Sacrament uses repetition and variation to explore connections between speed and resonance, spaciousness and overload, growth and decay. In the opening section, arpeggiating woodwinds summon a distorted synth line, leading to a series of riff-oriented sections that cycle back to a varied beginning, nine minutes later. As in many of my works, the performers in Sacrament are invited to strike a balance between fierce precision and transformational nuance. The flute creates virtuosic contrasts between rapid fire arpeggios and “distorted” breath tones, the clarinet evokes fluidity and color, while the marimba alternates between hypnotic riffs, stentorian pulses, and ecstatic gestures that dance on the threshold of syncopation and pointillism.
Score available at Project Schott New York
third movement
The three movements of “Lightmass” evoke living architectures and urban spaces – outward manifestations of inner experience, a living building as a divine body. The first movement can be equated with a gothic cathedral (St. John the Divine, NYC), with music evoking an organ, ecstatic plainchant, stained glass windows, and many different kinds of shimmering light. The contrasting second movement evokes imposing modern and art deco architecture, ancient pyramids, aerodynamic curves, the metallic steel of skyscrapers, and the contemplative awe of expansive urban landscapes. The third movement is transformational, and begins with chant-like sounds evoking playful dancing light, and the heaviness of stone. Following this introduction, a repetitive and ritualistic chant-like passage is gradually transformed into a much more fluid sense of time, where different types of musical material co-exist with one another. A confluence of green spaces, deep breathing, the inner radiance of hard matter, shimmering light, and subterranean depths. At the premiere, the composer John Adams praised the work’s “stentorian gestures”.
Mysterium was written for Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin, and Rebekah Heller, in celebration of a collaborative history dating back to 2006. As such, it is a synthesis of several styles I’ve explored since we began working together, thematically inspired by the evocation of supernatural phenomena and religious ritual (mysteries). These include archaic modal melody with florid ornamentation, the blending of analog synthesizers and acoustic instruments through overlapping fluctuations of pitch and noise, spectral transformations, and echoes of religious-themed modernism in the tradition of Klang-era Stockhausen. I chose the title in tribute to its myriad historical associations, which include the Eleusinian Mysteries, the liturgical chant O Magnum Mysterium, and C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, a treatise on his extensive study of alchemy.
The rhythmic figure heard in the opening melody is derived from the “sat-nam” chant of kundalini yoga, which roughly translates to “truth is my name.” The long sustained tones on “nam” are ornamented with melodic flourishes inspired by Algerian gasba flute music, alongside the colorful noise of Ciat-Lonbarde and Moog synthesizers. Following this introduction, an incantatory bassoon solo emerges, summoning a primal feeling of longing. The full dynamism of the trio unfolds in response, balancing ethereal passages with tight unison gestures. The remainder of the piece carves pathways through a series of ritualistic vision states, and concludes with a transformation of the C spectrum, using graphic notation to guide performers in “sounding the beyond”.
Score available at Project Schott New York
Sanctuary marked a new direction in my work, in that it more fully embraces the riff-oriented repetition present in my solo electronic and metal music, combined with my roots in modernist, spectralist, and minimalist approaches to modern classical composition. Sanctuary is a word derived from the latin Sanctuarium, literally meaning a “container” for holy things (sancta or sancti). Over time the meaning was extended to include places of safety, where one was safe from arrest due to the laws of the church. Architecturally, it can refer to a specific place around an altar in a Christian church, an intermediary or threshold space inhabited by divine presence, namely where the eucharist or divine body is received. Anthropologist Marcio Goldman, in his writing on the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomble, distinguishes between cosmological systems (i.e. mappings of divine and human worlds, virtual and real worlds) and the actions the cosmology allows practitioners to produce. That learning a religion like Candomble, “cannot mean passive apprehension but rather an experience that modifies all of the elements involved in that process – the matter being ‘transmitted’ and ‘assimilated’, but also the agents or subjects who…are engaged in an ongoing transformational process.” In this work, I seek to explore the idea of a sanctuary as a space to enable action, and spiritual practice as a technology for transforming the self and the senses. The musicians of TAK engage in sonic actions, transformational processes, and negotiations with virtuality. The sensory elements present in this work; sound and light relationships, acoustic and electronic sound, stark rhythms and ecstatic gestures, may suggest ways of navigating threshold spaces, cultivating sanctuaries of interdependency, connectedness, and power.
“Anima” for three cellos, was written as a response to “Sumna” a work of mine for solo viola da gamba. These form part of a group of works inspired by ancient vocal traditions of the east and west, in particular the vocal styles of Hildegard von Bingen, Sephardic music of Medieval Spain, and Tibetan Buddhist chant. The trio uses a melodic fragment from Sumna as its basis, a kind of “lamento motif”of a descending melodic figure, expressing sadness or grief. The “lamento motif” has a long history in Western music, dating back to the “Lamento di Tristano” of the 13th century, all the way through works by Purcell, Monteverdi, and Bach. Envisioning the trio as a kind of ecstatic consort music, I arranged the lamento motif using a heterophonic texture, where each instrument plays simultaneous variations on the same melody. This is contrasted by more the more primal sound of the introduction, a kind of chanting pattern that evokes both meditative breathing and the low bass voices of Tibetan Buddhist ritual. The title is a latin word which has various meanings, including a current of air, wind, air, breath, the vital principle, life, and soul.
third movement
Score available at Project Schott New York
Trembling Time II was written for members of Talea Ensemble in September of 2009, the occasion being a European concert tour in which we collaborated and shared billing with Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble. The title itself comes from a quote by Horatiu Radulescu in which he describes a feeling experienced when observing the slow movement of clouds. Although this image may suggest a work of gradually changing drone music, the music itself is brimming with mercurial energy. Along with my two string quartets written in 2004-06, it is highly representative of my writing for strings, and explores approaches innovated by Scelsi, Dumitrescu, Avram, and Radulescu through my own particular sensibility, combining my roots in metal and noise with the mystical and perceptual poetics of Romanian spectral music.