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NICHOLAS DENTON PROTSACK | COMPOSER-CELLIST

Collaborative Recordings:

Scree Scrub Mountain Sky

Album, (2024)

Embark on a lush and daring auditory voyage with Moth Quartet's debut album, Scree Scrub Mountain Sky. Comprised of composer-performers Salina Fisher (violin), Tristan Carter (violin), Elliot Vaughan (viola), and Nicholas Denton Protsack (cello), the Wellington (NZ)-based ensemble reimagines the modern string quartet as a vehicle for bold, spontaneous composition. Moth Quartet composed Scree Scrub Mountain Sky in the rugged landscapes of Tongariro National Park on New Zealand’s North Island, immersing themselves directly in the natural environment, where they listened and collectively responded to the water, trees, land and weather, bringing these ideas back to a makeshift recording studio at night. The album's title serves as a portal into this reactive style of composition—one that aims to transport listeners directly into the heart of the mountains, rivers, forests, and even skies of Tongariro. The result is a transportive journey, where unbridled creativity transfigures itself into the raw beauty of the New Zealand wilderness.

Far From the Tree

Album, (2023)

From genre-bending, screeching highs to delicate, filigree lows, Far From the Tree, the debut album of Branchroot Ensemble, delivers an unapologetic and volatile mish-mash of experimental improvisation. The trio, comprised of Andrew Stauffer (drums), Darren Williams (tenor sax), and Nicholas Denton Protsack (cello), creates bold, unreserved, and unique sounds that defy categorization and challenge expectations. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes chaotic, the album showcases the eclectic influences of the musicians, ranging from free jazz and contemporary classical to avant-rock and folk. Each track is spontaneously created in a single take, without overdubs or edits, capturing the raw energy of the trio as they weave intricate textures and melodies as a singular unit. Far From the Tree is a daring and adventurous debut that invites you to join the Branchroot Ensemble on their sonic explorations.

Firebird

Album, (2021)

FIREBIRD is a full-length album of spoken voice and experimental music by Kythe Heller (text and voice) and duo Sounds Like Things: Andrew Stauffer (composition and percussion), and Nicholas Denton Protsack (composition and cello). The work, a realization of Heller’s Massachusetts Book Award-nominated poetry collection of the same name (Arrowsmith Press), FIREBIRD draws from a vast array of sonic resources that include spoken verse, vocalizations, cello, pitched and unpitched percussion, hammer dulcimer, bells, found objects (including boiling water, gardening gloves, fire, and snow), and field recordings. This sonic world probes the capacity of the human spirit to endure under extreme conditions. Here, fire is both a destructive and a unifying force, altering people and landscapes. Runaways, the sick and the poor, a forest and a smoldering mattress—these stunning images burn themselves into the listener’s imagination. The female body becomes the site of trauma and myth, a place where “everything is burning, has been and is always burning.”