The Answers ( video )
A string quartet whose timings are derived from the rotation, orbit, and vantage point of the first four planets in our solar system and whose pitch world is based on the harmonics of the cello’s low C.
Recorded by JACK quartet during the pandemic.

GOAT ( live video, score video )
It’s Wimbledon 2019, and Nadal and Federer face each other for the millionth time, each with their own ticks and neuroses… written for microtonal guitar, drum kit, two foot bells, and oscillating fan.
Premiered by The Living Earth Show at Stanford in 2019

lawrence st. ( video )
You are in a good place. Eggs are cooking. A saxophone quartet, rich in funny interruptions and multiphonics.
Premiered by Quasar at Stanford in 2020, played again in Montreal in 2021 for the virtual concert, Longues Distances

toccata ( video )
A percussion trio about the process of making a compelling abstract drawing. The score is very prescriptive: the type of mark, where and how it is drawn, and the rhythm with which it is made are specified, and in coordination with the other performers. In addition to drawing on contact mic’ed boards, the performers play three percussive instruments.
Premiered by Line Upon Line at their Composer Festival in 2019 in Austin and subsequently played around Texas before COVID happened.

Distraction ( documentation, score video )
A piece for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano that explores what else we think about while reading music notation. Performers read cells of music on top of ambient video that passively influence and distract, with their breath as meter.
Premiered virtually by Unheard-of Ensemble in 2020

forest ( video )
A virtuosic piece for viola d’amore, where by physically rotating, the player traverses different timbral landscapes as more and more holes appear.
Premiered by Marco Fusi in 2019 at Stanford, played again in Paris at the Columbia Global Center

impatience ( video )
A piano trio about breath and internal study. Each performer has a candle (mental or real) in front of them, where their directed exhale can flicker the flame, a fluttering sonically as well. Each performer plays according to their rate of breath, sometimes in individual worlds, sometimes aligning as one organism.
Premiered by Longleash at Future Space in Brooklyn in Summer 2019

write hand ( video )
A duo for percussion and cello about the moment when an idea is made real by the act of writing it down. We barely notice its sound until we write the same thing over and over. The cellist punctuates the percussionist’s obsessive writing of Ren Hang’s love poem.
Commissioned by Tyler Cunningham in 2017

the cartographer explains ( video, score video )
For alto flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, and soprano, about the sound of drawing. The protagonist is the percussionist, supported by the other instruments. The unique drawings above the percussion staff indicate the form to be copied/drawn on the surface of the snare drum using a drum stick or wooden end of mallet that corresponds to notes or pairs of notes on the top percussion line.
Premiered by TAK Ensemble at Stanford in 2018

is your land ( excerpt, Mivos reading )
A string quartet where each instrument plays the pitches of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land in different keys at opposite corners of the room, so that walking from one instrument to the middle of the room, one traverses from the consonance of one key to the clashing of four. Sixteen minutes in length, the second part of the piece is the retrograde of the first, implying an infinite loop, of going back to the beginning. Inspired by my unsanctioned 4-hour performance on the carillon at the Women’s March.
Recorded by Johnna Wu, Patti Kilroy, Carrie Frey, Issei Herr
Premiered at the Design District Miami, YoungArts Foundation in 2017
Read by the Mivos Quartet in 2020

carpet ( video )
Solo harpsichord piece in the form of an unmeasured prelude. The performer is trapped inside of a harpsichord house but cannot speak; we see their tormented face through a camera inside the tiny house. They’re trapped yet still playing, trapped inside a relationship that suffocates yet produces somehow beautiful.
Premiered by Robert Fleitz in the concert series Music From the Harpsichord House at 205 Hudson St., NY in 2018.

in the bell chamber ( video )
A short in situ piece for swinging bells and clarinet, as part of Bronze Breath, a soundwalk devised for the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam.
Premiered at the Dakendagen Festival in 2017

Circles in Triangle ( video @ Juilliard, video @ Hunter College )
Sculptures and theatrical performance for celesta, composed using notes chosen by the geometry of congruent circles inscribed in a triangle. These “scores” are laser-etched onto plexiglass, which to a non-human, could be equated to a CD without yet a CD player. The sculpture is both score and recording, and is more meaningfully, a recording that determined its form without the restrictions of a recording device. This explanation is included in interludes which are pre-recorded and played in between pieces, alongside temporary tattoos that audience members were asked to put onto their bodies, “scoring” themselves as well.
Premiered by Robert Fleitz at Not Another Piano Recital, NYC in 2015