Izzo:Tilly Losch

At this point I've got about 8 minutes of music: Theme/Variation1/Variation2.  My goal is to compose another 4 minutes or so, specifically a slow variation and an ending/final variation.  I find that as I write these variations, I'm matching the music to specific pieces of Cornell's, as opposed to simply trying to communicate the general themes that run through his work.  As such I've decided to use the titles of these works to name each of my variations.

The music in this post is called Tilly Losch, which is the name of a famous ballerina from the early 20th. century.  As you can see, the piece consists of a young girl floating in mid-air perhaps supported by a giant balloon that we can't see, though we can see taut strings behind her.

Electronic realization: 

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Biondi: Drafting

For several years, I have been wanting to compose a piece based on some aspect of the biblical king David. The upcoming concert provided a good forum for this, and I have chosen an ensemble of soprano voice, cello, piano & percussionist. For text, I have selected two Psalms of David and plan on presenting them in the original Hebrew.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?

The above image is a collage of some of my early thoughts for the opening of the piece. Even if you don't read music, you can see that this is truly a very "rough" draft. And it isn't necessarily a linear presentation of how the piece will unfold, but rather an assortment of random musings as I begin to formulate the piece in my brain.

Hopefully all of this will begin to make some sense soon.

The text you see is Psalm 3, and I hope to convey a sense of urgent conflict in the opening of the piece.

Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!

Many are they that rise up against me.

Now at this point in my compositional process I am generally trying to calm the chaos in my head. But interpreting this text is encouraging me to do the opposite. I'm finding that the chaos wants to come out in its raw, unabashed original form. My challenge will be to find a way to unbridle this beast, while not getting bogged down in the strict notation. In other words, when hearing to the piece, I want the listener to be enveloped in the turmoil of the music, and not be subjected to an overly complicated science project.

Izzo: You Are Here...Again

O.k., so the music that I last wrote about doesn't work, mainly because I it's simply too sappy.
After failing to convince myself that I could work with the music in question, I was reminded by my friend Craig that I can go back and work directly from my original thematic idea. I'd completely lost sight of this due to my desire and panic to move forward, (deadlines will do this to you). 


Based on his sage advice I re-evaluated the theme and wrote a direct response in the form of a first variation. As you'll hear in the clip below, the theme has got a nostalgic, Romantic sound.  The first variation is playful but somewhat abstract; very different from the theme.  The theme to me represents a sort of dream world that I plan on quoting from throughout the piece.  I'm hoping that the juxtaposition of these different styles will make for an interesting formal tension.  

Electronic realization:

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