If the audio players don't work for you, make sure that you have the ability to play Adobe Flash files. I can say right now that there will never be audio files for certain pieces listed below. Really, it's better for both of us.
The notes (click to expand) are a more informal version of the kind of details I might put on a program note, along with explanations of techniques used to produce the piece's sounds (not the most important thing, but a popular question).
The Garden of Forking Paths (2008) for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, piano, soprano, violin, and cello (Audio & Notes...)
My program note for The Garden of Forking Paths:
The Garden of Forking Paths is inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name. Central to the story is a legend involving a learned man who retired near the end of his life, announcing that he had two goals: to create a labyrinth so intricate and vast that all people would lose their way within it; and to write a novel. Only the novel was found: a series of contradictory events and unresolved tangents, of outcomes disconnected from causes, baffling and seemingly incoherent. As the story progresses, however, it is revealed that the novel is the labyrinth, a fractured work that simultaneously depict all possible outcomes of every moment. The text of the work is the note left behind by the labyrinth's architect and author: "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths."
I became fascinated by the image of the novel: of a work that seemed on its surface to be fractured and irresolute, but in fact was organically and intricately derived from a now-subterranean structure. Throughout the work, materials splinter and divide into component elements that each become unique ideas in their own right, but that narrative is rearranged into a disrupted, fragmentary form that confuses cause with outcome, derivation with source.
Recording: Lucy Shelton with the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players - April 14, 2008 - Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley - Berkeley, CA
The Calling Under The Breath (2007) for SATB (w/divisi) choir
Divergences was written for a concert of string quartet premieres given by the Del Sol String Quartet at UC Berkeley. The form of the piece is essentially a set of diverging paths, beginning from an initial "scratch" gesture.
Geek Notes: The piece makes use of a number of extended techniques for violin (harmonics, scratching, bowing at the bridge/fingerboard, practice mutes), but my favorite effect (and probably the most original one) is asking the players to whistle. The whistle is described as "very breathy, any mid-high pitch", and players are encouraged not to stick to the twelve-tone Western scale. The effect is meant to create an acoustic sound analogous to an electronic technique I use a lot: filtering pitch out of noisy sounds (via comb filters, IIR, etc.).
Angeles (2007-in progress) For bass clarinet and tape
Paris la nuit (2006) For button accordion and voice
This Empty and Luminous Room (2006) For flute, clarinet, violin, and violoncello (Audio & Notes...)
I wrote this piece for the California EAR Unit Composer Seminar, held in August each year at Arcosanti. I began work earlier in the summer, while at the Bang On A Can Summer Institute. During that program, all the composition fellows got to work the founders of BOAC, and something David Lang said got me started on this piece. We were talking about composition lessons. "Here's a thing that might be interesting to try, just as an experiment," he said. "Every time you try something with your music because of someone else's suggestion, try the complete opposite too, and see if you like it better." This piece began as my first experiment along that vein, taking ideas I'd been having about simplicity, quiet, and space to a comparative extreme. It employs an (even more) tonal language than my norm, along with a deliberately simple (almost crude) form with no transitions. I was happy with how it turned out.
The idea with the "empty and luminous room" is that it's a deliberate oxymoron: the supposedly empty room is full of light, and resonances both of the past and of the person viewing it.
Recording: The California EAR Unit - August 9, 2006 - Arcosanti - Meyer, AZ
The Memory Gardens (2006) For flute, clarinet, vibraphone, marimba, piano, soprano, violin, and violoncello
Spaces Between (2005) For flute, violin, piano, and tape (Audio...)
