Year: 2018

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Improvisation: Evening

What a semester! It literally has been three months since I have posted but I have an excellent excuse. I am nearly done with my doctorate but something came up in the process of completing it. My advisers discovered that I had not taken any courses in electronic music composition! Now, as much as I wanted to be done with course work, this is something I have not done (except once and rather amateurishly). It is something I really needed in my education. It added just a little more to do than I normally like. That made the past three months way too busy.

Holy cow though, I am loving learning new things. While this next video does not have any electronic composition elements, it does include something I have learned about: de-noising software. Most of my videos have not included that kind of software and boy some of it could use it. At some point, I will post the new piece that I am creating, which has been a unique experience as a composer. And it is thoroughly an organ composition realized electronically.

This improvisation comes from my time practicing at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Missoula, Montana where I played my Sonata No. 1. Dr. Nancy Cooper was my first organ teacher and since my family return there every summer, I have made it a habit of playing there yearly. Of course, with this wonderful Richard Bond neo-Baroque tracker rebuild, it was hard not to play around with it after practicing for a few hours. The key word there is tracker; much the previous post from the tracker at St. Paul Cathedral here in Pittsburgh, it is really fun to play with slowly lifting and depressing the action.

The 8′ Principle is such a lush stop on this instrument. It was hard to ignore!

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Composition: Organ

Wow. August was crazy. But that is for another time. As it has been a little while and with the ongoing problems with the organ at the Monastery, I decided to dig around in my recordings of pieces when I rediscovered this little gem. Back in the early fall of 2014, the wonderful composer and performer Carson Cooman reached out to me for a commission. I have linked to his Youtube channel before as he has recorded a number of my works from my collection, Organbook.

The commission he requested was a work that could be performed on a small one stop instrument with no pedals, not quite in equal temperament, all the way to a four manual, 400 rank organ. This presented an interesting challenge that I decided to tackle through a historical form: the free fantasy. I also chose a mode that would work in any temperament, the dorian mode, hence the title. Here is a little of what I wrote for the program notes that addresses some of the specifics of the themes:

“The first theme is a descending chromatic motive, commonly found in a number of early keyboard works. The second theme is an original theme, sol-do-te-la-sol, with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck in mind. Lastly, the work takes the form of an early rhetorical work with differing ideas contrasting each of the six sections of the work.”

Lastly, the recording was made on a really cool organ. Duquesne hosts the composer Paul Manz’ practice organ. Paul Manz was a well known composer of liturgical music and has a large number of liturgical works. I am not exactly sure how Duquesne ended up with it, but since it is a tracker with a limited stop list, I felt it could represent the Fantasia well. It is not a perfect recording (you can hear me pulling stops very well), but it shows how the piece can work on a small instrument. Perhaps I will record this on a larger instrument some day… Enjoy the piece!

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Composition: Organ

I found another video with no blog post! In fact, this video has an early piece that I am really proud of. A quick story: I was nearing the end my (first) master’s degree at Duquesne and I had been working on the biggest piece I had ever composed at the time: the Seven Last Words (part 1, part 2). About two weeks before my recital, the organist I had originally asked dropped out. A friend of mine, Jaehee Kim stepped in and learned the organ part quickly and I believe the recital went very well.

In thanks to her, I wrote a piece for her with her name in it. The Seven Last Words is a very ponderous piece fitting Lent, Palm Sunday, and Good Friday very well. I wanted to write something in contrast, something as an expression of pure joy. This piece is that work and I love it. The two pieces together represent a high point of my early life as a composer. When I get around to revising the Seven Last Words (soon!), I’ll write more about my hindsight on these pieces.

The performance you hear in the recording is Jaehee’s Master’s recital premier at St. Paul Cathedral on the fabulous Beckerath organ there. Due to it’s German neo-Baroque design, I wrote a Prelude in the stylus fantasticus and a Fugue after J.S. Bach. The fugue contains Jaehee Kim’s name as the opening of the subject and ends with a quote similar to BWV 543. I  am so happy to have Jaehee as a friend and am proud of this premier.

PS: The photo in the video is of the Monastery I work at, not St. Paul Cathedral.

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Improvisation: Concert

As I slowly rebuild the website, I have been slowly revisiting my blog posts and Youtube videos. And I discovered a video that has no blog post! In 2011, I was a semi-finalist at the André Marchal Improvisation Competition held in Biarritz, France. According to Youtube, it is the first video I posted and it is really fun listening to it after almost seven years. It is fascinating to see how much the focus of my career has changed (and in many ways how it hasn’t).

I had just begun my academic teaching life at CCAC (Community College of Allegheny County). I was teaching three sections of class piano and I had to miss a week of teaching to attend the competition. I played this video for one of the classes after I returned and they all looked at me like I was on another planet. In hindsight, it is clear to me now that most people’s experience with music is not what this improvisation contains.

I remember using this improvisation as an exploration of the instrument. There are things I would not do now and that includes setting up the camera (and mic consequently) in the loft with the organ. Not until the end do you get a sense of the acoustic which of course makes the instrument sound much better than the recording itself.

BUT, I love looking back at something like this. Twenty years ago, I tried to imagine what my musical life would be like and it never looks like what I expect. Now, twenty years on in my professional career, composing, improvising, and performing, this is a beautiful time capsule. That said, I don’t think the improv is formally concise, just trying out the different stop combinations in a very broad arch form. I’m not entirely sold on this improvisation but I have eyes and ears that hear it differently. Enjoy this retro post!

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Composition: Sonata No. 1 and the AGO National Convention

Greetings post-Kansas City AGO National Convention!  It’s Sunday and I am both rejuvenated and quite tired. There was so much: great music, workshops, and some very powerful worship ceremonies. I was particularly fond of the dance pieces I saw as they were very moving (pun intended – but seriously, I had to hold back tears). It was so nice to see old friends, make new ones, and there is never enough time to really take it all in. But of course, for me, the premier of the Sonata No. 1, was a high point.

I was commissioned by the National Convention to write a work that the average organist can play and that would be useful for both church services and concerts. In my mind, a sonata seems the perfect form for that expectation. Sonatas are fluid things: the individual movements can work independently while becoming a larger, cohesive whole when done together. Jennifer Pascual played the premier excellently. The Sonata No. 1 is available through Selah publishing. I am so proud and humbled to be presenting this to you all!

And now some shameless self-promotion. I have created a $5 coupon good for anything in the store. Just use “agokc2018” during checkout to receive the discount and enjoy the music you purchase. The coupon is good until the end of August and thank you for supporting my compositions. Happy playing out there! (PS: To be clear, the coupon works on my site, not Selah’s.)

 

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Composition: Chamber

Greetings to the new website! The biggest reason I haven’t posted in two months is because of preparing this new site. And here it is! Besides having the shop for my music and revising a number of works (and I am still revising), it is a pleasure to have something that closer resembles my vision than what the previous site had.

To that point, I present a new work, something I wrote as a complimentary work to a piece I  arranged: Carlotta Ferrari’s Toccata sopra Crux Fidelis. Where the Toccata began the Good Friday service, Scrutari ended it (please note that the video for the Toccata says Palm Sunday, that is incorrect). In between there were many passion themed hymns. Behind the scenes though, we recorded this on Saturday before the Easter Vigil to get something better. We had just enough time to get one solid performance.

And while the recording is not perfect, it captures the aesthetic I was trying to achieve for a Good Friday meditation service. I hope that one day, I will be able to record it again in less time crunched circumstances. That and perhaps write more music for this instrumentation.

 

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Composition: Chamber

Happy Easter and greetings from the other side of Holy Week!  It has been quite a month and a half since I last posted.  My work at the Monastery had me quite busy, though not un-enjoyably so.  Along with the usual amounts of work that Lent and Holy Week require, I was asked by my rector to put a program together for Good Friday.  More specifically, he asked that I put together an ensemble (voice, violin, flute, and organ) and perform music under the vague title “Music of the Passion.”  Honestly, it wasn’t too hard to find hymns for that setting, but finding instrumental music was definitely more challenging.

After spending too much time on IMSLP, I discovered a work for organ by the composer Carlotta Ferrari.  I became familiar to her works because of Carson Cooman’s numerous Youtube recordings of her works.  The piece titled, Toccata sopra Crux Fidelis, seemed perfect for the Good Friday program as the opening.  I reached out to her and she loved the idea of the arrangement and I am so happy I did it.  The score is available on the same IMSLP page as the organ version.

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Composition: Organ

It has taken some time, but I finally finished recording and editing a video for the last movement of The Divine Office.  I remember when writing this work facing a difficult decision: should I keep the contemplative nature of the offices, as one might actually experience or do I follow the logical conclusion of a multi-movement musical work?  Well, the answer is the latter.  Gotta end big.

With so many quiet movements, the work really needs something sparkling at the end.  I mean that somewhat literally: I had the vastness of space and stars in mind.  Compline happens in the middle of the night and in those ancient days, the stars are very visible.  It is not programmatic, but growing up in Alaska and seeing the aurora borealis regularly, definitely sticks in one’s imagination.

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Composition: Organ

Apparently, I have been sitting on this recording for a whole year!  A few evenings ago, I spent some time finishing up my recordings of the Divine Office and I did not even realize that I had not posted the seventh movement, Vespers.  And here it is!

In retrospect, I am happy that I get to post these last two movements together .  They are somewhat of an impression of my late nights at the Monastery, particularly Saturday evenings.  It is a very quiet place in the evenings, a place for contemplation and prayer.  I tried to evoke the feeling I get when I am working in that quiet.

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Improvisation: Evening

Happy New Year!  It has been an exciting time as things are gearing up for an exciting summer.  The Kansas City AGO 2018 Convention sent out a very kind promotion to a piece of mine that will be premiered, Sonata No. 1.  It has been a long time coming and it is very, very exciting.

On a note about the blog, I have wanted to post something for some time but due to a mix of Christmas, family, and some issues with the organ, I have not been unhappy with the handful of recordings I have made.  Well, after the KC Newsletter, I wanted to post something and I took a look at the recordings I had and I found this gem.

Back in November, I went to St. Paul Cathedral to make a recording of more experimental improvisations, but it was not a very satisfying session.  Or at least that is what I thought at the time.  While reviewing the recording I came upon this terrifying improv.  St. Paul Cathedral has a magnificent von Beckerath organ, one that reminds me of the organ I played my undergrad days.  Really, both are German neo-Baroque trackers which allow for certain kinds of exploitation.  When I re-listened to the improv, I recalled the difficulty in moving my fingers slowly off the keys to create the desired effect.  The cromorne had particularly interesting sonorities when using this technique was applied.

As with any avant-garde composition or improvisation, I tried to ground it with some simple elements.  It is essentially a binary form, with a heavy emphasis on the lowest C pitch.  It is a balance; when there are highly strange elements present, simplicity is certainly needed.  And lastly, that middle section makes me think of this sound, whether or not it was intentional at the time.