ORCHESTRAL WORKS
DURATION: 50 minutes
ae83—Cloud Ossuary (Symphony No. 4) (2019)
0, Eh, 0, 0; 0, 1, 0, 0; 2 Perc; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6), SOLO SOP
Cloud Ossuary began as a setting of my daughter's riveting and poignant poem Bones and All. When I first read this work, I was seized with an immediate desire to set it to music. So, almost as immediately I did indeed get to work on it. As work progressed, I became more and more pleased with the piece—until it was finished. Once completed I had some difficulty reconciling the feelings of satisfaction with the setting with my concomitant feelings that it yet was somehow incomplete.
After a good deal of reflection, I came to realize that Bones and All was actually the final movement of a larger work and so the two movements that precede it were created: Breathe Clouded and The Ossein Cage. Breathe Clouded is actually an inverted and compressed version of Bones and All and The Ossein Cage follows the same harmonic architecture as both of the outer movements. Thus, the whole of Cloud Ossuary sits as three different guises of the same harmonic material and structural approach, though with clear and dramatically different surfaces.
DURATION: 12 minutes
ae80—Glitch (2018)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Bscl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 3, 3, 1; Timp+3; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6)
Glitch was commissioned by music enthusiast Hymie Factor. Dr. Factor approached me about a new score that references the various interruptive sounds that routinely accompany a live acoustic music performance. He wanted to know if I could somehow reference the interruptions of cell phones ringing, hearing aids buzzing, candy wrappers being wrestled with, coughing, talking and the like that frequently interfere with a “pure” music experience such as one might enjoy with a recorded performance while wearing headphones.
Since I am not really a composer that usually writes for audience participation in my works, I decided to create an interruptive musical idea that would penetrate, fracture and ultimately take over the musical argument of a set of variations on an original theme.
Cast in nineteen sections, the interruptive material is heard in the opening two bars which act as a short introduction to the theme (section one) of the work. This material is the interjected throughout the work—interrupting the otherwise smooth flow and development of ideas. These interruptions happen four times throughout the work with the last interruption leading to a section that is entirely comprised of an elaboration of the interruptive material itself.
Apart from the interruptions I sought to create a work of real drama, expressiveness and power in celebration of a friendship that, although dormant for decades, was rekindled by the tremendous love and life force of the commissioner of this work and my friend, Hymie Factor, to whom the work is dedicated with fond affection.
DURATION: 32 minutes
Winner of Five International Recording Awards
Winner in the American Prize for Orchestral Music
ae73—Unfinished Earth (Symphony No. 3) (2015)
Unfinished Earth Homepage
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Bscl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 4, 3, 1; Timp+3; Hp; Prep. Pno., ST (14,12,10,8,6)
Unfinished Earth is a symphony in all but name. The three movements all refer to large geological motions of earth and sea, yet, like most of my recent work, also use such natural phenomena to analogously point to the the large internal landscapes of the human heart and experience.
The first movement, Tempering, refers to the formation of earth’s structure and surface but likewise is also about the structural interplay between individual and group. This plays out in a number of ways: the offstage trumpet solos throughout the movement act as a kind of call of the distant heart to which we all seek to listen and follow; the convention of pitched and even tonally centric music that collides and twists to microtonal music of expressive inflection; and finally the overall timbral expression of this music that is thick and powerful.
The second movement Eternal Ocean is referential to the many currents of human emotions as reflected, perhaps, in the many different speeds and tidal currents of colorful, tumultuous and vast, open ocean.
The final movement Tearing Drift refers externally to continental drift and how parts of continents shift or break off—this shifting and breaking off is a type of sectionalized structural approach I have adopted in this movement. But further, and again, this music is about the internal life of human experience and how life experience acts on us like a type of continental drift that repositions our attitudes over time and in relation to our life experience. This work was written for my son Joshua who is learning the French horn and the reason why this instrument features rather prominently throughout this work—I wanted to show him the power and beauty of this fantastic instrument within an orchestral context.
DURATION: 9 minutes
ae59—…cascade…echo… (2011)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Bscl.Ebcl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 3, 3, 1; Timp+3; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6)
…cascade…echo… was written in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The SSO has had such a profound impact upon Australian music and musical life that the title of the work reflects on this rippling effect a premier institution can have upon the cultural growth of a country. The image of the echoing arcs of the Sydney Opera House itself, where the SSO performs as well as the cascading sounds within the Opera House when the SSO performs was also an element in the conception of the work.
Finally, the shimmering effect of sun on the water of Sydney Harbour and the image of the waves of sound of the orchestra almost bringing this body of water to pulsing life was an image I could not let go of as I wrote this work.
The work is full of powerful chords, muscular dance rhythms and bright orchestration – a musical realization in sound of the qualities I think of when I think of the superb musicianship, upbeat outlook and brilliant color of sound of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Happy Birthday SSO!
Duration: 24 minutes
ae54—Cascade-Concerto for Orchestra (Symphony No. 2) (2010)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Bscl.Ebcl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 3, 3, 1; Timp+3; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6)
cascade was written in response to a request for a new work for two pianos from the extraordinary Pridonoff Duo.
As I began to think about the work the idea of piano resonance started to capture my imagination. I began to think about this awesome ‘glow’ of sound that occurs after the keys are struck and how these waves of sound – lustrous, velvety pools of resonance – hang in the air. I began to think of these sounds as clouds or water and the various forms these take in the natural world. This, in turn, led me to reflect on the endlessly varied forms of water or cloud that inspired the three movement titles: drift echo, waves and torrent.
Into this creative amalgam of ideas also was the type of work the Pridonoffs and I had discussed: a multi-movement work of around 20 minutes. I thought of this in a traditional fast–slow–fast arrangement of movements since I wanted to honor their amazing technical prowess in the outer movements and have these surround a central, expressive, somewhat darker middle movement.
As I began to think about and increasingly as I set to work on the piece, the idea took hold that perhaps this two piano piece – extravagant and bold, colorful and expressive, playful and lyrical in turns – would also orchestrate into a wonderful and dazzling vehicle for large orchestra. So, in the fall of 2010, just months after completing work on the two piano version I set about the task of orchestrating the work into its current guise as cascade – concerto for orchestra.
The title and order of the movements is unchanged from the original version and I hope captures the energy, expressive intimacy and muscular drama that the Pridonoff Duo so powerfully projected in the two piano version.
DURATION: 13 minutes
ae34—Ripple (Symphony No. 1) (2002)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.Bscl.Ebcl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 2, 3, 1; Timp+4; Pno; ST (14,12,10,8,6)
Ripple when referring to sound is defined as ‘to go on or proceed with an effect like that of water flowing in ripples.’
In this work I have interpreted this meaning very literally in that the opening grid of full orchestral stabs sets up a rhythmic framework from which a hocketed treatment arises of winds and strings supported by the brass and percussion. A secondary ripple is set in place with the more playful ideas in the woodwinds starting in bar 6 of the work. This material ‘ripples’ through the work in various guises: set contrapuntally in a very slow form in the middle section of the work as well as providing expressive focus when set for strings only about three quarters of the way through the piece. Of course, the fast sections are always punctuated by this material set in its original scherzando form and serving to contrast the bold muscularity of the full orchestral hits punctuating the piece.
In a formal sense the work is cast in a type of 5 part form with the original opening ‘A’ section appearing three times in varied form. The scherzando material forms the basis of the two contrasting ‘B’ sections: first, the slow expressive section where it is set in canon with itself and a second time for strings only where it is set in an intensified, more keenly expressive manner. Thus the work has a fairly traditional ABA’B’A” form with the materials all drawn from the opening ten or so measures.
The work was written at the Bundanon Artists Centre near the Shoalhaven river on the south coast of New South Wales in late 2002.
DURATION: 18 minutes
ae28—Time Processional (1994)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Cbn, Clar 1.2.3.Bscl; AltSx.TenSx.BarSax; 4, 5, 3, Euph.,1; Timp+3; Pno; StBs.
The form of time processional unfolds both sequentially, in time, and through a complementary projection of ideas into various interlocked strata of pitch and pulse. Such strata are generated using strict permutations of a central pulse, so that, in most sections of the work, two or more strata are being unfolded simultaneously. Each pulse stratum carries with it a centric pitch, which acts, like the pulse, as a center around which all musical unfoldings in each particular stratum occur. Using this compositional framework, or web of pulses linked to pitches, allows for a stratified and organized way to transform musical materials. Apart from this technical and formal aspect of the composition, such elaborate, stratified interlockings yield a temporal and expressive freedom that I find liberating and dramatic as well as powerfully expressive.
The title of the work refers to this process directly. Musical ideas are established and associated with one sense of time, or pulse, then shifted to another, resulting in a reorientation of the idea, much as occurs when one first perceives an event then goes on to re-live that event in memory: the event itself has not changed, yet time has recast the event in a new, yet deeply related way. It is the network of such transformations of events through time that is the compositional focus of the work.
time processional is the result of a summer research grant from the Research Grants Committee of the University of Alabama and is dedicated to Dr. Gerald Welker and the University of Alabama Wind Ensemble.
DURATION: 11 minutes
ae4—Winter Steps (1981)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.Bscl.Ebcl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 3, 3, 1; Timp+2; Pno/Cel; ST (14,12,10,8,6)
This is my first orchestral work. The piece is cast as a set of variations and was the work that, when given it’s Melbourne premier by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, impressed Hymie Factor, who, decades later commissioned my very recent work GLITCH, which, in honor of him, is also a set of variations.