Passages
Ensemble: for multi-genre soloists and wind ensemble
Duration: 30’
Written: 2023
Commissioned by: the University of Miami Frost School of Music for the Frost Wind Ensemble, Robert M. Carnochan, conductor
Premiered: CBDNA Conference on February 17th, 2023, conducted by Robert M. Carnochan, with Sydney Altbacker, Jose Ignacio, Chad Nelson, and Dizzy Senze, soloists
Babel On
Heights
Fluttering / Hovering
I was thrilled to have the chance to write Passages, a large-scale work for wind ensemble and multi-genre soloists. Over the last decade I have written pieces for ShoutHouse, the ensemble that I direct in New York City, with the goal of creating a collaborative space for hip-hop, jazz, and classical musicians to compose and perform together. It has been a joy to bring the work I do in ShoutHouse to other ensembles and to experiment in the wind ensemble medium through Passages.
When Dr. Robert Carnochan from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami approached me about writing a ShoutHouse-style piece for wind ensemble, I immediately thought about language as a unifying theme for the work. I pictured emcees, a singer, jazz soloists, and dozens of instrumentalists attempting to communicate a single narrative through music and words. That tension and opposition among styles would become a basis for playful structural shifts and dynamic musical conversations. I approached my friends spiritchild and Dizzy Senze, both emcees in New York, and we proposed different stories and themes that could serve as inspiration for each movement of the piece.
The sung texts in this piece were written by spiritchild and set to music by me. As with ShoutHouse performances, the emcee lyrics are always written by the emcees, so while the singer’s lyrics remain the same among performances, the rapped lyrics will change depending on the featured soloist.
This first movement, “I. Babel On”, centers around the story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis. It features the singer as a narrator, guiding the dramatic "ow of the story with spiritchild’s texts. As the movement progresses, we travel from unified harmony to discord and alienation, following the story through the lens of multiple soloists.
The second movement, “II. Heights”, begins where the first movement ends, with a feeling of disconnect and breakdown in communication after the fall of universal language and harmony. The emcees represent opposing forces in this movement, bridging the narrative from the shadows at the end of the first movement to the lightness of the third.
When I read spiritchild’s texts for the third movement, “III. Fluttering / Hovering”, I was immediately transported back to a specific moment in my life, many years ago. It was a beautiful autumn week in Brooklyn, and a friend and I decided to drive up to the Adirondacks in upstate New York for a respite from the city. One morning, I woke up, grabbed my manuscript paper, pencil, and a big thermos of coffee, and wandered into the woods. I spent the next eight hours alone, surrounded by pine forests listening to the language of the natural world around me. Sitting on a wooden bridge on the edge of a remote lake, I wrote loud, ecstatic music, my first attempts at writing for full orchestra. In composing the final movement of Passages, I drew inspiration from that moment in the woods, spiritchild’s texts, and the idea of harmony between the languages of the natural world, the human voice, and varying musical styles.
I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Carnochan for believing in and supporting this project, and to spiritchild for his creativity and dedication to the creation of the texts. I would also like to thank the soloists on the premiere performance—Dizzy Senze, Chad Nelson, Sydney Altbacker, and José Ignacio, for their incredible virtuosity and individual artistic voices that served as inspiration during my writing process.
