Sketches is a set of eight short pieces for solo piano written in 2010. Here they are in Youtube video performances by the pianist, composer and filmmaker Brian Hanke.

Prologue:

 

I-Contrast:

 

II-Scales:

 

III-Staccato:

 

IV-Bells:

 

V-Melody:

 

VI-Swing:

 

Epilogue:

I composed my Piano Quartet #1 in 2018 on commission from my friends, the Northern Third Quartet: Sofia Hirsch, violin; Elizabeth Reid, viola; John Dunlop, cello; and Alison Cerutti, piano. The work is in six movements. Movements II and V are solo movements for viola and cello, respectively, while Movement III is a duet for violin and cello. Movements I, IV and VI are for the entire quartet. Here is a recording of the Northern Third Quartet’s third performance of the work in October, 2018:

My second string quartet was written in late 2007 and early 2008 on commission from the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, Vermont in honor of its 100th anniversary. It’s a five-movement work in which movements I and II are played without pause. The same is true of movements IV and V. Here is a recording made at the premiere performance in March, 2008, performed by the Chiara String Quartet, for whom the work was written:

Movement I:

 

Movement II:

 

Movement III:

 

Movement IV:

 

Movement V:

 

Glimpses of Azure is a four-movement work I composed in 2013 on commission from the wonderful Boston-based conductorless string orchestra, A Far Cry. Here is a performance of the work by them that took place at the Gardner Museum in Boston in December, 2013.

Movement I:

 

Movement II:

 

Movement III:

 

Movement IV:

I wrote this short fanfare in 2014 on commission from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, in honor of their 80th anniversary. Here is a performance by them from March, 2015, with Music Director Jaime Laredo conducting.

I wrote this work back in late 1992, almost 30 years ago, and it is still my most-performed choral piece. And unusually for me, I also wrote the words. Here is the text:

OUR WISH THIS YEAR IS PEACE

As we look out upon the darkness of the night,

The shorten’d days, our world bereft of light and warmth,

Our wish this year is peace.

As we lament the poor, disfigured, bleeding earth

Whose sons and daughters kill her in their march toward worthless goals,

While all her life slips down and ever further downward,

Our wish this year is peace.

For justice to rain down upon us all,

The poor, the dispossessed, the hungry, smallest child,

We must do more than hope.

But hope is often all we have

To outface logic and the seeming void

Which cries with hideous laughter “All is lost!”

And yet in darkness often miracles occur.

The smallest seed will germinate and, blurring time and space, confound the odds and grow.

And so, like seeds, our hopes in darkness rest.

While tears of love and moist despair, invested without thinking,

May bring nurture and the birth of something new,

Awaited since the dawn of time by all who truly love.

Our wish this year is peace.

 

Trajectory of Flight is a cycle of six songs for mezzo-soprano and strings. The work was written in 2011 for a concert of some of my choral and vocal works. All poems are by Vermont poet Jean L. Connor. Here they are:

I

NOW, IN MARCH

Outside, drifts of brazen snow

and the bitter hour glass of cold.

Inside, pressed against the pane,

pots of green and the first white

geranium, tenuous, unfolding.

And hidden deep within, the stubborn

candle of my will, ablaze,

steady, before that duality,

death, a February thing, and life,

which reaches out to April

and on occasion sings.

II

ALLEGRO: A MAY SONG FOR

NESTING SWALLOWS AND FLUTE

Lay claim my love. This flowering

tree is ours, this sweet aperture

our home. Now the high notes,

reedy, clear. Listen. Music, dipped

in azure, ripples towards the sun.

Ascend. Ascend. Join forces

with the flute. Come breast the sky,

the gentian sky. Turn. Turn.

Scissor the fabric, release the tethered world.

III

EVENING

Down in the woods,

a thrush repeats

the measured triads

of his flute-like song,

recounts the old rhapsodic tales

of lost serenities and peace.

As darkness deepens,

his voice grows still

and I am left

holding silence

in a thin white cup,

gold-banded,

rare.

IV

LATE AUGUST

Everything was made of time:

the apples, green, the milk-weed pods,

split and drying, the seeds,

wind-borne, driven.

All was movement and becoming,

clouds cartwheeled through space,

never arriving. Day held

no fixed point, only urgencies

and the tattered banners

of the hours. At last,

the longed-for darkness came,

hollowed out, shaped as night.

Then, not as an intruder,

but as one accustomed to the place,

the hour, a cricket began to sing,

steady, sure, and as he sang

the world slowed to meet

his pace, found itself webbed

about in peace. The grasses–

sleep-heavy, wet with dew.

V

KEEPING THE SILENCE

If you listen,

you hear apples fall

and the low nasal complaint

of a nuthatch.

In the distance,

a man hammers, a dog barks,

the church bell

mingles with the cry of asters.

In the wind-dipped silence,

I hold a space apart:

the call of jays

cannot reach me.

I have become amenable

to purple, the savor of grapes,

the waning of crimson,

the fall of leaves.

Now in October,

I sing a slow song,

praising the gold

of diminishment.

VI

ALMOST NIGHT

Quick flight of a bird

across the field that lies

outstretched before the night.

Only silence in the going.

Late, late. And a cool mist rising.

Unknown the name,

unknown the color,

the only certitude,

the dark trajectory of flight.

All poems taken from A Cartography of Peace, published by Passager Books, 2005. Copyright 2005 by Jean L. Connor. Used with permission of the poet.

The performance is by mezzo-soprano Wendy Hoffman, Sofia Hirsch and Laura Markowitz, violins; Elizabeth Reid, viola; John Dunlop, cello; and Evan Premo, bass; conducted by me.

I- Now, in March:

II- Allegro:

III- Evening:

IV- Late August:

V- Keeping the Silence:

VI- Almost Night:

 

A Voice in the Night is a work for bassoon and piano that I wrote in 2015 for bassoonist William Short, principal bassoonist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, and Bryan Wagorn, pianist and assistant conductor at the Met. This recording is of the premiere performance in New York City, November 15, 2016, played by Billy and Bryan.

Movement I:

Movement II:

Movement III:

Movement IV:

Summer is a work I composed in 2011 specially for a concert of my choral and vocal music. It uses a beautiful poem by Jean L. Connor, a wonderful Vermont poet who is still with us at the age of 101 as of this writing in summer of 2020. Here is the poem:

SUMMER

Every solstice

should be as this one, suspended

between evening

and the slow coming on of stars,

the great bear first, then the jeweled

crown. Let every solstice pause,

linger in a meadow, imagined

or real, blue with lupine,

the fields wide, the self small,

a place afloat between this

fixed earth and the transparencies

of clouds. Give silence room,

there anger seeps away. Out of the hidden,

fireflies may come to semaphore

a blessing. Beneath the deepening sky,

bright wands and an old cartography of peace.

Poem taken from A Cartography of Peace, published by Passager Books, 2005. Copyright 2005 by Jean L. Connor. Used with permission of the poet.

This performance is by Voces Dulcissimae, conducted by Larry Hamberlin