Archive for the ‘Composition’ Category

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A Lover Letter: Minverva’s Dance

Monday, October 25th, 2010



Dancing to the original.

Minerva’s Dance was originally written for my wife and for our first dance as husband and wife in 2004. She loves tangos and the music of Astor Piazzolla, so I decide to write her a tango. I went into my studio and started laying down some tracks. My friend and band mate, Andrew Wilshusen laid down some percussion and a few days later I had it ready to go. Since this was a studio piece with long improvised sections only a small part of it was ever written down. In the summer of 2010 I decided to notate and expand the orchestration.  The flute and soprano sax are featured soloist. The flute solo is a transcription of the original solo I played but the sax solo for the 9/25/2010 SFCCO concert was improvised. My friend Erling Wold was originally going to play accordion on this concert but just be for the concert he got hit by a car and broke his leg.  Minverva is the  goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic, and the inventor of music.

SFCCO performs Minvera

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A Lover Letter: G.A.C. 26.2

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

There is a quote from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s letter to his father on November 8th 1777:

I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet.
I cannot artfully arrange my phrases so as to give light and shade.
Neither am I a painter;
Nor can I even express my thoughts by gesture and pantomime, for I am no dancer.
But I can do so in sounds.
I am a musician.

This quote inspired me to create a collection of pieces I call Love Letters. They are usually for piano, last about 3-5 minutes and are written for or about someone dear to me. Twenty years ago I decided I want to write one based on my father’s initials, GAC. But every time I sat down to write it I was unhappy with the results. After my parents visit this summer, I had a feeling time was running out and I sat down to try again. I finally heard something I was satisfied with and in a couple of weeks I completed the piece I have been wrestling with for twenty years. Not only did I use his initials but I used his full name by putting rests in place of letters not used by music notation. I also added in my own name at the end.

Notation of my Father's Name

Notation of My Father's Name

Notation of my Name

Notation of My Name

My father is very interested in running and has run marathons all over the world so the A theme last 26.2 measures (26.2 miles is the length of a marathon) and the B theme is reminiscent of the music in the movie that inspired his desire to run “Chariots of Fire”. The finale is a culmination of all themes that runs on to the end.

Piano Version:

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As I was  finishing this composition I started to hear strings playing the B theme at finale so I decided to orchestrate it for chamber orchestra. On September 25th 2010 the SFCCO premièred this version.

G.A.C. for Orchestra

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Open Ended (redux)

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Open Ended

Do to unforeseen circumstances the composition I planed on having performed on the November 7th 2009 SFCCO concert had to be canceled. So I decided to pull out one of my guide improvisation compositions, Open Ended. I conducted/composed this performance as well as played tenor saxophone. It is a very versatile work that is composed live before your eyes and ears. Based on Rova‘s Radar techniques, Open Ended is less of a composition and more of a color or tool palette. It is an ever-growing collection of rules and games for the performers that are triggered by hand signals by the conductor/composer. The conductor/composer then composes the piece live using these hand signals to guide the performers. This work has no set instrumentation and can be played by any number of performers. It also has no set length; the piece could last 5 minutes or 24 hours. Open Ended has been performed several times, including a performance four years ago by the SFCCO, but every time it is a world première and unique performance that can never be repeated.

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…with the Spirit of the Desert

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Chisos mountains of Big Bend National Park

Chisos mountains of Big Bend National Park

On November 7th 2009 the SFCCO will be performing a composition I wrote back in 1993-94. It is a violin, bassoon and piano trio I call …with the Spirit of the Desert. This work is inspired by Big Bend National Park in Texas, a place I used to go camping every year in the early 90′s. The park can be thought of as having three natural divisions; the river, the desert and the mountains, thus why I chose a trio. Big Bend National Park lies in the northern third of the Chihuahuan Desert. The name Big Bend refers to the great U-turn the Rio Grande River makes there in Southwest Texas. Prehistoric Native Americans made their homes there at least 10,000 years ago and perhaps earlier. This area has been occupied many different Native Americans groups over the years. The La Junta, Chisos, Jumano, Mescalero Apaches and Comanche all made the homes in Big Bend. The Native Americans said that after making the Earth, the Great Spirit simply dumped all the leftover rocks on the Big Bend. Even though Big Bend is a desert it is full of wild life, you frequently see jackrabbits, roadrunners, golden eagle and coyotes. The composition is a seven-movement work, where the first three movements are played continuously as are the last four. Each member of the trio has it’s own solo movement, entitled “Alone”. The natural beauty of the area and its Native American past inspire other four moments. When camping in Big Bend where always awoken by spectacular sunrises,  the first movement “In the Sunrise with the Spirit of the Desert” represents that. The end of the first movement flows into the first of the solo movements which a this point is for violin. This solo second movement sets up the third movement, “Dancing the Dance of the Eagle…” This movement reminds the listener of a Native American dance and soaring golden eagles in the desert sky. The end of the third is the first break in the composition, the fourth movement is the bassoons solo movement which leads into the powerful fifth movement. “Two Braves Warring…” puts man vs. nature (and Spirits) as the desert is can be a difficult place to live. The rains and water finally come after this movement end on the last of the solo movements begin, this time for piano. After a long day in the sun the last movement takes place in the cool of the night as “Coyotes Howling at the Moon…”

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A Baby Sleeps (for Isabella)

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

After about two years of research, sketches and learning a new instrument, my composition for my daughter was premièred June 13th, 2009 by the SFCCO. The genesis of A Baby Sleeps (video Low / High) came after my daughter was born and my grandfather told me I need to write her a piece. I wanted to write a modern lullaby and one that would reflect my daughters American and Taiwanese heritage. For a few months I struggled for inspiration, then one night I realized my wife was singing a beautiful lullaby to her every night. I decided to write a “Theme & Variations” on this Taiwanese lullaby, 搖嬰仔歌 (Rocking the baby lullaby). It was written by the famous Taiwanese composer, 呂泉生 (Lu Chuan-sheng). (more information on this melody and Master Lu is available in an earlier post). Originally I was just going to add the beautiful Chinese instrument called 古箏 (gŭzhēng) to the orchestra. But in August of 2008 I was in Taipei and I bought an instrument that I have wanted to play for 20 years, the 笙 (shēng) (more on the sheng in an earlier post). So I started to add those instruments into the composition and ended up featuring the sheng and guzheng as soloist.

isy

Gangqin Zhao, 古箏 (gŭzhēng) &
Michael Cooke, 笙 (shēng)

I had written a bunch of different variations and in March 2009 after the premièred of my composition String Theory, I started to put all the pieces together into a composition. I ended up throwing out several variations as they were to complex and made the piece lose it’s lullaby quality. When the dust settled I had four variations (plus the theme) that I liked: Variation I: Fragments, Variation II: Canon, Variation III: Block Chords & Variation IV: Reduction. I wanted the piece to flow better then just switching from variation to variation so I wrote some “connective tissue” to put it all together in a seamless way. The piece became more of a dream sequence then a traditional Theme & Variations. Now I prefer to view the composition in that way, where the first theme is when the baby is going to sleep listening to the lullaby and at Variation I she is asleep and starts to dream. The variation send her on dream adventures, maybe swimming in the ocean or floating in the sky. At the reprise of the theme at the end of the composition, the baby is back from her dream adventures and is dreaming about being in her parents arms.

A reviews of this concert can be found on Sequenza 21 and Memory Select’s Blog

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String Theory

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

        String Theory, was premièred February 28th, 2009 by the SFCCO. String Theory is a guided improvisation composition that uses a graphical score which is inspired by the theoretical physics theory of the same name. String Theory is the revolutionary and shocking branch of theoretical physics that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity into a quantum theory of gravity. According to string theory, absolutely everything in the universe—all of the particles that make up matter and forces—is comprised of tiny vibrating fundamental strings. The Strings of string theory are one-dimensional oscillating lines, but they are no longer considered fundamental to the theory, which can be formulated in terms of points or surfaces too. In this composition, I have used graphical notation representing strings, points and surfaces to guide the orchestra in improvisation. Since String Theory may prove Einstein’s unified field theory at the very end of the composition the orchestra unites. If String Theory proves to be true it creates an elegant universe composed entirely of the music of strings.
         One of the exciting things about using guide improvisation as a compositional technic is the fact that music is different during each performance but over all recognizable as the same composition. To help demonstrate this I have a recording of the dress rehearsal of String Theory for a comparison to the concert performance.

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Stripes & Stars

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

        In Apirl 2008 I won a “Meet The Composer’s MetLife Creative Connections” grant to participate in the SFCCO project, The Star and Stripes Forever variations ( Low / High). Where 6 composers each write a variations on The Star and Stripes Foreverand it put together into make this new piece. I have many warm memories about hearing The Stars and Stripes Forever during 4th of July outings as a child. It is by far one of the most well known marches in the repertoire. While I have enjoyed listen to it over the years, as a performer, my part was always very boring. Bassoons and saxophone only got the pa-pa part of the um-pa-um-pa accompaniment. So for my variation, Stripes & Stars, I first decided I would give the bassoons a more fun part. Then while working with melodies I inverted them and really liked it. The inversion of a given melody is the melody turned upside-down. For instance, if the original melody has a rising major third, the inverted melody has a falling major third. I then recombined various melodies a little to round out my variation. This piece was performed on June 7th, 2008 by the SFCCO.

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Sun & Moon

Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Score of the Sun movement

Score of the Sun movement

        March 8th 2008 the SFCCO performed one of my circle music compositions; Sun & Moon ( Low / High). The Sun & Moon have been center of mythology since the dawn of time. They represent the balance of man and woman, light and dark, the cycle of life. This musical representation of Sun & Moon consists of two sections, Sun starts from left and moves to the right then moon start from the right and move to the left. These sections are in a form known as circle music. Essentially, circle music uses phrases that can be played at any time and in any order. I first learn about circle music form from Dr. Cindy McTee who wrote a circle music piece for my bassoon teacher.

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Symphony No. 3 “The Shadows of Japanese Children” take 2

Friday, December 7th, 2007

        After premiering the outer two movements in 2005, the SFCCO premiered the inner two movements of my third symphony: Symphony No. 3 “The Shadows of Japanese Children” on December 7th, 2007. More information is avaible from the original notes of the first performance.

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Ha-Me’aggel for Orchestra

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

        I recently completed a new composition, Ha-Me’aggel (one who draws circles) for Orchestra (Video Low / High) was premièred June 9th, 2007 by the SFCCO. This the biggest of my jazz and classical music to date. Originally this piece written for my quintet (woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion), the Cooke Quintet. The group recorded Ha-Me’aggel on An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible just 2 days after the première of “Music for Humans“. The CD was released on my labelBlack Hat Records. It has four sections, which in the original version could be played in any order, a form known as circle music. I felt that this piece would adapt well as a Concerto for Saxophone or Orchestra, though I had to make the form less flexible for an orchestra. There is some freedom to allow different instruments be featured but in the first performance alto sax (Michael Cooke), clarinet (Jonathan Russell), piano (Alexis Alrich) and timpani (Victor Flaviani) are featured instruments. These featured instruments have improvisational solo sections. The melodies in the piece were written using a Klezmer scale, which made me think of the story of Onias (Honi) Ha-Me’aggel, a first century Jewish scholar who drew a circle and placed himself in the center of it, praying for rain and whose prayers were mysteriously and immediately answered. My prayers where also answered, as this piece was made possible by a Creative Connections Award from Meet The Composer.

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