Solos/Duos/Trios

Year: 2023
Duration: 10 minutes
Instrumentation: high voice, low voice, piano

Mina Brooks-Schmidt, soprano
Benhur Mosazghi, bass-baritone
Jake Berran, piano

Texts by Emily Dickinson, Millie Rocco, and Sara Teasdale.

Performed on July 22, 2023 at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sitka, AK.
Video courtesy of Sitka Community TV.

Year: 2022
Duration: 13 (2 + 6 + 5) minutes
Instrumentation: viola, piano

Performers:
Jóia Findeis, viola
Jake Berran, piano

The second movement was written in 2022, and in it I sought to step away from my then-typical strategy of scaffolding my music with webs of musical and extramusical concepts. Rather, I wanted to focus on the sound, narrative, and lyricism in a more abstract manner. I also used quarter-tone harmonic ideas proposed by my teacher Jesse Jones in his doctoral thesis, Microtonalis: A Systematic Approach to Microtonal Composition. In particular, minor thirds and perfect fourths, which contain odd numbers of semitones, are "cut" exactly in half, often producing a pitch in the harmonic series of the root note.

A year later, the first and third movements were born out of my desire to better establish the quarter tones beforehand and take a more dramatic turn afterward. In the first movement, three versions of B-flat are constantly reiterated: the equal-tempered one, the slightly flatter one from the C harmonic series, and the even lower B-three-quarters-flat. In the third movement, previous material is spun into a struggle between two alternating themes, one of which sucks the energy out of the other.

Viola Sonata was written for Jóia Findeis, a friend and violist at the Oberlin Conservatory. I want to thank them for their input throughout and for collaborating in the brainstorming stage. (Fun fact: Jóia has synesthesia, and C minor is a "murky violet" to them. So we started with that!)

Year: 2023
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: marimba

Year: 2023
Duration: 11 minutes
Instrumentation: bass clarinet, live electronics

Ian McEdwards, bass clarinet

Uses my Memory MIDI patch for Max for Live!

Program Note:
Six Etudes for Bass Clarinet and Electronics is my first foray into live electronics and an important step in my quest to merge my passion for music and my coding skills in meaningful ways. It uses an original Max for Live device I call "Memory MIDI," which allows one to record any segments of the piece and play or loop them back later with pitch, speed, and amplitude transformations, or trigger a MIDI file using the recorded segments (with the same possible transformations) as the base sample. Thus, anything the soloist plays has the potential to be both musical material and raw audio material.

The "Prelude" is a clarinet solo which is recorded in its entirety. "Frenzy" utilizes a captured multiphonic as a fast, staccato MIDI sample to produce a sound which is impossible on the bass clarinet. Next, "Bubbly" uses recorded rapid arpeggios to craft a harmonic accompaniment, and "Spacious" slows sounds down to an extreme level and plays with the resulting textures. "Snappy" stacks and staggers three short motives into fun chords and rhythms. Finally, "Impromptu over edulerP" is a dialogue with the reversed "Prelude" audio with some wacky interjections. Some of the original musical material was developed with the help of Angelo Ciriello, a clarinetist and friend at Oberlin Conservatory.

Year: 2022
Duration: 8 minutes
Instrumentation: clarinet, cello, piano

This piece was written for the Unheard-of//Ensemble; performed by Ford Fourqurean (clarinet), Iva Casian Lakoš (cello), and Daniel Anastasio (piano).

Year: 2021
Duration: 2 minutes
Instrumentation: drum set

Year: 2021
Duration: 2 minutes
Instrumentation: baritone voice, cello, piano

Text:
A brick in my cell just grew a mouth
You wouldn't believe what tumbled out
Stories of this wretched cell,
How warriors barely made it out
Now I am locked in a box
Trying with everything I have to box with a lock
As I struggle with my homework
I kick myself in the ass "you should be at home jerk"
Now I walk the prison halls with two masks
One to hide my emotions, the other to save my ass

About the writer:
Shareaf R. Fleming is a father of three boys who he tries to impress with his perseverance even while incarcerated. He writes poems, songs, plays, and a lot of essays and he is a part of the Northwestern Prison Education Program. He is scheduled to graduate with his Associates Degree in February 2022. He loves to create through words and believes if you say something someone else wants to repeat then you have said something worth saying.

Year: 2021
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: piano

Year: 2021
Duration: 20 minutes
Instrumentation: upright piano (my upright piano)

Year: 2020
Duration: 3 minutes
Instrumentation: soprano, oboe

Year: 2020
Duration: 2 minutes
Instrumentation: bass or baritone, piano

Performed by Benhur Mosazghi (voice) and Jake Berran (piano)

Year: 2020
Duration: 9 minutes
Instrumentation: piano

Year: 2019
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: piano

Year: 2019
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: piano

Year: 2019
Duration: 4 minutes
Instrumentation: piano

Year: 2019
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: cello, piano

Year: 2020
Duration: 2 minutes
Instrumentation: cello