The moto perpetuo is a piece in which there is a steady stream of moving notes without pause or interruption throughout. Typically a virtuosic piece used to showcase technical prowess and thrill the listener, it grew popular in early industrial Europe – a time when the machine began to permeate into artistic culture. Certain artists sought to emulate machinery in music with perpetual motion. One such musician from this period was Niccolo Paganini, a celebrity violinist and composer of this era. Legend has it that Paganini, a notoriously extravagant performer, sold his soul to the devil for his abilities on the violin. This work is inspired by the terrifying idea of his eternally damned soul returning to our world and animating a piece of heavy machinery, which we should certainly hope never happens. Moto Perpetuo was written for violinist Matt Albert and pianist Adam Marks.

Solo Cello/Solo Violin Composition (2006)

In the Mountains was premiered by cellist Beth Root Sandvoss outside – in the mountains at Goat Pond near Canmore, Alberta on August 22, 2006. This concert was sponsored by the Canadian Music Centre’s ‘New Music in New Places’ and produced by New Works Calgary and Open Streams. This piece was performed in the mountains at dusk – the musical material portrays a picture of the beautiful landscape and also the arrival of night.

This work was written as a gift to Paul Dornian to mark his retirement from the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) as their CEO. Paul was a tremendous supporter of contemporary music, especially those by Canadian composers, and mandated the need to commission and program as many living composers as possible. As CPO’s New Music Advisor, a role he created and I was appointed to in 2017, it was incredibly rewarding for me to collaborate with him and his team during those years. I have many fond memories of our creative discussions and the exciting projects we created together in an effort to introduce many of today’s exciting musical voices to our local audiences. Denouement represents the sentiments I felt as I reflected on our wonderful creative relationship.

The work was first presented by Slavko Popovic (Principal Clarinetist of the CPO) and Kathy Dornian (pianist).

This piece began as an exploration of the harmonies that exist within a single, strummed electric guitar string, and how the present overtones shift as the sound is run through different amplifiers with varying degrees of distortion. As it evolved, it transformed into the lifecycle of a simple heartbeat-like gesture that is slowly built-up and deconstructed alongside shifting timbres and colourful noise.

Laniakea is the name of our local super galactic cluster; the cluster of galaxies in which our own humble Milky Way Galaxy is a part of, and is a glorious Hawaiian word meaning Immeasurable Heaven. Immeasurable Heaven brings with it the daunting prospect of immensity, the infinite, the beautiful and the violent creation of all we are and know. I have always loved looking into the night sky and pondering that dark oblivion filled with the fading light of distant shining suns such an immense distance away. Star clusters, galaxies, super galactic clusters – bogle the mind with the size of our universe and our small place in it.

2014

violin, violoncello, piano, live electronics

pulling the light; escape velocity; redshifted; proper time; singularity

An “event horizon” is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer…a “point of no return”… the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible…a phenomenon usually associated with black holes. The concept of energy at the horizon or the edge of our immediate grasp of time has been a motivating interest in a number of my compositional projects in recent years. It continues to provide impetus to explore movement, speed, transformation and process in many aspects of my music. In Event Horizon, various components of the phenomenon provide conceptual points of departure for each of the sections of the piece. The audio signal processing of the violin, violoncello and piano extends the exploration of both sound and time to the spatial and spectral attributes of the listening experience.

Event Horizon was written for and premiered by the Land’s End Ensemble of Calgary.

Miniatures have always fascinated me. They bring us face to face with questions of meaning in a way that larger pieces often obscure. Small things that end before we’ve had time to justify their existence, what seems truer to life? A series of moments, some beautiful, some atrocious, some vexing- all begging for an explanation as to their meaning and arrangement thereof. The catch is, though, that whatever “meaning” we may uncover, wish for, or declare to be the case, will be but a superimposition of our own making. Our stories about ourselves and our lives, as compelling as they may be, sit atop a bedrock of meaninglessness, incoherence, and dissatisfaction. Alas, this is not an injunction for despondency, but insofar as music is concerned, it is an invitation for a different kind of listening. Against catastrophe, the small, the discreet, and the inexplicable become all that are possible. As I grow restless with the perceived value of all our stories, I find myself instead transfixed with small things that make me wonder, “I don’t know what that was, but it might be of interest”.

I explored two phenomena in this piece: sea sparkles and the two streams in the Bosphorus, one flowing north and one flowing south simultaneously. Istanbul and sea sparkles in the surrounding seas were the first inspiration for this piece. ‘Yakamoz’ means sea sparkle in Turkish. Yakamozs are phosphorus little creatures that you could see on the sea under moon light whenever something touches them, like fish or boats. They shimmer. Turkish fishermen use this sparkles to see where the big fish are. Yakamozs are very common in the Marmara Sea (at least they were when I was a child). The two main melodies one going up and one going down symbolises the two streams; one flowing from the Back Sea to south a cold water stream from the bottom of the Bosphorus, and the other flowing north from Marmara sea to the Black Sea the warm water stream on top. These streams cross each other and  reach a peak point in a brief balance before they resolve into motion again. In the piece, I put two different harmonic worlds together, one is the discovery of the nature of the sound itself reflected in shimmering parts of the yakamoz and the other is coming from Istanbul’s unique historical and cultural fusion reflected in the transitional melodies symbolizing not only the water streams but also the transmutational cultural texture of Istanbul. 

SONG

From An Owl Is An Only Bird of Poetry

Robert Duncan

What do you see, my little one?

I see an owl hung in a tree.

His blood flows from his side.

Earthly things may rest tonight, 

all heavenly fear hangs there.

I see a nest where owlets cry

and eat the cold night air.

What do you see, my little one?

I see an owl hung in a tree

like flesh hung on a bone.

The thorns of flesh run thru and thru.

Ring out the tones of life.

He builds the artifice of heart

and takes his word to wife.

What do you see, my little one?

I see an owl hung in a tree

among the letters whispering there

a tongue of speech that beats

the passages of mere air.

The ladders of tone pass into words,

the words pass into song,

The heavenly orders sing to me.

I see an owl hung in a tree.

Each of the three phases of water carves a mark upon the world: as atmospheric vapour, as flowing streams and rivers, and as glacial ice.  The contours, gestures, and rhythms of Markings are one composer’s response to the elemental music suggested by these phases. The overall structure of its movements – slow, moderate, fast – proceeds in the reverse order of the actual temporalities of the phases (cloud time, river time, glacier time).

The poet C.D. Wright wrote a series of essays all entitled “In a word, a world.” Through its exploration of the musical implications of a single harmonic sonority, Markings responds to her with its own proposition: in a chord, a world.