Three Short Dreams, for piano

Poem No. 4, for voice, viola, and piano

There is a house with ten rooms. Each room has a different size and structure. And, each room is independent and has its own personality. However, it is not completely isolated because it is connected to a corridor. Like the corridors, the soprano penetrates all parts and gives unity.
     independent but not independent
     connected but not connected
     similar but different
     different but similar
     All musical events take place around the hallway.

Stress Fractures, for cello solo

Adrian Gomez, violoncello

     Stress Fractures explores five types of stress: compression, tension, torsion, bending, and shear, drawing inspiration from Newton’s concepts on loss of energy and conservation of momentum. Though scientific in its influences and construction, Stress Fractures should not be divorced from the psychological definition of stress.

A Pleasing Aroma, for fixed media

     A Pleasing Aroma is a musical work of fixed media which presents the listener with grainy collage composed of three aural images: a concert hall where a large audience offers applause in anticipation of a performance of piano music; a trio of monastic singers performing an Agnus Dei in their chapel, while bells sound overhead and a rainstorm offers additional counterpoint; and a rock concert— synthesizers, electric guitars, and intense, guttural vocals. These three images do not present themselves discreetly or in clear terms. Instead, their unique elements are warped and distorted as they are transformed at different rates from one into the other. The global effect is like that of a dream, in which separate images are smeared across each other until they are joined in a disorienting whole.
     These images may seem to have little to do with each other, but they are connected by a thread more social than musical: that being the phenomenon we call spectacle. The trio offers musical worship, a spectacle for the eyes of man and of God— given that the rains might fall and give life. The pianist offers musical performance, to summon the applause of an audience— a rain of their own. And the rock musicians offer their own spectacle. Each of these spectacles may serve something of a unique purpose, and each may have this or that more in common with one than the other; but they are also undeniably related by their connectedness with us— those who listen, those who watch.

study no. 1: every tree feels/falls the same, for oboe

Lexi Doremus, oboe

On compound tintinnabulation: primarily, three scholars address the possibility of considering M- and T-voices as participating within a single melodic line. Leopold Brauneiss observes the potential of the “interlocking of melodic notes and notes of the tintinnabuli triad,” seen most clearly in Variotionen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka (1977). Hermann Conen terms this phenomenon as a “hybrid” of the M- and T-voices. Anabel Maler, building from Conen’s work, solidifies such combinations as its own kind of surface manifestation, which she terms as “compound tintinnabulation.” Contrary to simple tintinnabulation, which provides a harmonic framework, compound tintinnabulation offers a new lens by which to view M- and T-voices unfolding over the linear landscape of a piece.

Burner (the dust we breathe in), for Electric Guitar and Tapes

M Denney + “others”

*Content warning - Transphobia, Violence*
This piece recounts an experience I had after coming out last year, how I’ve processed it, and the lingering feeling of alienation and “otherness” I've felt in the community, partially because of it.