Works suitable for intermediate string orchestra, string quartet, or other string ensembles. Contact for score availablity.
CHORALE: SONG OF SONGS [2026] for string orchestra
For the 2026 “composer’s concert” (featuring all-original music composed by our members), I decided to write an original chorale, since our orchestra concerts always open with a chorale by JS Bach. Adhering as much as possible to the conventions of four-part chorale writing, I wanted to create something that emulated the usual tempo, structure, and harmonic movement of the Bach chorales, while letting some of my own musical personality come through. And since the chorale as a song form originates with hymns in the Lutheran church, I chose passages from the biblical Song of Songs as the lyrical text, thereby drawing a connection between the tradition of the chorale and the timeless form of the love song.
[ score/performance video ]
MISGIVEN [2025] for 2 cellos
A melancholy cello duet, written at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA)
TIME'S SHARPENED ARROW [2025] for string orchestra
For this piece, I wanted to take advantage of our orchestra’s large cello section. I created two cello parts and gave them the first and final statements of the musical theme. In between, violins take up this theme in a very basic form and then build it into something intricate and driving, accompanied by a growing rhythm in the other parts. The effect calls to mind the arrow of time, advancing steadily, gathering complexity and urgency, but never missing its mark.
[ score/performance video ]
RUN, RISE, & FLY [2025] for 4 cellos
This piece began with an improvisation of the first cello part, which I then looped and played along with to create the second and third parts. As each part enters, their opening notes build a G major triad and then move in independent consonant melodies with a unifying rhythm. As this piece developed, I had a keen mental image of running through a field, making ever-stronger attempts to jump and catch air. The longer notes and slight chromaticism of the middle section evoke initial unsteady moments of success, and the last section returns the rhythmic theme, but this time with a confident and joyful melody rising over the top. The listener can picture themselves finally soaring through the air, or perhaps conquering any task that might have at first seemed impossible.
ALONG THE GREAT CIRCLE [2024] for string orchestra
An exploration of motion and rotation. Commission by Duke University String School / Premiered April 2024
THE PULSE OF SHADOWS [2024] for string orchestra
After the peacefulness of a sunset, a different world comes alive in the darkness. This piece begins with a smooth, chorale-like opening section, which gives way to rhythmic motion with an undulating melody and countermelody floating on top. The largely dorian modality gives it a mysterious yet active feeling, evoking the restlessness of the night or a march through middle earth.
[ score/performance video ]
A DAFFODIL OUT OF SEASON [2023] for string orchestra
The title of this piece, a reference to the John Cage composition "A Valentine Out Of Season", juxtaposes the serenity of a flower with an unsettling sense of being out of time or place. It also raises the spectre of climate change and a world no longer in sync with itself.
[ listen at your choice of streaming services ]
[ score/performance video ]
THE PASSING DARK [2023] for 4 cellos
A piece written as a personal exercise in how to find creativity in limitation, of both instrumentation and mood.
[ listen at your choice of streaming services ]
[ score/performance video ]
THE TIDE-BEATING HEART OF EARTH [2022] for string orchestra and soprano
The title and text for this piece are an adaptation of a passage from Moby Dick chapter 111 (“The Pacific”). In this small, 4-paragraph chapter, the narrator imagines that ocean’s waves are caused by bodies of sailors buried at sea, tossing and turning in their deep eternal sleep. He goes on to declare that the Pacific Ocean essentially spans the entire world, “the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms”, and that its tides are the heartbeat of the earth itself.
"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
[ video ]
THE YEW-TREE WALK [2022] for string quartet
In some cultures, the yew tree symbolizes death, transformation, and rebirth, due to its highly poisonous nature, long lifespan, and ability to propagate itself. The Yew-tree Walk is the name of a garden in the book Middlemarch, and the location of a pivotal scene in which these themes of death and renewal, of loss giving way to new life, come to bear on the lives of the characters. This piece reflects this theme of transformation in a musical form.
“When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge.”
[ listen at your choice of streaming services ]
[ score/performance video ]
The new record, out now!
Using instruments such as violin, viola, and cello layered with electronics, drums, and electric guitars, _Forest Fires_ explores how the natural world embodies and reflects the themes of human desire and longing.
Listen at your choice of streaming service
Buy on Bandcamp
Buy on Ampwall
Simple tunes written for the Indie Strings folk ensemble
"The Dissolving Dream"
For this piece, I wanted to create something “dark” for the folk ensemble. I started with the violin melody, which arose from a simple improvisation in a favorite key (E minor). I then added the viola/cello part as a harmony but also a countermelody, sometimes moving with and sometimes departing from the violin theme. My favorite is the middle section, where the violins rise in a dotted-quarter note pattern and then cascade like falling water, as the cello/viola takes up the dotted-quarters to accompany them downward. The title can refer to the moments right after waking when you are recalling a dream but lose grasp of it, or a darker theme of larger hopes and dreams fading away.
"The Dark Sally"
When I originally wrote “The Dark Sally”, I only wrote the first half: a sauntering folk tune in 3/4 time. I gave it the title because it seemed to evoke a sense of motion (“sally” here used in the sense of a short journey), but somewhat unsettled, underscored by the musical key shifting from D dorian to D major and back again. However, I felt like the song needed something else, a contrasting section with a stronger, more driving beat, like a “rave-up” to bring it to a more exciting close. I wrote the second part in a faster 4/4, with eighth-note triplet runs trading off in the upper and lower strings, skipping now instead of strolling, rising and falling in D melodic minor.
"The Parting Glance" [ score/performance video ]
"From Stars" [ stream ]
The Beatitudes [ score/performance video ] - Martynov's piece arranged for cello quartet
The Lateral World [ available on Bandcamp ] - an EP, now many years old, but it has its moments I guess
"To Catch a Sparrow" [ mp3 ] - a song about getting close
"Wasted Years" [ mp3 ] - an electronic cover of the Iron Maiden song
"Cossack Lullaby" [ mp3 ] - an a capella arrangement of the Russian folk song