Featured Works

Broadacre City reflects on Frank Lloyd Wright’s abandoned designs. The form of the piece tries to capture their trajectory: a sudden, relentless genesis of ideas and material that slowly strips away and disintegrates to total stasis. Overtime, ghost-like versions of those ideas find a new footing - all of which trying to convey the effect these forgotten designs had on the craft and consciousness of their creator.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY:

• July 2 & 3, 2022: Chamber Music Northwest premiere featuring Tara Helen O’Connor, Alexi Kenney, I-Jung Huang, Teng Li, and Sophie Shao

Piano Trio: “Field of Iris” is the first piece I wrote coming out of quarantine. During that time, I also began my process of coming out to my family, friends, and community. Writing this piece was used as a touchstone during that recent time in my life.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY:

• December 11, 2021: Emma Meinrenken, violin; Matthew Christakos, cello; Thomas Weaver, piano

• April 26, 2022: Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center

Poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca
Translated by Sarah Arvio

I. Of the Gold Girl

The gold girl
was swimming in the water
and the water turned gold

Waterweeds and branches
in shadow shadowed her
and the nightingale sang
for the white girl

The clear night came
dark with bad silver
and the bare hills
under the dusky wind

The wet girl
was white in the water
and the water blazed

The dawn came spotless
with a hundred cow heads
stiff and shrouded
in frozen garlands

The girl of tears
swam in the flames
and the nightingale wept
in its burned wings

The gold girl
was a white heron
the water turned gold

II. Of the Dark Doves

In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two dark doves
One was the sun
and one the moon
Little neighbors I said
where is my grave —
In my tail said the sun
On my throat said the moon
And I who was walking
with the land around my waist
saw two snow eagles
and a naked girl
One was the other
and the girl was none
Little eagles I said
where is my grave —
In my tail said the sun
On my throat said the moon
In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two naked doves
One was the other
and both were none

“Of the Gold Girl” and “Of the Dark Doves,” translations of the poems entitled “De la muchacha dorada,” and “De las palomas oscuras” by Federico García Lorca, c. Sarah Arvio. Excerpted from her volume Poet in Spain (2017) by permission of Sarah Arvio and Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Moonshot was inspired by a triptych of “date-paintings” which chart milestones of Apollo 11, created by Japanese-American artist On Kawara and on-display at the Glenstone Museum. The piece is in three movements to reflect each painting: I. July 16, 1969, launch; II. July 20, 1969, the lunar landing; and III. July 21, 1969, people throughout Earth reacting to and reflecting on this watershed moment.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY:

• October 3-5, 2019: Premiere and residency at Glenstone Museum with the Abeo Quartet

• June 28, 2021: Performance at Chamber Music Northwest by Soovin Kim, Kristin Lee, Melissa Reardon, and Michael Katz

• July 12, 2022: Performance at Chamber Music Northwest

• Winter 2023: Upcoming performance by Viano String Quartet

I. I sounded like a fire, for no reason. 

II. 6:24 a.m. Greyhound station.

One-way ticket to New York City: $36.75

III. My hands were daylight all through the night.

IV. The way they formed brief churches over the table as he searched for the right words.

V. I promise to stop soon.

VI. I'm going to lose it when Whitney Houston dies.

VII. Maybe rain is 'sweet' because it falls through so much of the world.

VIII. Here. That's all I wanted to be.

from Ocean Vuong’s “Notebook Fragments” which appears in his collection “Night Sky with Exit Wounds”