I adapted this text from Sonya Huber’s poem “What Pain Wants”, which I found in her book Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Having lived with chronic pain myself since the age of eighteen, I related strongly to the idea of pain as a constant companion, a sort of being with a cryptic personality. Continue reading
Tag Archives: piano
Apart/ment
for four treble voices, alto flute, bass clarinet, cello, piano
About 60,000 people, including some 24,000 children, sleep in New York’s municipal homeless shelters each night, and thousands more sleep unsheltered on the streets. This diverse population includes people from nearly all walks of life, although the primary cause of homelessness for the majority is the severe shortage of affordable housing.
National Exploits in DC
July 3, 2014 – Kalorama Trio premiered National Exploits, a new work for clarinet, violin and piano, at The Lyceum in Alexandria, VA.
La traición de las imágenes
(The Treachery of Images)
for mezzo-soprano, flute, viola, contrabass and prepared piano
This song cycle is my response to eight surrealist works by René Magritte, whose famous The Treachery of Images highlights the impossibility of art to truly reflect reality. Magritte described his creations as “images which conceal nothing [and] evoke mystery… [they do] not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either; it is unknowable.” I have tried to capture the same spirit of mystery in both the words and the music.
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Выздоровление (Recovery)
for soprano or mezzo-soprano and piano
This piece is available in two transpositions for high (range C4–G#5) and low (B♭3–F#5) voices. They can be purchased as a set from Gumroad or Ko-fi (US Letter PDFs only). View a score sample of the low voice version.
Watch soprano Abigail Chapman and pianist Fang-Yi Chu performing the high voice version:
Text in Russian by K. N. Batyushkov Continue reading