Disclaimer: Some of these files have my old address and phone number. I'll be updating them soon.
Modulus - for Two Flutes
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Premiered on Iowa State University's "Lipa Festival" concert. Performed at historic Jordan Hall in Boston. Several subsequent performances. approx. 12 mins.
In the mid-twentieth century a distinct improvisational tradition emerged within concert music in which performers could be given varying amounts of freedom of choice in which performers could be given varying amounts of freedom of choice in a wide variety of musical domains. Modulus explores this current, especially in the "Faces of Grief" movement. Tone color is typically heard as a primary musical force (not just an expressive detail), with an expansive palette of flute sounds, including singing while playing, key pops, and so on. Each of the three movements takes its general mood from one of the well-known stages of grieving.
Ice-9 -- For Vibraphone (2 Players)
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Premiered on an Iowa State University Recital. Presented on Iowa Composer's Forum Winter Concert. Various other performances. Recorded and distributed on the Iowa Composers Forum Sampler - approx. 7 mins.
In this piece the notation of meter and rhythm are abandoned for a graphical, freer flowing, approach in which performers are given freedom of choice within the musical domain of time. Ice-9 explores this current. Tone color is typically heard as a primary musical force (not just an expressive detail) within the movement, with an expansive palette of vibraphone sounds, including striking the instrument with various implements, harmonics, using contrabass bows to sustain sound, and so on. The piece takes its general mood from a novel of Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, in which a substance, “Ice-9” is invented for military purposes that causes water to solidify at room temperature. One can imagine some of the disastrous consequences of throwing this substance into a body of water or perhaps touching it to one’s lips. Jonathan wishes to thank Barry Larkin, professor of Percussion at Iowa State University, who premiered the piece with the composer and to whom the piece is dedicated.
"Now lam Become Death Destroyer of Worlds" - For large orchestra
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BMI Student Composer Award winning piece - approx. 12 mins.
"Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds" is a quote of Robert Oppenheimer quoting an ancient text the Bhagavad Gîtâ. This piece is so named as it was conceived as a fantasy of what one might feel if it were possible to experience the building of this terrible device from the point of view of its architect. Oppenheimer was torn between solving this interesting problem of physics and the possibly terrible consequences of its ultimate use. The music is understandably disjunct, alternating between excitement and darkly ominous grief and remorse. Tone color is typically heard as a primary musical force in this piece (not just an expressive detail), with an expansive palette of traditional and non-traditional orchestral sounds, including singing whispering and shouting. This piece is dedicated to the composer's parents: Steve and Connie Saggau.
Almost Transparent Black-- For four percussionists
Score coming soon...
Preview performances on various recitals. Full Premier by the University of Akron, Ohio percussion ensemble during a Society of Composers, Inc. National Convention. - approx. 15 mins.
Almost Transparent Black for four percussionists began as a rhythmic study inspired by some of the sometimes-counterintuitive possible properties of time brought to us by theoretical physics. Imagine if time were to gradually or even suddenly slow down or speed up; imagine Cleveland gaining 15 minutes within each hour as measured in New York. What sorts of strange paradoxes would occur if time suddenly reversed for a certain few people? Perhaps cause-effect relationships could become effect-cause. One can fairly easily imagine some of the more strange, both jarring and subtle, phenomena one might encounter if time were a bit more playful. This piece explores some of the more disconcerting of those possible phenomena via various rhythmic devices such as elongating beats by certain percentages, asking one player to accelerate gradually so as to overtake another, multiple tempi simultaneously, sudden as well as gradual metric modulation (changes in tempo), and so on.
Dismantling the Silence -- For Wind Ensemble (concert band)
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Commissioned by Iowa State University for the installation of their University President. - approx. 3.5 mins.
Solipsism -- For Clarinet & percussion with chamber winds and piano
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Commissioned by the Soria Chamber Players of Boston - 7 mins.
On Edge of Infinite Blue -- For Clarinet & Marimba (companion piece for Solipsism)
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approx. 5.5 mins.
On edge of infinite blue, dedicated to Rachel Hollrah, takes its title from a line of William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways that describes Duluth, Minnesota, which is adjacent to Lake Superior, "as if [it] sat on an edge of infinite blueness." I remember a family vacation taken there during my childhood finding myself astonished that a body of water could stretch beyond sight. In this piece for clarinet and marimba, tone color and rhythm are heard as primary expressive musical force. It is constructed with an expansive palette of marimba and clarinet sounds, including multiphonics, extremes of range, marimba harmonics, using the shaft of the marimba mallet to produce a click sound, and a technique approximating a "rim shot" by striking the marimba with the shaft and the head of the mallet at the same time. It includes also a number of experimental rhythmic devices to combine and delineate musical and expressive material such as multiple concurrent tempi and individual beats that can expand and contract to express the infinite malleability of time on both a large and a small scale. It is ever-changing, sometimes dark and sometimes playful character (though always based on the same pitch material throughout), and expresses my memory of that first childhood experience with infinity.
Bestiary For The Fingers of My Right Hand-- For Double Orchestra
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approx. 3.5 mins.
Based proportionally on a poem of the same name by Charles Simic.
No Visible Horizon -- For Marimba
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approx. 3.5 mins.
Akrasia - For chamber orchestra
Score coming soon...
approx 8 mins. Written for Alarm Will Sound and premiered at the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center in New York City - approx. 13 mins.