BRAWL

Finally coming up briefly for air today between writing frenzies!

Since my last post, I’ve finished work on a band piece, a substantial new work for large flute choir, and a bassoon solo—all of which I plan to chat through here—and then I’m diving right back in to finish TWO string orchestra pieces, a piccolo duo with electronics, a low flute solo, and a trio for flute, oboe, and piano! It’s a busy time, but I am so excited to share more about these works, collaborators, and inspirations with you.

Coming up this Tuesday, the Philadelphia All-City Band will be premiering a brand new work for wind ensemble, BRAWL, at the Kimmel Center (home of THE Philadelphia Orchestra)—so I thought I’d share a bit about the piece, the ensemble, and what led to this music getting out to the world.

ABOUT | The Ensemble

Conductor Patricia Cornett conducts All-City concert band at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

The PAC Band is led by Patricia Cornett (Director of Bands, Temple University), who I had the great fortune to meet when she interviewed me for a piece in The Instrumentalist in 2022 (after she discovered my work through the pieces, Our Little Secrets and Passing Through). She reached out to me with an idea to collaborate on a new piece for her annual group of high school players, wanting to give them the opportunity to work with a living composer. She really wanted to push the students into something new, and told me she appreciated how I had incorporated aleatory, sound effects, and other non-traditional elements in past works.

Soapbox aside: I do love incorporating these elements into works for younger players—there are so many pieces that give students the opportunity to work on basic things like rhythm, articulation, beauty of tone, ensemble blending; however, I find too few that challenge students to really interpret, to listen and react, to see their instruments as objects of play, rather than a chore. I find that by including some sections of aleatory and/or special effects, it can help open up their ears to whole new possibilities of how they can fit into an ensemble—about what it means to really make music as an instrumentalist. Soapbox over!

ABOUT | The Inspiration

As I told the students this past week during our clinic, at the time I was writing this, I started rewatching some old anime. I had grown up watching the Toonami dubs of series like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha, etc. and a smattering of Sailor Moon, Speed Racer, Attack on Titan, and Neon Genesis Evangelion—though it wasn’t until after my Masters I started watching some of the big classic anime films like Paprika, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and all of the Studio Ghibli classics.

I mean…just look at it!! (Attack on Titan)

While I started thinking about what to write about, I had been revisiting a few old shows and movies. I loved how highly stylized the fight scenes were—how to convey the unimaginable power, scale, weight, or strength of specific characters or beings with only 2D images and sound is a real art. I started thinking about how fun it would be to write a fight for wind ensemble—so many opportunities for theatrical moments, sound effects, and chances for a bit of chaos. And so, while BRAWL doesn’t reference any particular anime, story, or musical influences, the artform itself definitely inspired the idea to write!

I opted to try and depict an all-out brawl rather than a 1-v-1 or 1-v-group type fight to give myself as much opportunity as possible to have different voices of instruments joining together at a time throughout the work—as well as justify some real chaos throughout!

ABOUT | The Music

If all you want to do is listen, go ahead and click the soundfile above - if you’d like to see excerpts from the score and learn a bit more about the piece, read on!

How the winds open BRAWL - splitting apart in range as wide vibratos move into trills and begin to crescendo

Knowing first and foremost that Trish wanted to include some aleatoric elements for the kids, I opted to start the piece with a whole section of it. Trying to depict the rising tension that leads to a fight itself, I had each of the instruments start towards middle C and gradually split apart over the course of about 45” — expanding into a large, dissonant arrival. The simmering feeling comes from wide vibratos that eventually turn into trills as each instrument either ascends or descends to the extremes of their instruments.

The bass drum swells ever louder and more chaotically as keyboard instruments in the percussion section swish across ever-wider ranges of their instruments.

Each of these sections can feel quite long in-the-moment to the performers, so this 45” gesture also acts a great lesson in patience and pacing. How to get to the note I need without getting there too fast or playing too loud? How can I make the final bar feel more chaotic with how fast or wide my glisses are? How can I make my bass drum rolls more exciting in the final bar?

All of these questions are able to explored by individual players, rather than being told in strictest terms how or when to do something.

Brass and percussion during the opening of BRAWL

Introduction of melodic ideas following the aleatoric opening

This large, tense arrival ends in a loud SLAP by a percussionist and resulting gasp from the ensemble. This sets off the low instruments in what starts as a melodic-idea but turns out to be background for the upper voices. I love playing with hocketing, and while younger players may need more doubling to feel confident about their entrances, a large ensemble like this one still leaves plenty of opportunity to have it both ways! Each time a melodic idea begins, it is interrupted by another idea, creating a melody across the ensemble of little fragments—competing for the listener’s attention.

Eventually, these fragments compete enough to break into a brand new section. After a theatrical “HEY” from low brass and a few woodwinds, the percussion takes over the entire texture in short break featuring timpani, the rim of a snare drum, a closed hi-hat, and wood blocks.

This section break signals a new section of competing fragments that are now divided by instrument types (rather than by low and high voices). Flutes and oboe team up against a low-end compliment of bari sax and low brass (with optional voices of bassoon and bass clarinet joining in), while the upper reeds join forces with the trumpets. The horns and trombone are off doing their own grand glissandos in the background.

Percussion break - signaling the start of a few new alliances among the battling ensemble!

To tie all of this together in a way that still feels cohesive, the percussion continues pedaling onward from the percussion break until measure 35, when we finally get a bit of cooperation among the all voices of the ensemble—taking a breather from the conflict. The music settles into a series of downward gestures passed along the ensemble, each successive wave less dramatic and sparser than the last. This calmer section ends with a single note gesture from the piccolo, and—rather than a dramatic gasp—we get an uneasy, shuddering breath in the brass through their instruments. This shaky breath leaves a bit of tension—is the fight over? What is going to happen next?

The boxed notation towards the end of this segment indicates players should pick a note in that approximate range.

Of course not! There’s still two minutes left of this piece!!

The opening gesture from the low voices returns, this time slower and heavier than before—lasting for six uninterrupted measures before the upper voices come in, now with notes outside the key. In our rehearsal last week, we decided that the short accelerando I had written wasn’t quite dramatic enough (only six bars as the lower voices huffed their way to the next part), so we stretched an accelerando over the course of this entire section (now 14 measures). One of the benefits of being a living composer is that we can do that!

This building accelerando sees shorter and shorter fragments of the material from the opening fighting for attention before finally a large ensemble ascent breaks out—the individual sections themselves fracturing apart into clusters of unspecified notes (but unison rhythms).

The big climax of the fight! Lovers of Tchaikovsky may remember the big loud cymbal part from the sword fight in his Romeo and Juliet—same energy.

The upper voices across the ensemble—all the flutes and oboes and clarinets and alto saxophones and trumpets and horns—clash in these fast, boxed clusters, punching wildly as the lower voices join in a unison melody. The percussion is also splintered, with the hi-hat and wood block joining the upper voices and the snare drum accenting the rhythm of the lower voice melody. The bass drum is off in their own world, beating a simple rhythmic pattern to hold it all barely together. Here the lower voices split apart into chords, breaking up the energy once more to recall the calming, more collaborative texture from before.

Final measures from BRAWL.

We get a moment of uneasy calm (once more featuring a solo moment from the piccolo, this time joined by mallet instruments in the percussion), before the whole ensemble once more winds up—this time in unison rhythms cascading up as lower voices trill and gliss ever downward.

The snare drum drives the section all the way into measure 87 when we get an explosion of huge hits, offset between the upper and lower voices until we finally get a single unison arrival (though still discordant in harmony) in measure 90.

The tension boils once more as the listener wonders where we are about to go from here—and, after a briefl silence, the piece quickly finishes off with a final run that lands, SLAP, gasp, 1-2-POW. 

Done!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Pre-orders coming soon!

Whatever happens at the concert, I hope the students had at least half as much fun playing it as I did writing it! It was such a blast to prepare this work for the All-City musicians in Philadelphia, and I’m so grateful to them for the performance and to Patricia Cornett for the opportunity to write something new for wind ensemble!

UP NEXT | When can I get this piece?

The piece is going to get a few edits following the performance (like that accelerando we talked about earlier!), but could be available as early as next month for pre-orders in time for summer and early fall performances.

I try to keep pre-orders from happening until I at least have a recording of the piece, but if you or the lovely band directors in your life would like to get an advance copy of the score and a—rather hilarious—MIDI rendition of the piece to peruse through, feel free to reach out!

UP NEXT | Stars, elfin cows, and a trip back home

There’s a lot of music blogs coming in the next few weeks—a three-movement flute choir piece about the life cycle of stars, a bassoon solo about a majestic elf-cow, and the work I’m already deep into for the orchestra program in my hometown of Eau Claire—and I can’t wait to share more.

To see the very latest on what’s happening, you can check out my event calendar or look at the latest info on my recordings page.

But, as many an editor has told me, that’s more than enough for now!