Chamber Music

Re-emerge

Composed Aug-Sept 2024

11min

for string quartet & double bass

Program Notes:

Re-emerge examines ideas of beauty and disaster and asks what it looks like to re-emerge after destruction. Based on lived experiences of climate disaster in New England and imaged conversations between trees along the fungal networks that connect them, this piece is an engaging emotional journey that draws on the full range of colors available from the strings.

Let It Sound

Composed Jun-July 2024

6min

for flute, violin, & bassoon

Premiered: August 9, 2024 at the Night Market in Peterborough, NH

Program Notes:

Let It Sound was a commission for the Night Market in Peterborough, NH on the theme of the 90s mixtape. I have fond memories of making and receiving mixtapes in the 90s, and still have some buried away in boxes in our barn. This trio captures the spirit of excitement, adventure, and connection that was at the heart of my mixtape experiences.

Program Notes:

Before the Hapless Stars is based on the poems of Wildfred Owen, a British officer in WWI. Owen sought to document the horrors of the war in his poetry as a deterrent to future armed conflicts, and this piece seeks to do the same. We start by joining Owen in the trenches where he’s scribbling poetry whilst bombs drop. Then we delve into his mind as he is haunted by a scene he witnessed on the battlefield — a man seeming to drown in air because he couldn’t get his gas mask on in time. Owen and the other soldiers press on, but they cannot shake the ghost of this scene. And although the inexorable march of war cannot be stopped, it is the sound of the poet’s witnessing that rings in our ears in the end.

Before the Hapless Stars

Composed Feb-Jun 2024

6 min

for clarinet, violin, cello, & piano