Contents: Senior Composition Recital | Graduate Composition Recital | Tech

Degree Recitals

As with most music degrees, both my undergraduate and graduate composition degrees required a recital component. These recitals were significant compositional achievements, and represent the majority of the music I have written over the course of my career. As such, I felt it important and appropriate to single out these two performances for an exhibit.

Senior Composition Recital

My senior composition recital was given at the end of my last semester at Sacramento State on May 7th, 2019, in Capistrano Concert Hall. It featured all of the pieces I had written up to that point except for two: the multi-percussion duet Rainmaking, and my first piece for wind ensemble, Imanu’el. The former was left out because it was one of my first pieces and I considered it more of a learning experience at that point than a completed piece deserving of a performance. The latter, Imanu’el, would have been difficult to include given the size of the ensemble and the fact that it was intended to be performed by Laguna Creek High School (my alma mater) the following December. Regardless, my recital featured pieces that were important both developmentally and emotionally. Recordings of most of these pieces are available on my YouTube channel, (linked on the About page) and program notes for all seven are included in the digitized program, but there are three specific pieces I want to single out.

Room 113

Room 113 was actually written at the request of one of my friends in the percussion studio. She and I had spent a few years at San Joaquin Delta College together in nearby Stockton before transferring to Sac State. While at Delta, we were both part of a close-knit group of five percussionists. We spent many Friday nights together enjoying each other’s company before we inevitably ended up going our seperate ways. By my last year at Sac State, four of us were now part of the percussion studio there, while the fifth member was studying at Texas Tech. So for my recital, I wrote a piece the five of us could play together, also trying to play off the personalities of each member of the group. The title was an homage to our time at Delta, referencing the room number of the band room on campus there.

Recheat

Recheat was similar to Room 113 in some ways, though instead of being asked to write it, I decided to write it myself. This piece came out of a desire to write something for my sister, who had been in New Mexico for two years earning her Master’s in French Horn Performance and at the time had just started pursuing her DMA at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. As twins we had always been very close, and being seperated by such a large distance was a struggle for me, so I decided to write her a piece. For a while I had difficulty deciding what instrument to pair her with, but eventually settled on writing a French Horn duet. The final product was a three-movement work for two horns, which she performed at my recital. Unfortunately, due to technical issues during the performance, the recording was unusable, and Recheat remains one of my few pieces not available on YouTube.

Willamette Jubilee

Willamette Jubilee is a special piece because there is a good chance it will never be performed again. One of the aspects I loved most about my time at Sac State was the unique opportunities available in the percussion studio. The percussion teacher at the time, Dan Kennedy, who retired in the middle of my last year, was one of the leading experts in non-Western percussion on the West Coast. It was while studying with him that I discovered my love for hand drums, including Indian tabla. But besides hand drums, Dan also spent a good portion of every other semester teaching Balinese Gamelan. One interesing aspect about gamelan, is that each set of instruments is completely unique. There is no standardization like for many Western instruments, and so pieces cannot often be translated from one ensemble to another. With this in mind, I wrote Willamette Jubilee specifically for the gamelan set owned by Sacramento State. It was my first, and likely only, piece for gamelan, but I consider it a celebration of my amazing experiences in the Sac State Percussion Studio.

Graduate Composition Recital

My time at University of Oregon was colored by unprecedented times for the country and the world. By the end of Winter Term during my first year, rumors about a strange sickness ravaging parts of China were spreading like wildfire. Once Winter Term finally ended and we left for our Spring Break, the one week seperating the end of Winter Term and the beginning of Spring Term, it became apparent to university officials that we could not continue in-person instruction. That spring and the entire second year of my degree at Oregon were completely remote; an interesting experience when you live a five-minute walk from the music building. This meant that for over half of my career at Oregon, concerts featuring my pieces were given virtually, including my Graduate Recital. The situation being what it was, the School of Music and Dance had even decided to waive the public performance requirement for degree recitals; all I needed to do to get my degree was to present a portfolio of my completed pieces to the composition faculty, live recordings optional. Nevertheless, I was determined to share my compositional achivements, and through quite a bit of planning, managed to put together a collection of pre-recorded videos.

My Graduate Recital premiered virtually on my personal YouTube channel, without any support from the univeristy, on June 18th, 2021, six days after Oregon’s virtual commencement ceremony, which, coincidentally, was also the day my grandfather died. This recital is special to me as a single bright point that came at a very difficult time in my life, and I think the pieces themselves also embody that feeling.