Tuesday Night New Music: Ha, Rosenberg, Rozen, Mincarelli, Xu, Chapman, Guan, Engelhardt, L. Chen

Changjin Ha | Crocodile's Dream (2024)

…before the apple…
Desireé
Honey
The color of the rose
Petals
Roses and apples share same roots
Es spricht

Program note

Crocodile’s Dream is a 15 minute set of 8 miniature pieces (7 performed tonight) that explores the realm of desire. It explores how a desire forms, develops, and resolves. The text is kept simple and mostly consists of words and melismas.                                        
– Changjin Ha

Tomer Rozen | Poetry for July 19 (2024)

dim/i/nu/tiv…
spirit colossal…
Jack’s white horse( up…
if the Lovestar grows most big…

Quinn Rosenberg | Equinox (2023)

Program note

Originally written for NEC's Climate Change Culture and Performance Practicum 2023 interdisciplinary event, Equinox is a love letter to the ways human experiences and natural phenomena mimic one another. Its name comes from the two times per year when the sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night are equal length. We are not separate from the ecosystems which surround us; we are a part of them.
- Quinn Rosenberg

Samuel Mincarelli | Third Movement from Piano Sonata No. 1 (2024)

Program note

The harmonic language of this piece is of my own creation. I employ structures built of a tritone and a fourth, spanning a major seventh. Upon the fourth, I can stack more, allowing me to travel to new harmonies. While there are a lot more intricacies to the language, this is its most basic principle. I composed the final movement of the sonata first since I was not prepared to compose in sonata form with an unfamiliar style. Over the course of the compositional process, the language became more intuitive, evolving from theoretical to practical. The piece follows a ternary form, allowing me to focus on harmony rather than form.                           
– Samuel Mincarelli

Yangfan Xu | Turn Me Into Ocean (2023)

Program note

Turn Me Into Ocean was commissioned by Kenneth Radnofsky and draws inspiration from a my poem about a nocturnal journey through a cityscape leading to a personal transformation and a discovery of solitude.

Turn Me Into Ocean

I walk down the street at the witching hour,
The night sky looks like an endless abyss of Coca-Cola.
Fizzing, sparkling, bubbling,
So deep as if to devour everything.
I can smell midsummer in the air.

I walk on the sidewalk to the right.
Streetlights are shaking and blurring,
And it makes me dizzy in a sober way
Street lamps are gradually morphing into moons
Many different moons above my head.

I walk down the hill on the sidewalk to the right,
Many moons are ramping by.
I fell headlong into a mass of soft shadows.
While the waves hit my soles hard,
The world turns upside down,
Many moons below my feet.

My limbs are melting away.
I float in the middle of the ocean.
Falling into unconsciousness.
My mind turns into an ocean.

Yangfan Xu, April, 2023

Coco Chapman | Mood Ring Suite (2024)

Black and White
Purple
Camouflage
Blue and Red
Teal

Program note

I wrote this piece about a personal relationship that, while over by the time I started writing this, really affected me. I thought composing would be a good way to process my feelings, so when I arrived back on campus after summer break, I improvised what would become the last movement of this cycle. I was hoping to work with my studio teacher on vocal writing, as I have been writing songs with lyrics for as long as I can remember but have always been too embarrassed to share them with any of my teachers. This set's allegorical style allowed me to share this deeply personal message with my studio teacher, who encouraged me to keep writing songs for the cycle. I decided to dedicate each movement to a different time in the relationship and the feelings that accompanied that time, naming them after colors, as I have synesthesia. Some of the movements, such as Black and White, are named after colors that are most associated with the feelings I capture, while others, like Teal, are named after colors I associate with the harmonic canvas I am using. A big thanks to Ying for bringing these portraits to life!                                               
– Coco Chapman

Amelia Guan | Cold 冷 (2023)

𝓼𝓽𝓪𝔂𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓲𝓯𝓾𝓵♡                                                                               

– Amelia Guan

Austin Engelhardt | Gutai (2024)

Program note

Gutai is a piece written as an experiment in self listening. During the piece, every musical choice the pianist makes has the potential to come back later through the electronics. The performer must always be listening and be ready to respond to and come to terms with the decisions made previously in the performance.
– Austin Engelhardt

Linxi Chen | i into the body of a whale, transfigured into a bubble (2024)

Program note

i into the body of a whale, within the endless abysm and darkness, breath seems to depart from me. I listen to the sound of a whale, its vibrations dissect my body, light seeping into my form, tracing a path through the sinews of my bones, caressing and eroding. I meld, and cuddled its body, melding as one, like a bubble.         
– Linxi Chen