CONCERT MUSIC
Once I asked someone in an interview: "What makes you excited and happy to get up every morning? What gets you started?"
Her answer was brutally unphilosophical, humorous, and to the point: "Coffee."
But what was most interesting is the way she phrased her return question: "What's your coffee?"
What is my coffee? It could be any number of things from boba to my love of film scores to the act of blasting music at speaker-breaking levels in the car while on the highway. These things emanate specifically across the piece in the form of sparkly textures (think: bursting boba), long narrative lines, and syncopated bass rhythms inspired by the 808s in many hip-hop songs that have been on my radar lately.
But more generally, I hope this piece can help you ask yourself: "What's your coffee?"
In other words, I hope that this piece can remind you who or what is out there worth waking up every day for.
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what's your coffee was composed throughout the summer of 2022 and performed on 1 Nov. 2022 at Duncan Recital Hall, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University by Anika Veda (Flute), Evan Huang (Alto Saxophone), Xayvion Davidson (Bassoon), Samantha St. John (Double Bass), Christina Greenwood (Piano), with Daniel Cho conducting.
Schism encapsulates an idea of internal emotional conflict in a way that is persistent, conflict that does not emerge and then dissipate but instead holds constant, an unwavering block of obstinate irresolution. Suffused with ideas of emotional dissonance and indecisiveness, the piece creates this conflict by exploring a kind of frantic, psychological split between two alternating mental states.
It begins with a solitary, winding melody in the flute that is copied and expanded upon in the other instruments, representing an eerie initial state of mystery and searching. Even within this initial thematic presentation, this single melody itself is conflicted: it struggles to find a direction to forge forward in, and wavers in and out of existence.
This first theme subsequently moves through a surprisingly seamless transition into a contrasting, triplet-dominated motivic gesture. Although the new secondary theme does have a sense of direction through a more clearly defined pulse, it is full of metric irregularities, further expanding on the manifestation of conflict in this work.
These two motifs intertwine over the course of Schism, ultimately creating an end result that experiences areas of rising and falling tension that eventually ends on an extended violin solo full of fragments of both. Is this a resolution to the split? Or is it a reaffirmation of conflict, a continuation of the schism?
Schism was composed in 2021 for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano. It was premiered on 18 Nov. 2021 at the Wortham Theater in Houston by Hunter O'Brien (Flute), Tania Villasuso (Clarinet), Emily Richardson (Violin), Colin Hill (Cello), Aaron Smith (Percussion), Ting-Ting Yang (Piano), with Sam Wu conducting.
Headway is a piece about progress, about drive, and about direction. Rarely stopping its continuous push onwards into the unknown and unexplored, it finds itself punctuated by a multiplicity of sudden attacks, runs, and tension-release dichotomies. Throughout its fast-paced, energy-dominated texture, Headway never loses its power and vitality, running all the way up to an articulated, declamatory finish.
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Headway was commissioned and performed in 2021 by Drew Hosler.
Rebirth. Renewal. Rejuvenation. Reluminescence is a piece about the visceral feeling suggested by all three of these words, a compelling sensation of new beginnings and the coalescence of things that are at once old and new.
It employs an overall context that suggests light through a uniquely bright, radiant, and uplifting musical texture. And within this framework, Reluminescence draws its sense of trajectory and direct purpose from a counterintuitive use of continuous perpetuity and circular repetition, suggesting an absorbing synthesis of contrasting linear and cyclical elements into a singular thematic purpose of illuminating fresh directions along old pathways.
It dovetails strands of both linear and vertical material amongst various parts of the instrumental textures into components that repeat in both smaller eddies of moment-to-moment recapitulation, as well as broader narrative arcs of return and invigorating transformation. Throughout all of its structure, it never loses sight of an unending, luminescent core of motion and optimism, one that takes it all the way to a brilliant, enlightening end to the piece.
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Reluminescence was composed in 2021 for brass quintet.