Tufts Composers presented a concert of music by Tufts faculty and student composers on Friday, October 30, 2020 at 12:00 pm, featuring “vertically-organized” music by Tufts student and faculty composers suggested by cairn-building.

Featuring Asher Cohen, vibes; Iverson Eliopoulos, cello; Samuel Golub, guitar; Annie D. Kim, violin; John McDonald, piano; Julia Moss, viola; Doug Poppe, electric bass, voice, production; Nate Shaffer, marimba and electronics.

Watch New@Noon #1: Add or Remove a Stone

Program

Caleb Martin-Rosenthal: Cairn Song (2020) for piano

Niki Glenister: Zesty (2020) for viola, marimba, and piano

Claire X. Freeman: Crisscross (2020) for violin, cello, and vibraphone
Lost and found, but not necessarily in that order. A cairn of unbalanced stones that together hold, a lightless path that leads you home. (C.X.F.)

Samuel Golub: Sam’s Journey of the Cairn (2020) for solo guitar
Inspired by the harmonic stylings of the contemporary Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu, this piece takes a literal interpretation of stacking rocks to form a cairn. One ever-present theme represents the base of the cairn and each chord is supported by this theme. As the rock stack grows, it becomes more unstable until it collapses and is restructured…This is the journey of the cairn. (S.G.)

Jacquelyn Hazle: Kenosis (2020) for mixed quartet
Kenosis, meaning “self-emptying” in Greek, explores the inspiration of a cairn and stacked musical structures through timbre and texture. The music begins with a single, strong unison attack that is “emptied”, then unfolds and reveals itself as the music progresses. Like Stonehenge, a great pyramid, or a simple garden cairn, its true sum is more than a series of stacked stones (or tones) and the total number of rocks. The music portrays the appreciation of a thing in observing both the smaller pieces that make it up and the object as a whole, especially in temporality. (J.H.)

Doug Poppe: Annelise (2020)
Annelise wasn’t written as a cairn piece per se, but I think it works well as one, with the imagery of a shaky tower of stones complementing the instability and nervousness of the song. I hope I don’t mess up! Just kidding, the song will be played as a pre-recorded track.

The wind in the courtyard is wrapped in the trees
The kids in the schoolyard all catch the disease
The sun isn’t racing across the blue sky
And time isn’t waiting but passing you by
Play on my team
Annelise, Annelise
To lie at a distance from farness away
Surpassing the difference and seeing the same
The ships in the dockyard are lost out at sea
The kids in the schoolyard learn days of the week
Play on my team
Annelise, Annelise
(D.P.)

Aaron Wong: Underpinnings (2019) for piano

Andrew Daetz: What’s Left Behind Never Stays the Same (2020) for piano
What’s Left Behind Never Stays the Same chronicles the arc of a journey away from home, what-ever “home” may mean. A broad, stable chord opens the piece, gradually fading in volume until it essentially disappears. As the piece unfolds, the home chord continues to return, but the top notes successively tumble down to the bottom, like the gradual collapse of an unsteady cairn. This symbol-izes the idea that when one sacrifices something comfortable for a new opportunity—perhaps this means giving up a relationship for a job or leaving childhood friends to go to school far away—the things left behind will continue to evolve and shift on their own. Relationships may change, or they may crumble altogether in ways which cannot be restored. There is no turning back the clock. (A.D.)

Nate Shaffer: Process for Marimba and Room 21 (2020) for video recording & live marimba
The product and the process are one. Time is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. What did you do with your time? What do you think you did? Who are they? Who plays the music? (N.S.)