for Tammy Evans Yonce “All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Remembered line from a long- forgotten poem.” — Hunter S. Thompson Download the score: A Thing I Cannot Name
Tag: slow
Calling for euphonium and drone (2014)
Very often, it seems, my music takes on a life of its own. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I started this composition but it didn’t take long for the piece to decide what it wanted to be. The sources of the tape part are not important. The inspiration for the…
All My Thoughts are the Same for solo cello (2018)
All My Thoughts are the Same started as four miniatures for solo cello. As I worked on these miniatures, I started to notice certain similarities and connections between the material in each one. For fun, I started to weave back and forth through these short fragments and much to my surprise, it worked. And somehow…
Abstain Red Hells for soprano saxophone and fixed media
Abstain Red Hells takes its title from a movement of a forgotten piece of mine for flute and soprano saxophone. The basic idea of a stubborn ostinato and a tense-yet-lyrical melody was played out in the very small scale in this earlier piece and has since been liberated into a bigger and more open musical…
Two Slow Movements
Composed for the Central Michigan University New Music Ensemble, both movements are typical of my current compositional output. Harmonies are based on the repetition of a simple interval pattern and long lyrical melodies weave their way through these chaconnes. The rhythms and colors are rather plain, unadorned, and far from ornate. The directness and simplicity…
Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice for glissando flute and electronics (2013)
I have a file full of potential titles and one summer this file grew quite a bit as I re-read William Gibson’s classic Neuromancer. When Tammy Evans Yonce asked for a piece for glissando flute (flute with a glissando head joint) and electronics I proposed the title “Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice,” which I’m pretty…
as if to each other… for piano and fixed media (2011)
I composed this work in February 2011 as part of the RPM Challenge which requires musicians to compose and record either 10 tracks or 35 minutes of music during the shortest month of the year. My goal was to write a single 35 minute long composition for piano and electronics but something that would be…