Electronic

Forwards and Backwards (2025)

First performed by Val Jeanty (Val-Inc) at the University of Virginia, February 2026

Forwards and Backwards incorporates pre-recorded music and live sample performance. The piece includes field recordings and synthesized sounds, which are layered (and sometimes reversed) to create the music with which the performer will engage. Over the course of the piece, the performer improvises with samples drawn from different categories: ARP 2500 synthesizer, bird recordings, water recordings, and recordings of a stainless steel water bottle being hit (which produces a resonant tone). The performer also has access to the reversed version of each sample. Each section of the piece utilizes different combinations of sample types, and the performer incorporates a variety of dynamics and textures in dialogue with the music. In this first performance, Val Jeanty also incorporated other electronic sounds and acoustic percussion. Overall, the combination of fixed media, live performance, natural sounds, synthesized sounds, and processing creates a texture that is both carefully crafted and organic.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The pre-recorded piece was presented at Digitalis at the University of Virginia in April 2026. It was titled Forwards & Backwards / In & Out / High & Low; this variation on the title is meant to emphasize the contours of the recording, as it is presented with no live sample performance.

Rings of Memory (2024)

First performed at Digitalis at the University of Virginia, April 2024

Rings of Memory explores different ways of conceptualizing time, using the rings of a tree as thematic material. The rings are concentric, suggesting a way of looking at time that differs from the conventional tendency to think of it as progressing from left to right along a straight line. The piece opens with a long melody representing the tree's life; the melody is made up of smaller units, each representing an individual year. After the full melody is heard, the piece explores the tree's life as a collection of layered melodies. Although time progresses linearly, the tree rings accumulate concentrically. The individual melodies are grouped into sets as a way to organize the tree's life into discrete multi-year units. The exploration of the tree's music begins with its innermost set of rings and slowly adds each successive set, creating a progressively rich texture of sounds that eventually come to encompass all of the time represented in the rings. As time progresses, the melodies of years past become quieter, but are still heard in the layered sound to represent the fact that the tree's life is comprised of all of its individual years and the memories that come with them. The image of the tree rings figures prominently in the performance; tracing around the rings with a controller causes corresponding changes in panning around a multi-channel speaker system.

Jazz trio Max patch (2022)

This fixed media piece uses as its source material the live recording of a jazz piano trio that I wrote and performed in college. The original piece is titled “3.4.3” to reflect the meter of the different sections: it begins in a jazz waltz (in 3), then transitions into a quick swing tempo (fast 4), and returns to the jazz waltz at the end (again in 3). I wanted to experiment with audio signal processing, so I created a Max patch that applies randomly generated values between 0.9 and 0.99 to the playback speed to create a “pitch bend” effect. My goal was to create a piece that maintains enough of the original recording to be recognizable as such, but also has a distinct character due to the variations on the source material.