Fixate, for string quartet
Read by JACK Quartet April 26, 2023
“Fixate” isn’t just a commentary on my own ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but everyone’s shrinking attention span – it’s so difficult for any of us to just focus on any one given thing. However, while composing this piece in itself was a personal exercise in concentration, it was also a meditation on unmindfulness, finding comfort and relief in an inevitable dissociation from a world that is constantly bombarding us with distractions and stimuli.
Here’s one subjective but not definitive interpretation of the direction of this piece: The music struggles with itself to find a balance between two extremes of hazy unisons, and frenetic, hyper-focused rhythms. It gradually dissociates from a stiff harmonic pattern into a kind of aloof folk-like jam, before returning to an even more austere and hypnotic stasis. Eventually, the music breaks out of its self-imposed trance and intensifies manically to a peak, before finally finding an uneasy peace.
December 2, 2017 live premiere
Bard College Conservatory Orchestra
Jean-Marie Zeitouni, guest conductor
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This piece for orchestra is a tribute to my late father’s passion for space. The title refers to the three telescopes my dad owned and used to view the night sky. Many of the textures in the orchestra resemble the energy of sparkling stars and bright colorful planets. In terms of form I created sections that start out small and quiet but eventually telescope outwards to a fuller sound.
Premiered May 9, 2022
Yelin Wang, clarinet
Daniel Santiago Castellanos, piano
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This piece, for clarinet and piano, is an ode to the delicious Cuban meals my abuelos have cooked for me since childhood. My abuela has unfortunately forgotten how to cook many of her iconic recipes due to her Alzheimer’s, but my abuelo can still cook a few of his signature meals. One of them is his “revoltillo,” a breakfast meal that is essentially eggs scrambled with potatoes and veggies, served either with or on a roll. The piece evokes the sounds of simmering food, as well as the nostalgic and bittersweet feelings I have towards these meals that I know I won’t be able to enjoy forever.
Premiered July 2015; revised and performed again in March 2016:
I wrote an earlier version of this piece for the Semiosis Quartet that they premiered that summer. The revised version was premiered by my colleagues Lun Li, Alex van der Veen, Joe Burke, and Emily Munstedt in the spring of 2016.
Performed on May 18, 2018.
Rufus Müller, tenor
Maeve Schallert, violin
Lily Moerschel, cello
Eva Grunblatt, clarinet/bass clarinet
Gabriela Rosado, flute
Corey Chang, piano
Sam Gohl & Ryan Voell, percussion
Michael Patterson, conductor
Ethan Isaac, engineer
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Back in 2018, I wrote a song cycle based on eight poems of Catullus, an ancient Roman poet. I centered the narrative of my work around the passionate yet hotheaded character presented in many of his poems. In the final movement of this piece, “Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,” we encounter the character of Catullus just after a fiery break-up with his lover, Lesbia. When composing this movement I sought to capture the two conflicting sides of Catullus’ character: the one that wants to be tough and hide all feelings, and the one that wants to openly express raw emotion. I thought the words in this poem still resonate with our own present-day society’s expectations to ignore our feelings and treat them as a sign of weakness rather than true strength.
Premiered at Bito CPS, Bard College, May 4, 2019
Chloë Schaaf, mezzo-soprano
Florence Mak, piano
Texts from a sermon by Henry Scott-Holland, Vergil’s Aeneid, and Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet Cycle.
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Notes on the piece:
Early on in our friendship, Chloë and I discovered that we’d both lost a parent to cancer when we were young. At some point last year, she asked me to write a set of songs in her mom’s memory. Inevitably, my own experience losing my dad provided much of the initial inspiration for the piece. The material in the first movements evoke a hazy, dreamlike feeling, inspired by bittersweet dreams I’d have and still have of my dad returning to visit me and my family for a brief moment before departing back into the afterlife. The middle two movements deal with the process of grieving over a loved one. The second movement uses text from a storm scene in the first book of the Aeneid as a metaphor for the initial raw pangs of grief. The third movement quotes a passage from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on Love, and it implies the gradual reconciliation and acceptance of our suffered loss. The final movement returns to the dreamlike texture, while adding that death is merely “slipping into the next room.”
Performed live by the Da Capo Chamber Players in 2016.
Daniel Santiago Castellanos 