True to its name, A Gleaming Thing (2024) abruptly opens with a piercing, radiant chord, played by every member of its six-piece mixed ensemble. This immediately dissolves into an almost glowing-hot texture where the entire register of the ensemble is crammed into a single unison pitch. Within this inconceivably cramped harmonic space, the properties of music change: things like melody, harmony, register, texture, and even rhythm begin to meld with one another or break down entirely.
I like to think of this highly constrained music as analogous to the ways in which the classical laws of physics seem to break down when describing things that are either very, very small, or so fast they are approaching the speed of light. As such, the “gleaming thing” depicted in this work can perhaps be seen as a supercharged particle, a ray of light, the exotic matter found in the core of a neutron star, or maybe all of these things at once.
Regardless, it soon becomes clear that this mysterious, gleaming thing is in fact quite unstable and transient. Gradually, it fragments into a radiant burst of harmonies, like an explosive, nuclear chain reaction in slow-motion. The overall effect is one where an event that is perhaps unfathomably small, fast, and brief is expansively stretched over almost nine minutes of volatile music.

Written for Stroma Ensemble (Wellington, NZ).

When you hike in the Chugach Mountains, relationships between all things—some unfolding over thousands of years—can be readily observed everywhere you look. Nothing is inanimate. Everything seems to have a life and trajectory behind it; the massive glaciers propagate themselves from the ice field high in the peaks above, patiently sprawling across the valley for eons until they each find a spot that suits them. Their meltwater, like a vast circulatory system, feeds many streams and rivers, which in turn nourish the local marshes, fungi, plants, and animals. The mountains constantly make their motion known to you as well; several times a day, the unearthly rumble of distant rockslides punctuate the vast white noise of the wind and rivers. Even the force of gravity seems to have a mystical persona that hangs in the air. Everything is constantly drawn downward from the peaks to the valleys.

The calls of the Golden Crowned Sparrow seem to echo this state of being; though the melodies will vary slightly from place to place, they, too, always descend downward.

When I visited the Chugach Mountains, I spent much of my time transcribing the calls of the Golden Crowned Sparrows. Taking in their melodies, and the landscape around me, I had a bizarre, almost transcendental thought: A mountain must perceive a glacier similarly to the way I, or a sparrow, perceive a brook gurgling by our feet. Perhaps all forms of existence are just different sides of some cosmic coin. Perhaps through music, I can show how a sparrow's call can become a brook, and that brook can become a glacier...

Written for Corvus Ensemble.

When you spy the cap of a mushroom in a forest, what you are actually seeing is a mere fraction of the fungal organism that produced it. The vast majority of the organism is comprised of mycelium—subterranean tendrils that form vast networks beneath the forest floor. These networks are not only what allow the fungus to propogate, they also act as an integral player in the entire forest ecosystem. Specifically, mycelium networks latch onto the roots of trees and other plant life, exchanging some energy for essential nutrients the trees and plants rely upon to be healthy. This symbiotic relationship runs deeper, however. By passing nutrients through these networks, some trees and plants have evolved a remarkable ability to literally communicate with one another: They alert one another to disease and predation, and even assist one another, altering their root structures to make space for growth, and sharing their nutrients.
When musicians perform as an ensemble, they must form a collective intelligence to produce a desired group sound. Sometimes this collective intelligence can behave quite like an organic network, analogous to trees and plants communicating through mycelium. In creating A Mind in the Branches, I intended to realize a work of music that would bring this process of collective intelligence to the forefront of the performance. Rather than treating the ensemble as a homogenous unit that traverses a linear work of music from beginning to end, the performers instead have their own individual agency, their own ability to explore the score a number of non-linear ways. However, in doing so, they will also encounter instances in which they must work together, or musically communicate with one another, or even behave as a homogenous unit for a moment, should the need arise. In doing so, the performers become interdependent "trees" in the ecosystem that is A Mind in the Branches.

Written for Ensemble for These Times (E4TT).

If you are interested in performing this work and would like to obtain a color-coded version of the score for ease of performance, please send me a message via the ‘Contact’ section of my website.