Concert One

"“dans les dents de la guivre” is the opening movement of ""Valentina V.,"" an in-progress extended monodrama for harp, multichannel electroacoustic sound, video, and lighting. In this work, the harpist adopts the persona of a historical figure: 14th-century noblewoman Valentina Visconti, whose life ended in tragedy and exile. Cast in five movements, ""Valentina V."" presents an imagined scene near the end of Valentina’s life in which she is confined to her chamber with only her precious harp to confide in. Musical materials are in part derived from Jacob de Senleches’s song “La harpe de melodie,” which he likely composed as a gift for Valentina to sing and play herself. The music of “La harpe” is at times referenced directly; at other times, it emerges in a fragmented or distorted form, representing Valentina’s reminiscences as they are filtered through her fractured psyche.

Drawn from Victor Hugo’s poem “Canaris,” the opening movement’s title “dans les dents de la guivre” (“in the teeth of the viper”) refers to the Visconti family’s coat of arms: a serpentine creature devouring an infant. This horrifying image symbolized the Visconti’s despotic stranglehold over the city of Milan. “dans les dents de la guivre” intersperses fragments of “La harpe de melodie” with sounds imitative of the mythical serpent, engendering a feeling of trepidation, anxiety, and suffocation."

This piece got its start in the weeks following Hurricane Ida. New Orleans was without power and I was evacuated, pursuing sounds that require electricity.

saxophone, voice, electronics

This work was created with both audio and visual together at the same time in a week long collaboration. We chose the explorations of color pallets and how we see color changing in different times of the day. Telling the story through the audio of a journey through a day, trekking through a long rainstorm and begrudgingly walking into the night soaked and wet.

A Hyper-real space of bees, engines, and saw waves.

The title can be defined as a gradual decline into disorder, which I try to illustrate by adding onto the main arpeggio with various uses of noise and distortion.

For Dancer and Projection is an accompanying work for Danielle Willis’ video dance work Celestial Bodies, which also served as her M.F.A project for that semester (Fall 2020). The sound source for the piece, a drone of five sine tones, is decidedly simple and abstract, much like the direction of the choreography. The granulation of this sound-source is inspired by the particle effects that Willis designed to be projected onto her dancer. A simple heartbeat like pulse persists throughout the work, for the solo choreography to be edited to.

The work was the result of a collaboration between the Dance Faculty at Texas Women’s University and the Music Faculty at the University of North Texas.

“As they arose from the primordial ooze, they did not know what to do with themselves.”

کاشانه Kashana portrays my love for bringing together old and new, past and present. The Kamancheh, a traditional Persian instrument, narrates the sound of the past; inspired by classical Persian music dastgah- modal system, it invites the audience to my idea of Kashana, a small edifice, dwelling, house, like a bird's nest. The shimmering high register electronics coupled with low drone sound draws a sound of the present– industrial and static. The visuals attempt to draw the same duality– it starts with an arch inspired by Persian architecture, while the shiny colors and parallel lines narrate the present. Expressing duality appears in most of my recent works, perhaps due to my dual Persian and American identity, the past and the present me. Kashana hopes to invite people into my dual world.