Compositions

Syöjätär sometimes referred to as an "ogress", is a character in Finnish folklore.  I have first visited Musiikkitalo in 2021, when its main pipe organ was still in its planning phase. A year later, when I saw its rich specifications that included a quarter-tone division and a wind-regulating mechanism, I decided that I would write something for this instrument. A vague desire leaped into action only when I saw the first digital renderings of the  new organ on the International Kaija Saariaho Organ  Composition Competition’s website. I immediately started working out some ideas, deriving them directly from the organ’s evocative visual design and eclectic specification. The silvery wind ducts, like futuristic roots of a tree, creep up a black box reminded me of the Syöjätär, the character from Kalewala. The tangling pipes, the mystery of a black box filled with pipes, inspired me to compose a visceral, mystical, yet very energetic piece. The special effects, quarter-tone division, and the wind regulation on each division are all essential building blocks in my composition.  I am please that it has received the price of the Finnish Association of Composers as well as the top prize of the competition in the chamber orchestra and organ category. The premiere will take place at the Musiikkitalo in March 2024.

This work was is part of a series of compositions I wrote for period instruments, including my two cantatas "I am Content" and "O Come, O Come," my "Concerto after Vivaldi" and Harpsichord and Organ Concerto No. 3. This sonata is inspired by the Six Violin and Harpsichord Sonatas by Bach.

I. Overture

II. Allegro

III. Aria

IV. Allegro

I commissioned poet Kai-Hoffman Krull to compose a poem tackling various philosophical definitions of truths. The protagonist (T), is like an evangelist, tells three versions of the famous biblical scene when Jesus is interrogated by Pilate, and Pilate asks him: what is truth?
This fun, seven-minute cantata is set for a baroque ensemble; it is like a recitative with small ariosos with interludes quoting the string parts in Charles Ives' "Unanswered Question"

The question
-Kai Hoffman Krull (2017)

Pilate asked Jesus what is truth?

Jesus responded, Truth is yes
each word shaped by the other.
If you say I am Pilate and I say true
could I not say
yes? The mountains are sand
and the beach a mountain
Yes
true in my time, not yours.
In my time the mountains
were not yet formed.

When Pilate heard this
he went back outside and said
go and crucify him.

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

Jesus responded, Truth is coherence
truth is when belief builds like rain creating the sea.
Can you take a man at the end
of his years and tell him
what he lived was not true
no, we believe what our days
teach us. Truth is the water
everyone must cup in their own fingers.

When Pilate heard this
he went back outside and said
go and crucify him.

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

He responded, Truth is use.
If a person speaks the truth
a mind in the wind can come to the fire.
If a person speaks false their secret rusts
the nails of the home
and one day the wind
separates each board from the others. Tell me
Do not all tools need attention?

Tools must be used
for them to continue
to offer their use.

When Pilate heard this
he went back outside and said
go and crucify him.

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

Jesus responded, Nothing is true
but reality makes it so.
Truth depends on the discovery of the real,
correspondences outside of our beliefs.
While it is possible to believe
in something that is false
it is the belief we should always question.

When Pilate had heard this
he went back outside and said:
I find no guilt in this man.

A three-movement challenging sonata. I focused on idiomatic vocal lines in the first, special effects in the second and virtuosic elements in the last movements.

This piece was a study piece in Boulez'style, using the Sacher-chord in his Derive I and his gestural compositional style. The form consists of seven variations using a fixed order of the hexachord. The pivot pitch outlines a ciaccona bass line throughout all variations.

I commissioned poet Audrey Fernandez-Fraser to write a poem that reflects on the Funeral Cantata by Georg Melchior Hoffmann (formerly attributed to J. S. Bach as BWV 53). I expanded on the use of bells in my piece, making it integral to the expression of the text. The original piece was for a baroque trio (2vln, vcl., hrpsch.) but I added a baroque viola for a 2018 performance by Daniel Moody and members of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra at Stamford University.

In “The Final Wait,” I express the progression of feelings and afterlife imaginings that beset my heart and mind when I ponder the fateful bell-strikes that sound throughout the poignantly joyful alto aria, BWV 53.

When Balint asked me to base my poem on this aria, he suggested a ritornello form. This form lends itself naturally to the speaker’s vacillation between impressions of her present state – on a sickbed, perhaps – and visions of what death might bring. But the speaker does not stagnate in her ruminations. She journeys through territories of memory and imagination, beholding alternately fearsome and beautiful inventions of her mind, or perhaps premonitions of a life to come. Through the poem, she moves from anxious waiting, into a mysterious light, then back to her lonely, deadening surroundings. Then, more vividly, she sees angels, demons, friends, and heaven’s landscapes. By the end of the aria, she is “ready”. Perhaps her diverse musings have satisfied her curious mind, perhaps she is simply exhausted; or maybe she has glimpsed truth in places as yet uncharted by us, and there found comfort."

The Final Wait

Waiting, in my final hours, anxious and alone,
Clock ticking, unforgiving. What will come with the striking bell?
My heart-beats come faster, wishing time would come slower
Closer and closer I’m coming to the unknown hour

What is this illuminating light, in my ruminating mind—
Is it from the sun that warmed my childhood walks?
Is it of the Son, that humble holy one?
Sun or Son, Lux aeterna, will my shortening candle’s flame became you?

Angels, I can see you! Will you lift this heavy body?
Share your feathered wings with me,
Lift me flying to a perpetual place
Of growing life, where strong hearts beat

My heart-beats hasten. I fear.
Evil spirits! Dead spirits!
Wailing in my frightened ears, biting at my skin.
Night grows darker, my mind is dim.

Yet – I see a table, set with delights,
And people whose hearts have struggled and laughed with mine
My beloved ones gather to sing and feast, faces lit with life.
Is it Heaven I’m seeing, or only Earth?

Heaven! In heaven are there pastures? I see verdant pastures,
They are irrigated with waters from rivers of life, flowing from tears of love.
Lavender and jades, grains and bushes, forests!
And beyond them, flocks of creatures, strange and kind

I wait, I wait for my end to come, an answer to my questions:
I cannot resist the pulse of time, the final beat and bell
My heart hopes, heavy and hoping.
I’m ready for the rest

Three songs on poems by Jorge Luis Borges for mezzo soprano, piano and two percussionists. I was inspired by the colorful use of percussion instruments by George Crumb.

I. The South

To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars,
from the bench of shadow to have watched
those scattered lights
that my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations,
to have heard the note of water
in the cistern,
known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arch of the entrance, the damp
-- these things perhaps are the poem.

II. Nightmare

I’m dreaming of an ancient king. His crown
Is iron and his gaze is dead. There are
No faces like that now. And never far
His firm sword guards him, loyal like his hound.
I do not know if he is from Norway
Or Northumberland. But from the north, I know.
His tight red beard covers his chest. And no,
His blind gaze doesn’t hurl a gaze my way.
From what extinguished mirror, from what ship
On seas that were his gambling wilderness
Could this man, gray and grave, venture a trip
Forcing on me his past and bitterness?
I know he dreams and judges me, is drawn
Erect. Day breaks up night. He hasn’t gone.

III. Patio

With evening
the two or three colors of the patio grew weary.
Tonight, the moon’s bright circle
does not dominate outer space.
Patio, heaven’s watercourse.
The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house.
Serenely
eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.
It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness
of covered entrance way, arbor, and wellhead.

I wrote this piece in memory of my clarinet teacher, Thomas Friedli who died in a tragic mountaineering accident that year. In this recording, I play the clarinet part and Christa Rakich plays the Richards & Fowkes organ at First Lutheran in Boston.

I wrote this piece for solo clarinet to explore some of the extending techniques I learned through my clarinet studies of contemporary repertoire. I was influenced, in particular, by Domaines for solo clarinet by Pierre Boulez, a piece I often played as a clarinetist, including for my exam for the Prix de Virtuosité at the Conservatoire de Genève, as a student of Thomas Friedli. This is my last hand-written score.