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Sextet
2024
Baritone
Bass
Contralto
Mezzo-soprano
Soprano
Tenor
- Program Notes
- I wrote this piece for my master's recital, which also marked end of my schooling for the foreseeable future. While facing the mild existential crisis of "what do I do once I'm out of school?" I found myself pondering the nuances of the relationships I had with my formative musical institutions, including the American Boychoir, the Walden School's Young Musician's Program, Princeton University (and by extension its choirs and the Katzenjammers acappella group), the University of Southern California, and the vocal octet Exilio. Similarly, I also found myself thinking about the nuances of the intersections of composing, singing, and conducting (my three musical disciplines), and the nature of collaboration and peer leadership. Movements 1 and 2 set literary quotations that felt topical to my thoughts at the time of writing. Movements 3 and 4 focus much more on the filigree of the rehearsal and collaborative process; movement 5 is the emotional core of the cycle, using quotations of music that I sang at the institutions listed earlier to make a narrative collage inspired by the plunderphonics of artists like The Avalanches and J Dilla. Movements 6 and 7 depart from the retrospection of the earlier movements to celebrate the present and to accept not having answers for all questions. This piece was written for a vocal sextet of interdisciplinary singers: Hannah Rice, Mingjia Chen, Ann Chen, Daniel Montes de Oca Tellez, Koji Sakano, and me. Special thanks to the performers as well as to Ted Hearne, Donald Crockett and Andrew Norman (my composition teachers at the time of writing), and to Gabriel Crouch and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, for inspiring me to write this due to their model of interdisciplinary leadership.
- Recording Notes
Hannah Rice, soprano
Mingjia Chen, mezzo
Ann Chen, alto
Daniel Montes de Oca Tellez, tenor
Koji Sakano, baritone
Theo Trevisan, bass