Tag: Burning

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My entry for the NYC Contemporary Music Symposium

Recently I’ve been writing this music for piano, clarinet, and cello, with the intention of entering it into the composition contest held by the NYC Contemporary Music Symposium. Today I officially entered the competition. If I win, this music will be performed at a concert in New York, and I’ll get a professional recording too.

The first draft of this music came about in 2007, after reading the dark and mysterious novel The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, which filled my head with strange colors. I sketched out the basic shape of the piece, but then discarded it as I got swept up in writing Jackdaw.

I revisited the music after returning from my honeymoon in 2012, and built it into a more sturdy shape. Because of the energy and emotion I was feeling during that incredible time in my life – when I had just returned from Europe newly married, when I was so obsessed with creating art and so hungry for life, and in many ways mixed up – this music (which was a by-product of that creative energy and emotion) will forever remind me of that time. To be specific, this music reminds me of the city of Prague, where I drank absinthe and played piano at a pub, and felt myself sink into the Great Human Experience. Read more about that here.

Even after all that, I still couldn’t be bothered to actually finish the music, so again it was discarded and left for dead. Then nine years later, in April 2021, when I decided to enter the NYC Symposium contest, I chose the Bowery Trio as the ensemble I would write for, and resurrected this music that has always meant so much to me. First I changed the instrumentation. The original instrumentation was piano, oboe, and bassoon, which certainly gave it a funky flavor (as I mentioned earlier, I was trying to express some strange color)! But once I switched over to the much more standard piano, clarinet, and cello, the music took on that rich and loving sound that it always wanted to have. While the original instrumentation was unique, it didn’t fit with the sections of the music that were more tender, the love themes. The new instrumentation brought those themes to life, and welcomed more diversity of color into the music as a whole. Oboe and bassoon can become a bit monochromatic after a time, but cello can sing forever.

This music bends genre a bit. It’s classical for sure, but also infused with blues. I also wanted certain rhythms to sound metal, but not metal in the sense of Metallica meets the symphony. I wanted the metal-esque pieces to be fully baked, or interwoven, into the framework and form of the classical music (as opposed to simply taking a metal song and performing it with a classical ensemble). Therefore this music doesn’t really sound like authentic metal in any sense, but certain sections were inspired by the genre, and these moments make an impact on the ear as they pass.

This music has followed me through multiple stages in my life. First as a student striving to expand my creative palate, trying to understand the world but falling far short; then as a young husband, traveling in a haze from country to country, stateless but full of love and optimism, bursting with creative energy; and lastly as I find myself today: a father, trying desperately to prioritize art creation during a very busy year of a very busy life, still nurturing that spark. This music somehow reflects all of that. Or at least that’s what it means to me.

I set myself a goal in January to enter two music competitions this year. One down, one to go.

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Music that reminds me of drinking absinthe in Prague

This music is the first movement from “Burning”: a trio for piano, clarinet, and cello.

Excerpt from journal.
Dated July 27, 2012   –   Prague

On a recommendation from a bartender, we headed toward a pub away from the city center, on some twisted alley or another. Our bellies were full of dumplings and gravy, our hearts starving for adventure. We waltzed into a well-lit bar and took a drink of the scenery.

The air was viscous with cigarette smoke. I immediately felt as though I were deep deep underwater, in a pub at the bottom of the sea. The rowdy conversations of the crowd drifted slowly toward me; from a distance I could see the words coming my way, yet still I couldn’t quite make them out. Men and women emphatically slapped the tables in laughter, rattling the half empty glasses and late night coffees and honey cakes, sending them floating away around the room. Others sipped their absinthes knowingly, balancing their cigarettes so delicately atop their outstretched fingers.

Ah Prague, ah absinthe. In honor of Bohemia we ordered two drams of the green concoction. Actually it wasn’t green… but it did smell like licorice, and it burned, burned!

It suddenly became very warm in that bar.

I was taking in my hazy surroundings when I saw her, sitting silently beside a red couch. She wasn’t outlandish, wasn’t putting herself out there, just relaxing and blending into the scenery. I’m not sure anyone else in the room even noticed her.

She was a thing of beauty.

She had a strong yet elegant frame made of fine wood panels. Her golden pedals glimmered and winked at me, beckoning me. Her keys were made of real ivory, an authenticity that can not be faked. This was no tourist attraction. This was the real shit, the soft underbelly, the pearl, that hard-to-reach part of your back. I was suddenly helpless against a mighty river of desire. I let it take me, wash over me, sweep me away.

I could tell right away that she was played regularly; all the tell-tale signs were present. The keys were bare and open for all the world to see, draped flirtatiously like freshly painted fingernails. The bench was pulled out, a bare leg peeking from beneath a knee-length skirt. However refined she may have seemed to an untrained eye, I could see from across the room how much she loved to be touched, that her strings were tight, her music sweet and pure.

I realized I was in a conversation with a man at the bar. While pretending to chat, my gaze kept wandering to her quiet corner of the room. She stared back at me unabashed. I wanted to put my hands on her that very moment, to know her secrets.

Erica looked at my face and read me like a book. I was lost already and there was no point trying to pull me back. We locked eyes and she signaled that I was free to go. I immediately moved to the instrument.

When I touched, I fell into a trance. Twenty minutes of absinthe-fueled dream music left my body.

Dumplings and cigarettes and alleyways. Twisting streets and beggars with their faces in the dirt. Pianos and absinthe and my wife’s soft skin. Love and travel and hunger and… feeling so lost that you forget what country you’re in.