Four World Premieres!
On June 3, the incredible percussionist Cameron Leach gave the world premiere of my new percussion chamber concerto entitled This Could Be Madness. The performance could not have gone better, thanks to Cameron’s incredible talents, the world-class abilities of the musicians in the accompanying chamber ensemble, and the unparalleled expertise of the ensemble’s conductor, Kevin Fitzgerald. You can watch the archived live stream of the world premiere presentation on YouTube or via the embedded link below (thanks to Adam Schumaker for making it look and sound wonderful!).
This Could Be Madness is, without a doubt, the most important piece I’ve composed, both for its representation of my artistic point of view and for its potential impact on my career. As I wrote in my last blog post, this piece reflects on the last two years of my life by exploring the theme of togetherness in a concerto. There is also a lot of heavy metal influence. It is an enormous musical statement — energetic, dense, expressive, the piece covers an incredible range of aesthetic territory, executes a sophisticated structure, and left the audience wanting more on June 3, even though it is more than 30 minutes long. I wrote almost all of the piece between September and December 2020, and returned to it last summer to re-work the beginning and finalize the percussion part. The world premiere performance was delayed several times, so I did not finish the instrumental parts until this winter.
Although this uncertainty is far from ideal, it was a luxury of sorts to have so much time to work on, set aside, and return to This Could Be Madness. The piece reflects my personal pandemic experience, especially the changes attendant to being a new parent, in many different ways, so it is only fitting that its arrival on the concert stage was also impacted by these challenges. During the rehearsals leading into June 3’s premiere, I also noticed some potential musical reflections of the pandemic that were not apparent to me as I composed the piece. Namely, there are multiple waves in the form of the piece’s energetic second half, which, to my ears, paralleled the iterative COVID surges that have shaped the last few years. Other aspects of the piece, such as the aleatoric opening and the accompanying rhythmic layers to Cameron’s lyrical vibraphone part about a third of the way into the piece, intentionally engage with themes of togetherness/isolation that are unique to the current moment. But, it is always interesting to hear meaning in your own music that you had not recognized before.
It is hard to express how excited I am to have such a significant, marquee piece to showcase my artistic skills and personal aesthetic interests. In addition to the fabulous video recording of the world premiere performance, This Could Be Madness was also captured in a pristine recording session on Sunday, June 5. That audio and video record of the work will be extremely valuable and serve me well in the coming months as I plan to renew my focus on my work as a composer. This Could Be Madness is the most ‘me’ piece I’ve written, and includes the time-tested influence of heavy metal music as well as new inspirations from my experience as a father. For example, the second half of the piece begins with a long marimba solo in 11/16 time. At this point, there is no recurring pattern, but every measure has three three-note groupings and one two-not grouping, which draws on rhythms I would improvise to liven up the act of burping our first child, Isaac.
During the rehearsal process, the pervasive heavy metal allusions in This Could Be Madness led to a couple surprising instances when I needed to perform cross-genre ‘translation’ to communicate concepts that are foreign to classical music. This was most notable in the first run through of a passage in the second half of the piece that involves fast rhythms but a much slower groove, or hypemetric pattern tethered to a framework of longer, unperformed durations. After the first rehearsal, I shared the Meshuggah song “Bleed” with Kevin and the ensemble to illustrate this section’s feel, which is not actually fast, despite the rhythmic values that are present. There are other parts of the piece that incorporate more specific aspects of certain metal bands’ performance practice, such as Meshuggah drummer Thomas Haake’s tendency to play the snare drum on every third beat of the background 4/4 meter, even though the leading riff’s rhythms are structured differently.
This summer, I plan to share additional detailed breakdowns of This Could Be Madness’s form and content, including even more information about the passages mentioned above. Look for those posts on this blog, as well as my Tik Tok, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, starting in July. Not only am I extremely proud of This Could Be Madness, it also holds countless interesting details and connections to my favorite music.
What makes the world premiere of This Could Be Madness even more exciting is that it was one of four works I debuted at the beginning of the month during ÆPEX Contemporary Performance’s inaugural festival one June 1-4. An unexpected partnership with the new, local public visual arts nonprofit Embracing Our Differences Southeast Michigan yielded the first in a new series I call Around Hear, through which I will produce audio pieces that combine spoken word recordings with newly-composed ambient electronic music. I don’t know if these works will always included people connected to Embracing Our Differences, but I hope to keep that part of the project locally centered. I also did not plan to make the video elements I produced for these pieces, but, ultimately, it seemed fitting and respectful to Embracing Our Differences’ incredible work in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor to present my soundscapes alongside video taken at my visits of their exhibits.
I aspire to write and produce more electronic music in the next chapter of my career as a composer. Although I’ve written electronic pieces before, such as 2014’s Mechanismus, my expression in this medium has a lot of room for growth and learning. As I wrote back in October, I acquired new hardware in 2021 that allows me to improvise electronically in new ways. I also really enjoy working with free software and playing around with its capabilities and limitations. I am very proud of these Around Hear pieces, especially because I am still learning so much about the tools and methods for producing the kind of electronic music I want to make. With this said, I am very excited to have a new creative outlet that encourages different processes and aesthetics than my music for instruments.
