This Way Forever (2023)
for flute, trumpet, violin + electronics, ca. 10'00"
full recording coming soon!
Composed for In^Set (David Aguila, Teresa Díaz, and Ilana Waniuk) in 2023, This Way Forever explores ideas relating to personality and personal approaches to music. Performing on their primary instruments takes a backseat, as performers are invited to play percussion, sing karaoke and complete various theatrical actions inspired by one another. In addition to these theatrical actions, the performers also provide musical and text samples for inclusion in the performance, with the result being a mashup of the personalities involved. This Way Forever weaves these materials into a vibrant and chaotic theatrical experience which playfully explores the nature of working outside one's comfort zone, and performing with people one knows quite well.
score sample
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Scratching (2016)
for prepared piano + 2 offstage voices, ca. 10'00"
Written for Barbara Byers, Lauren Jones, and Mari Kawamura, Scratching is a playful yet unsettling work which explores the boundaries of piano performance as well as those of performance spaces and audience expectations. The piano playing in the work is highly percussive, and requires the performer to be in near constant contact with the instrument's various internal components.
score sample
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full recording:
Barbara Byers + Lauren Jones, voice; Mari Kawamura, piano
recorded live @ UC San Diego, Conrad Prebys Concert Hall;
January 18th, 2017
Moonflower (2017)
for guitar trio, ca. 7'00"
Written for the 2017 SoundSCAPE festival in Maccagno, Italy, Moonflower blends popular, folk, and contemporary styles to create an unusual yet idiomatic sort of modern nachtmusic. The work often asks the performers to sing, or tap percussively on the instrument, creating an extended and atmospheric musical environment which explores the range of possibilities offered by the acoustic guitar.
score sample
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full recording:
Jeremy Bass, Dieter Hennings, + Kique Ortiz, guitars
A Grin Without a Cat (2017)
for bass clarinet, contrabass, piano + percussion, ca. 10'00"
full recording:
Madison Greenstone, bass clarinet; Matt Kline, bass
Mari Kawamura, piano; Sean Dowgray, percussion
Steven Schick, Conducting
A Grin Without a Cat, (2017) uses Lewis Carrol’s famous children’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as a basis to explore the ways in which textual intelligibility can be limited or obscured without being destroyed outright. The selected text is from Alice’s first encounter with the nebulous Cheshire Cat, a conversation which is rife with semantic games, and logical inversions. These sorts of inversions are taken to an extreme level in this work, with the discussion often presented as a tangled web of text, approximating sonically the confused and disorienting nature of the conversation at hand.
score sample
To inquire about full scores please submit a form on the Contact page