and samples of the instruments, processed and mixed, make up the electronic part.
CD Recording EAM-2000, Music from SEAMUS. Vol. 9
CONCERTO FOR CHAMBER ENSEMBLE AND ELECTRONIC SOUNDS
Commission award from the International Computer Music Association (ICMA)
Recorded at GRM, Radio France, Paris. Performed by Ensamble Fa, Daniel Kawka, Conductor.
SYNERGY
Flutes (One Player) & Electonic Sounds
