Highway Music

Posted on January 8, 2012


Back in December, violist Wendy Richman came to DC to premiere Highway Music at the Strathmore Mansion. This piece, and the event (commissioned and presented by Strathmore, with additional support from the Randy Hostetler Livingroom Music Fund) were a long time in the making: I had wanted to write something for Wendy for a few years when Strathmore approached me back in 2009. The evening ended up featuring a few other premieres as well, by none other than Ken Ueno, David Smooke, Everette Minchew, and Jose-Luis Hurtado. (Just to keep it interesting, Wendy also tacked on some music by Kaija Saariaho and Giacinto Scelsi.) In the tradition of Scelsi’s Manto, each of the newly composed pieces featured Wendy’s voice in some way.

Below you’ll see 3 video excerpts from my piece. Highway Music was inspired by the experience of traveling long distances to be with loved ones. For me, any road trip is accompanied by music, whether surfing through radio stations or dialing up a mix on an iPod. Rather than a depiction of a specific journey, the piece is an exploration of the various states of mind on a several hour road-trip. As a kind of mixtape to accompany a journey, I hope it helps a listener explore and contemplate the spaces between departing and arriving. More info on the piece here.

Highway Music, Part 1 of 3:

Highway Music, Part 2 of 3:

Highway Music, Part 3 of 3:

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Fall 2011

Posted on November 27, 2011

Two new videos to share from the Livewire Festival back in late-October! Below, you can check out Pictures on Silence diving into Plunge, and Rob Patterson from the Verge Ensemble shredding On the Whiteness of the Whale.

I just wrapped up my new trio, Tudo bem? Tudo bom?, for flute, bassoon, and piano, composed for Jennifer Parker-Harley, Michael Harley, and Steven Aldredge. I’ll be announcing the premiere and a string of performances at some point in the next coming weeks (Feb. 3rd is the DC date!).

new videos:

New things…

Posted on August 3, 2011

Welcome to the significantly updated stephengorbos.com! A big thank you to Alexandra Gardner for her work on this site over the summer. Please bear with us as we continue to work out the bugs with this new design. If you notice that any features are down, contact me at info@stephengorbos.com and we’ll look into it. If you’re interested in getting the occasional update about what I’ve been up to, take a minute and sign up for my mailing list, and look me up on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube (all conveniently set up on the right side of this page).

Upcoming performances:
– in late October, the Livewire Festival in Baltimore will feature performances of my music by Pictures On Silence and the Verge Ensemble.

– in December, Wendy Richman will be premiering Highway Music, commissioned by the Strathmore Music Center, for viola and electronics.

Current projects:
Over the upcoming months I’ll be working on a new solo piece for bassist Ira Gold, a trio for flute/bassoon/piano, and a piece for two harps for the Sprezzatura Duo.

Check back soon for more updates.

A few things to share from this past spring

Posted on May 10, 2011

As the semester winds down, I have a few things to share from the past few months:

– League of the Unsound Sound premiered my Faulkner-inspired Selfish Houses on Blood Strange Roads, for bassoon, vibes, piano, violin, viola, and double bass. You can check out the piece here, along with reviews of the DC and Baltimore shows (best sentence from a review ever: It was a subtly balanced dissertation on space and distance, time and transference, para-mountaineering, dis-tempering solace and crystal gravy, from the Baltimore What Weekly).

– Maya Stone premiered 8-bit Divertimento, for bassoon and electronics. Go here to listen to the piece and watch a video assembled from clips of old-school 8-bit Nintendo games.

– Listen to David Searle and the CUA orchestra play the heck out of a new revised version of Diaphony:
Diaphony

– I’ve joined the video revolution: I finally have a youtube channel.

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Pushing Ahead

Posted on February 2, 2011

I’m really pleased to announce that Push, my piece for 12 percussionists commissioned by the Moores School Percussion Ensemble at the University of Houston, received a CAP Grant from the American Music Center. This past fall, Blake Wilkins and the group premiered the work and gave several performances of it on their fall tour. Below is the live recording from their November 13th performance at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Push was composed this past summer, just after returning from my honeymoon in Turkey. The title refers to the gradual pushing forward of the tempo, as well as the canonic activity on the musical surface. After the slow, spacious opening, the music breaks out into what is probably the most dance-like, groove-oriented music I’ve composed in several years. Thanks to Blake and the ensemble for doing a fantastic job with this:

Push
More info on the piece can be found here.

After a January/most of February spent in hibernation, I’ve got a busy few weeks lined up: Collide-O-Scope Music rides again, with shows in Brooklyn at the Issue Project Room on Thursday Feburary 24th, and in a special performance on Friday March 11th on the Intersections Festival DC at the Atlas Performing Arts Center here in Washington (along with pieces by Cage, Xenakis, Nono, and Chris Bailey, both of these shows will feature some improvised material from me on electronics, and Noah Getz performing my sax and electronics piece Echoes of Amber). On March 19th the League of the Unsound Sound premieres Selfish Houses on Blood Strange Roads, my tribute to William Faulkner’s As I lay dying, in DC at Catholic University, followed the next day by a performance at the Windup Space in Baltimore, MD. The Catholic University Orchestra will attempt another performance of Diaphony (they tried last year, but were thwarted by the snowpocalypse…March 22nd and 25th should be late enough in the season to not be stopped by another few feet of snow). Bassoonist Maya Stone and composer Spencer Lambright are coming up to DC for a show at Catholic University on Wednesday, March 30th, which will feature premiere’s by both Spencer and myself. This will be followed by a roadtrip down to Murphreesboro, TN, for a repeat performance at MTSU on April 7th.

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New recording, new performance

Posted on November 22, 2010

Pictures on Silence premiered Plunge, for harp, alto sax, and electronics, on Friday, Nov. 12th. Jacky and Noah did a fantastic job with this, and I’m really happy to share this recording from the performance. Their gentle pacing and plaintive lyricism is exactly what I was looking for:

Plunge
More info on the piece can be found here.

If you’re in the Boston area on Friday, Dec. 11th, come check out the world premiere of a new arrangement of And They Sing This, for Bb clarinet and electronics. The piece was selected by the Boston New Music Initiative from a call for scores. Written last spring for oboeist Emily Madsen, And They Sing This uses recordings I made in India around Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, interviews I conducted with my great-uncle before just before he died, and a delay patch on the live performer. This new version for Clarinet will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 11th at Lilypad in Cambridge, MA (tix $10), along with pieces by Jason Bolte, Kyong Mee Choi, John Gibson, Moon Young Ha, Jeff Herriott, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Kirsten Volness. Map/directions here.

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Lots of stuff coming up to announce

Posted on October 25, 2010

If you’re in Indianapolis on Saturday, November 13th, come and see Blake Wilkins and the Moores School Percussion Ensemble from the University of Houston play Push at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. More info on that event here. They’ll be premiering the piece on Monday, November 1st at a special preview concert at the University of Houston before they hit the road for the trip up north.

Closer to home, Pictures on Silence will premiere Plunge, for harp, alto sax, and electronic sounds, on Friday, November 12th on a concert in John Paul Hall at Catholic University in Washington, DC at 7:30pm (free!). As promised in my August post, this piece involves sounds I recorded while traveling this past summer with my trusty microtrack. Most of them come from the harbor in Southampton, UK (the place where both the Mayflower and the Titanic left from!): lots of boats and docks creaking in the waves. Giving in to my long-time fascination with British accents, I also used a bunch of conversations I picked up around town. Pictures on Silence will take the Plunge on what’s shaping up to be a pretty exciting event: lots of electronics, some pieces that involve film, and another world premiere by composer Anna Rubin.

Signals, commissioned by the NOW Ensemble last year, will be played by DC’s Great Noise Ensemble on Friday, December 3rd. Info and tickets to that event can be found here.

On Sunday, October 3rd, Collide-O-Scope Music got off to a great start this season with an opening event at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in NYC. Along with my piece Surely Some Revelation?, we featured works by Cage and co-director Christopher Bailey. In addition to this first event, we’ll also be putting on another NYC event at the Issue Project Room on Feb. 24th, and on March 11th here in DC at the Atlas Theatre, as part of the Intersections DC festival (Collide-O-Scope’s DC debut!).

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Summertime updates

Posted on August 10, 2010

I’m just wrapping up a commission from the Moores School Percussion Ensemble at University of Houston. Director Blake Wilkins, a composer as well, does wonderful things with this group. They’ll be premiering something I’m tentatively calling Push, for 12 percussionists, this fall. More info to follow.

Collide-O-Scope Music will ride again: we’ve got some very cool things lined up for our second season, which we will be ready to announce shortly. I’m also just starting work on a commission from Pictures On Silence, a fantastic harp and sax duo based in the DC/Baltimore area. In that piece, I’m hoping to involve some sounds I collected while traveling in Turkey and the UK.

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