Azaan (2007)
Azaan is the final movement of a 45-minute multimedia work called Awaken. The performance combines live instrumental and vocal music (performed by Susan Narucki, the Ciompi Quartet, and Zeitgeist), live electronic sound, and continuous video prepared by Anya Belkina. The individual movements are Prelude, Poetry Garden, Nasuh (see below), and Azaan. All four movements, with the possible exception of Prelude, can stand alone as concert pieces. When presented as a single multimedia work, musical transitions elide one movement with the next.
Azaan, which refers to the Islamic call to prayer, takes its inspiration from a riveting Qur'an recitation of Surah al-Balad by Raghib Mustafa Ghalwash. The intensity of his vocalism is matched by the extravagant reactions of the congregation. I painstakingly transcribed Ghalwash's performance, and this provides much of the melodic material played by the soprano saxophone. There was no way for me to recreate the social ritual of a Qur'an recitation in this concert piece, so the vocal melodies are subjected to prismatic variations over the course of the work.
Three audio excerpts from Azaan from the premiere:
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Photos of the premier performance, though these do not do justice to Belkina's ravishing visual setting:
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Nasuh (2003)
Scored for soprano and string quartet, Nasuh is a setting of a "teaching story" by the great Persian Sufi poet, Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks. Soprano Susan Narucki premiered the work with the Ciompi Quartet in February 2004, and subsequently recorded the work with in March 2005. This is a recording of that performance. Anya Belkina, the talented painter, animator, video-maker, graphic designer, and Duke colleague prepared a beautiful program booklet and has set the entire piece a magical combination of video, animation, and photographed paintings and drawings as part of an extended multimedia project.
Bell Plates (2002)
Bell Plates is scored for percussion solo and electronic sounds. The soloist plays brake drums, aluminum pipes, woodblocks, bongos, tom toms, and suspended cymbals. The electronic part consists of samples of various drums, cymbals, and gongs. These are heard at the beginning of the piece in their original form. Later, these instruments are processed in Csound to resemble a variety of gongs and bells. Adam Sliwinski is the remarkable soloist in this live performance. Here is a picture of his set up.
Small Change (1997)
Small Change for marimba duo is an older piece, but this nice performance was just released on a new CD by Nancy Zeltsman and Jack Van Geem. I remember composing this piece for a bit of relief while working on my first string quartet.
The Dolphins (1995)
I composed this song as a contribution to the AIDS Quilt Songbook. The poem, by Richard Harteis, speaks of the endangered dolphin ("Nothing avails their animal innocence. Extinction is the unnatural act.") and draws a parallel to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
This beautiful performance of The Dolphins is by soprano Susan Narucki and pianist J.J. Penna at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in 2005. You can hear birds singing outside the shed where the concert took place.
Quartet (1994)
Now for something really hard!
Quartet was composed for Zeitgeist as part of a consortium commission from Meet the Composer. It is a fantastically difficult piece, so much so, that the excellent musicians of Zeitgeist had to resort to a click track to get through the premiere. Ten years later, they decided to revive the piece and have produced this stunning performance (w.o. click). Quartet is one of my "brainiest" pieces, filled with rhythmic and textural experiments that I'd never attempted before or have repeated since. After a decade of thinking that the piece was impossibly difficult, I now have a performance that realizes my ideas with all the daring energy and meticulous care a composer could hope for.
Spin Cycle (2001)
Spin Cycle was commissioned by H. Robert Reynolds for the University of Michigan Wind Ensemble. This piece marks the beginning of a series of works which tend to have fast tempi, conspicuous virtuosity, and a generally lighter expressive character than some of my earlier work. My first musical ideas were the swirling and spinning melodic figures which are heard throughout the piece. As it happens, these gestures circulate in a fairly rigorous cyclical pattern, leading to the whimsical title. This terrific performance is by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band under the direction of Lt. Col. Michael Colburn.
Middle of the Road (2000)
In 2000, I collaborated with choreographer Clay Taliaferro on a work for five dancers and recorded sound called Middle of the Road. The soundtrack consists of recorded instruments, speaking voice, ambient sounds, and other soundfiles, occasionally processed with Csound, SoundHack, and other software tools.
Human Gestures
The selections below are from my CD Human Gestures, available on the the CRI label.
Click on the image to order.
Pedro and Olga Learn to Dance
A lovely recording of my marimba duo, Small Change, by Nancy Zeltsman and Jack Van Geem
Extraordinary Vistas
Susan Narucki and Alan Feinberg give a wonderful performance of
The Dolphins on this recording
Signs, Shapes, and Symbols
The premier recording of Spin Cycle by the University of Michigan Symphony Band
Hemispheres
Another recording
of Spin Cycle by the University of North Texas Wind Ensemble
Bang On A Can Vol. 1
Lindroth conducts this performance of his spiky piece for tape and live ensemble Relations to Rigor
