Songwriting for the Musical Soundcloud: It’s Up!

This class has ultimately pushed me further than most music classes at Purchase, and I am fortunate to be featured among several talented composers and lyricists for this end of the semester “performance.” Due to COVID-19 complications, we could not have the live performance typical of this class. However, a SoundCloud playlist/podcast has its own advantages moving forward during this time. This gives composers the opportunity to utilize a much wider array of arranging options, not being limited to the piano/guitar of the live performances. I tried to make use of this on my track, Staples Separation. Honored to have it be on this playlist, alongside such talent from my peers.

Big shout out to Ryan Homsey and Sara Cooper for being immensely positive and flexible when it comes to organizing this. Their kindness is not superficial, they gave us great feedback pushed us to be the best we could be every Monday. Thank you, truly <3

Circle Through New York: Contemporary Ensemble Compositions with Guggenheim Staff

My senior year at Frank Sinatra High School has been one of the more fruitful times artistically for me. Much of this was due to my participation in the school’s newly founded Contemporary Ensemble. This small group of 10 people was the first time that there was a class period dedicated to composition in the school, and cumulated in a final set of variations being performed by the ensemble. Master classes with Berklee professors and professional composers made this class one of the more productive classes at this school, and I am proud to have been one of the founding members.

In any event, I was fortunate enough to have the Guggenheim’s project Circle Through New York “circle through” my school, and even more fortunate to have them “circle through” contemporary ensemble. We were tasked with arranging the world’s oldest song in any way we saw fit, and we have been told that our works will be played on NPR and/or displayed in the Guggenheim itself. Despite our tight deadline I think we produced some great results, and I hope you enjoy our work!

Av Kitane Mansa

Av Kitane Mansa is my most recent, standalone, contemporary classical composition that has been performed. Performed early 2017 by a group of independently hired professional musicians, it is one of the pieces I am most proud of to date. This time of the year was the introduction to many new things for  me as a composer. The task given to us by my mentor Kevin James was to write in a style that we were unfamiliar with, and make it our own. I chose Gypsy music. This was the first time that I had experimented with prepared piano, generating something akin to the cimbalom, a hammered percussion instrument. It was the most performers that I had written for at that time (12), and was also the first time using a specific cadence in order to convey the location of the song. On top of this, my class of composers had to hire a group of musicians on own. There was quite a bit of new material, but I think it helped me to learn even more and really push the boundaries of my composing.

This piece’s title is derived from a Gypsy love chant “Av,mi Romani mal / Pawdel dur chumbas / Av kitane mansa?” that roughly translates to “Come my Gypsy friend, over the hills so far away. Will you come along with me?” This piece starts with an agitaded con fuoco section, creating a sense of imbalance with shifting meters. Once the steady guitar pulse comes in, flourishes in the other instruments pervade before introducing the odd meter bass line, and finally getting to the “chorus” of the song. The clarinet and trombone melody is later found to be the source of the lyrics, after the vocalists are added in. A stripped down section featuring dumbek and cimbalom leads to a more classically influenced string section, before building and stripping away into a cimbalom solo/cadenza. This leads to the reintroduction of the guitar pulse and, finally, the addition of vocalists into the main chorus, showing how the piece got its name. Overall, I am incredibly proud of this piece, and incredibly thankful to everyone involved, especially Kevin James, as always.