By the Cauldron [in your hips]

for soprano, clarinet, and Marimba

2022

Commissioned by the composer collective Kinds of Kings for their 2022 Bouman Fellowship and premiered by Sputter Box.

“by the cauldron [in your hips]” reaches for healing through time. 

It is a rushing forward, a pulling back, a leaping, a trusting, a falling through and drifting in timelessness, where somewhere, all I thought was irreparable can shift, can churn, can be restored. In many ways, “by the cauldron” is inspired by something a spiritual mentor told me many years ago — "It's the gentle lapping of the waves that turns the stone into sand."

Text:

Falling through this animate body
Washed ashore of marrow memory.
Graciousness is never so finite,
breathe with me and circle your time.

Burst knuckles on the edge of bone
Blossom iron and craggy stone,
Belly lapping unto your spine
Memory unbinding with each cry,
Your feet remember long before
Spirals within the circle's core.

Somewhere
in this becoming
You will remember, create —
Tremble on the ocean walls 
of rib cage

Falling into —
For now,
lose time
wordlessness

For now,
home.

What I’m trying to tell you

remote Performance for voice, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello

2021

What are you afraid to say out loud? What words get stuck behind your teeth or in a lump in your throat? When do you notice yourself withdraw? When are you not being vulnerable, or when do you feel like you can’t be vulnerable? How are you, really?

 “What I’m trying to tell you” explores the difficulty of emotional vulnerability in online spaces. Throughout the piece, performers play with inner & outer expressions, overlapping and interrupting each other. Gradually, the performers begin to speak, giving voice to what we are afraid to say out loud.

Throughout the piece, audience members are invited to submit their responses to the question, What are you afraid to say out loud? Responses can be submitted to the performers directly (not viewed by the rest of the audience), and performers will be reading those responses as part of the music.

 Gathering Bone

for mezzo-soprano and flute
2019

Gathering Bone is an exploration of the Norse creation myth of Ymir. The myth takes place in a primordial world involving a land of fire, land of ice, and the yawning gap in-between. Ymir is the giant (jötunn), both male & female, who dwells between the worlds. Óðinn and his brothers - for some reason - must slay the giant Ymir for the Earth to be created. Ymir’s skull becomes the sky, their bones the hills, their blood the sea. Rather than the traditionally valorized heroes of Norse myth, Gathering Bone explores the multiplicity of Ymir, grieves their shattering, and asks what remains of the whole among disparate fragments.

Premiered April 23, 2019 at Spectrum NYC in Brooklyn by Tessa Romano (mezzo soprano) and Elisa Muzzillo (flute).

Movements and text:

1. casting

2. perthro / passion permitting

From the place of fire, 
from the place of fire comes 

Surtr, the swarthy one.
Surtr, the swarthy one.
World destroyers -
from flame and chaos is endless expansion
from flame and chaos run the world destroyers.
Cloaked in soil, 
Realm builders
Realm destroyers.
To break, tear, asunder.
Wreck of the world
Beginning and wreck of the world
Beginning and wreck of the world
Wreck of the world
Wreck of the world

From the place of fire, 
from the place of fire comes 
we start our games 
we fly them
we spin our fates
our sputtering flame

what chaos permits
what passion permits
what chaos permits
what passion permits
the flame will take 
written in stone
written in stone
what the flame will take
what the flame will take
will never be the same. 
never be the same
what the flame will take
will never be the same
will never be the same.

written in stone
we cannot burn
we cannot burn 
what will come to pass. 

3. (interlude)

4. laguz / astral waters

Laguz,
Laguz
From Laguz,
Laguz
Unto Laguz
Life ever flowing
Wells from Mother
Dark Mother
Our world of ice
from which all melts
Become ocean.

Primal passage 
across astral waters
Ice become
Ice become
Laguz
Laguz
From Laguz
Laguz.

5. uruz (interlude)

Uruz, Uruz, Uruz
Auðhumbla, Uruz, Auðhumbla
Uruz
urging earthward
to shape creation.

6. shattering ymir
Here after your den of heroes!
Grasp your sedge
Sharp-tined sedge
with blood burns,
with blood burns -
your hunt of the Earth.
Hunt of the Earth

Shattering Ymir
Shattering Ymir, Ymir
Slay your beloved
Slay your beloved
Slay the beloved.
To never be sewn
to always be sewn
back together
before return to the 
world of men,
yew bows,
blood burns
never to be sewn
never to be sewn.

We slay beloved.

7.

8. your song in our bones
Upon our ridden roads,
on after the counsel wrath
we spin, we weave
chaos unto order
weave world around together

no fate but this
no fate but this
no fate
but to return
place your hands to Earth
we hear you.
Silent seeker,
your song in our bones.

You who were shattered
Mirror our hearts again
Bound to your flesh
Finger to bone
We are yours
We are ours.

The Lovers (for Abby and Ben)

for trumpet, Alto sax, and Piano

2018

Premiered by Abigail Bernat, Benjamin Wiebe, and Hsiao-Ling Lin at the University of Colorado - Boulder. 

Pied Horizon

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and Percussion

2017

Commissioned and premiered by the Boulder Altitude Directive on Nov. 1, 2017.

Video performance by the Playground Ensemble April 14, 2018.

This piece, I’m afraid to admit, is about love. One of my greatest fears is being average so I strayed away from love pieces because it felt like they’d been done before, like any piece about love would by default be unoriginal. As it turns out, though, of all my identities, being a lover is probably one of the ones I’d claim first. For me, love feels like a destiny tea party, and if I choose to show up, I always fall. I’m probably in love with more people at one time than some people are in their entire lives.

This piece is about how my experience of love feels transcendent, in particular it’s about someone named Nadia and how we love through anything. Doesn’t matter if we are grieving or joyous or fed up with the world. We can express it all in the joining of our bodies. It is our weapon and our solace. Whether we are reminding people of their own discomfort or when the fear in us goes through our interlaced fingers like electrocution, when there are too many eyes and not enough support, when the consequences feel too permanent. But stars, when we are joyous, we can tear through the whole world. No matter the scars, the past, the wells that run too deep to be opened - we can love anyway, we can shut out the terrible parts of the world, and create sanctuary. Every matter the scars, the past, the trauma, the dysphoria, the wells that run too crimson for the eyes to ever water just cleansing salt - we can let the world seep in and love even with devastation. Otherwise, in the changing tides of our breaths, in our shifting song, we build entire worlds. In those moments, it isn’t about sanctuary or healing - because we are creating, dreaming. Because on Nadia’s lips, I taste all the wishes we have for the planet, I catch glimpses of the world we invoke. I taste new colors, find the stillness on their skin, the horizon in their eyes. 

This piece is not about the wells too deep, it is not about the systems we are interpellated under that render our love irrevocably political. This is about the horizon, the wisps of dreams we catch on eyelashes, the worlds queerness creates - worlds made of pied, many-colored, ever-shifting, the completeness of our tomorrows.

Thread

for mezzo-soprano, trumpet/flugelhorn, and piano

2016

Once-robins (for Ash and Blake)

for Clarinet, Horn in F, Violin, Cello, and Piano

2016

text by Ash

This piece tells the story of a mentor of mine, who is now more like a sister. It tells the story of 2012, when she gave birth to Blake. In many ways the music is an attempt to depict this fantastical world of childhood and the more complicated world of motherhood, the joy and reverence but also the pain of always having to let go. This story may be a little different than others of its kind, though, because Blake has Down syndrome, and from my limited perspective as a humble witness, the emotional arch of that journey is different than that of mothers who don't have a baby with Down syndrome. 

For movements I, II, V, and VI, the text accompanying this piece comes from Ash. Movement III incorporates spoken word. These are things that have been said to Ash or come from books that were given to Ash.

My ultimate intent in this project is for it to be healing, a meditation and celebration, but also the pain of words like "normal," that bar us into certain ways of being. Above all though, this piece is about the quiet certainty of love.

I. "Happy birthday, little Blake! Welcome to the world!"

We found out the child was a boy on February 8th and we named him at that point - Blake Alan Swanson. My husband Dan’s first words, “That’s my boy!!” and pride dripping from every syllable.

I heard a heartbeat start dropping and immediately asked if that was my Blake and they said no, it was my own heartbeat.

The doctor said, “Happy birthday, little Blake! Welcome to the world.”

They said he had a semi-crease, slanted eyes and lower ears, all consistent with Trisomy 21.

Calmness…acceptance…I never once questioned that he was mine and I would love him no matter what they told me.

II. All Because of the Extra Chromosome that Exists in Every Cell of His Body

How many mothers are there now with a three year old with Down syndrome. Down syndrome down syndrome down syndrome - what a strange ring it has. And not really a ring. It’s a drone and a chant that pervades my life. It sounds so strange and it has no meaning until it does and then it means everything and everything means Down syndrome. What does normal mean anyway? What a horrible, dreadful word.

III. from Friends

I can’t go out without at least two or more people recognizing and asking me and telling me about their mother’s brother’s cousin’s dog’s aunt’s brother’s wife’s son who had Downs 20 years ago and what a blessing they are and how they are just incredible and how their personalities are just perfect.

IV.

V. Is it obvious?

Can they see the Downs? Is it obvious? Are they just being nice? I find Blake so cute and beautiful but he is mine. Maybe other people see it and are quickly judging. Maybe they are whispering their real thoughts in their minds where I can’t hear. Sometimes I look through his pictures and the almond shaped eyes jump out at me. I get so scared of the world he will grow up in.

VI. He will be pure love

Blake… if I think without any outside influence, then he just is. He is just my child, he is just my son. I feel a smile creep over my face and feel a sparkle in my eye - because that is all he is in those moments. It is just me and him. There is nothing more.

Page of Cups

for piano, clarinet, and viola

2016

Written for and performed by Alice Sprinkle, David Leech, and Sarah Broadwell, The Pine Trio. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, so you'll hear falling into wonderland, chatting with the Cheshire cat, entering a mad tea party, some Queen of Hearts raucous (truly she's a reversed Queen), and falling back into the dream.

For me, Alice in Wonderland is a Rite of Passage story. Alice is becoming less child and more adult. Her body is changing, she wants to go somewhere but doesn't know where, and she's trying to figure out the rules of Wonderland but they mostly seem absurd and nonsensical. I think where I differ from Lewis Carroll, is that the childhood innocence doesn't truly die. There is something we still can gain from finding this place of everything being new, from journeying to wonderland.

So it goes.

for 2 Trumpets
2014

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?” 
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

It wasn’t by plan that I wrote a trumpet duet. When asked to write one, I thought it might turn into some obligatory piece that was amorphous and didn’t have any meaning for me once it was finished. Needless to say, it became a lot more than that.

As I was first thinking of the piece, the melody from “Taps” kept trailing through my head, and I was reminded of how odd I felt it was - that a song consisting of only notes from a major triad was played at military funerals. This got me thinking about how I’d picture grief to sound.

“So it goes.” attempts to depict the raw emotion of death rather than a heroic story or commemoration of death. It features different extended techniques for trumpet, asking performers to cry through the trumpet, imitate bombs, and imitate sirens. While the title can be taken in a variety of ways, its original intention was to allude to the endless motif from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, which appears, somewhat flippantly, after anyone in the book dies. 

Charcoal Ink-Blotted

for Bass Clarinet and Marimba
2013

Armando Dances

for Clarinet and piano

2013

Written for Dominique Armando Ramirez. 

I. from Clouds

II. Harlequin

III. Of Mountain and Vines