Ice-Nine

On April 29, the Frost Clarinet Choir will be playing my new piece, Ice-Nine.  The title is a reference to the book Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.  In Cat’s Cradle, ice-nine is an alternate crystal structure of H2O which ends up causing the world to freeze over.  In my piece I tried to create a semi narrative structure that chronicles the creation of ice-nine through the time that the world freezes over.  The piece is divided into three sections, the first of which consists of melodic fragments mixed in with bubbling minimalist textures.  I call this section “genesis”  The second section is extremely slow with dissonant clusters fading in and out of the upper voices which eventually accompany an otherworldly contrabass clarinet solo.  This section is titled “Collateral Damage”.  The final section begins with quick fragments in a 12/8 feel weaving in and out of each other which turn into a quirky yet demented melodic figure.  The section finishes out with a juxtaposition of the melody from the first section accompanied by the 12/8 figures at the beginning of the third section finally breaking down and rushing to a somewhat ambiguous finish.  This final section is titled “End Game”.

But enough explanation here’s the pdf of the score and an mp3 rendering which hopefully will be replaced by a live recording in a few weeks.

Ice-Nine.mp3

Ice-Nine.pdf

Playlist of the day

So I’ve decided to start letting Itunes decide my music for me so I’m generating Genius playlists.  And I have to say the first try was literally…genius.  I chose Jupiter by Gustav Holst and here’s what I got.

Jupiter-Gustav Holst
Symphony No. 5, Mvt 1-Ludwig van Beethoven
Carmina Burana: 1. O Fortuna-Carl Orff
Koyaanisqatsi-Philip Glass
Symphony No. 5, Mvt. 4-Gustav Mahler
Red Line Tango-John Mackey
Rocky Point Holiday-Ron Nelson
Metamorphosis, 1. Metamorphosis-Philip Glass
Serenada Schizophrana, 3. A Brass Thing-Danny Elfman
Shenandoah-Frank Ticheli
Kingfishers Catch Fire, 2. ” “-John Mackey
Symphony No. 3, IV-Philip Glass
Carmina Burana: 2. Fortune plango vulnera
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scherzo-Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony No. 3- Mvt. 1-Ludwig van Beethoven
St. Paul’s Suite, Finale-Gustav Holst
Organic-Philip Glass
Symphony No. 1, V. Hobbits-Johan de Meij
Flight of the Bumble Bee-Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Metamorphosis, 4.-Philip Glass
Courtly Airs and Dances: Allemande-Ron Nelson
Symphonic Poem “Hope”, 3.-Yuji Toriyama
Symphony No. 2: Apollo Unleashed-Frank Ticheli
Carmina Burana: 25. O Fortuna-Carl Orff
Serenada Schizophrana, 4. The Quadruped Patrol-Danny Elfman

 

So anyways, I think I’m just going to start posting these playlists every once in a while when they’re really awesome.  I really like who Genius was almost capable of creating a playlist with cyclic form by putting “O Fortuna” third and second to last.

In other news, my life has gotten so dull that I have nothing better to post than what I’m listening to.