Additional Examples

cry i - 2022 - solo baritone saxophone

This is the first piece and first track from an upcoming album of 11 improvised pieces for/on solo baritone saxophone (performed by me at 2220 Arts and Archives in Los Angeles, 2022). Through these pieces, I develop 12 explorations within the themes of stress, plate tectonics, and queerness.

I include this piece because it represents my practice as a solo improvising saxophonist. My work as an improvisor is extremely important to my practice as a composer, and I do not see them as two discrete practices. In my process, I seek to find relationships between musical syntaxes and linguistic ones and see where those relationships might lead. I like to weave contradictory approaches into a maximal, textured expression of all of their implications.

ophiuchus - 2019 - for large ensemble, performers

This piece was written for a one-time only performance by Dog Star Orchestra. All pitches and structural timings are dictated by the placements of various celestial bodies at a specific place at a specific time, and each of the three groups of performers are interpreting transliterations of these placements to the limit of each group’s technical capacity. Sadly, because of a technical issue no documentation for the performance exists.

This piece is an audiation of the spectrum of ignorance within astrology to cosmology in esoteric hermetic tradition. Part of the mega specificity/fun of this piece is the dogma of it all. In this piece, precision is not meant to really be attainable and actually tiered "failure" is built into the structure of it (the hummers will probably not even be close to C -30 cents, instrumentalists may likely fail to reach specific cent designations). So while a degree of failure is predicted , nevertheless performers should strive for precision.

This piece is about 20 minutes long, and involves slow transitions (or any transition solution that may be preferred) between clusters of specific frequencies within groups of time.

Performers are divided into three groups: Bells, Instrumentalists, and Scientists. The part of the Bells is meant to inspire a gestural interpretation of graphical and verbal direction. The part of the “Instrumentalists” is to be interpreted by performers playing traditional Western orchestral instruments. Finally, the part of the Scientists is most precisely interpreting the given frequencies using MAX/MSP controls or other live electronic solutions.

Selected pages from the score:

Graphic Scores (Assorted Excerpts)