Kevin Joest

Piano solo / optional additional soloist

This work was completed very shortly after the unspeakable terror at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fl, in June of 2016. It is dedicated to the victims and those who love them.

Vibraphone / Violin

Anchor was commissioned by my good friend Adam Schwartz for a recital in September 2014.  It revolves around a central idea: the facade vs. the real.  The vibraphone is the facade self, continuously changing and often completely at odds with the real.  The violin is the real self, peeking through and never changing.  Where the facade must constantly be in flux, the real is an anchor to which it can always return.

Harp / Cajon, Congas, Bongos, SD, BD, Vibraphone, Crotales, Susp. Cym., Marimba, Log Drum

Autumnfall was inspired by the vibrant New England autumn of 2014, which got me thinking of the cycles of life, death, and resurrection.  Each movement corresponds to a stage in the natural year. The first movement, 'Orange Flesh,' is the leaves green and vibrant and living and dancing, as well as the deep contentment of a life at the threshold of death.  Thus, the percussion is that of skin against skin (or in some cases, wood) in a quirky, often off-centered groove, while the harp juxtaposes abstract rhythms and harmonies as the wind that tickles the leaves on a lazy summer afternoon. The second movement is a shimmering weightlessness of metallic lullaby as the leaves turn their colors and fall to the ground.  It is an endless cascade of shades, the sonic counterpart to the visual vibrancy of autumn. The third is stark and brittle yet lively and thrashing - the hardness of the wood against the softness of the beautiful frigid winter hiding the life within.  While both instruments dance together with the energy stored for rebirth, the rich warmth of the marimba against the mellowness of the harp evoke the naked trees against a bleak sky, their upturned branches wooden cries for the spring to return. Autumnfall was commissioned by Duo Harpwerk.

Violin

before/behind was written after my first visit to the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the main exhibition was the work of John Chamberlain, a 20th century American sculptor whose medium was brightly colored scrap metal arranged in often towering precarious-yet-grounded abstract designs.  I was fascinated by these works, especially at the way they changed as one walked around them, as if they were stationary mobiles, causing the world to circle them instead of the other way around. The Guggenheim itself is famous for its enormous 6-story main hall consisting of a grand spiral ramp, allowing for enormous exhibitions to be viewed in one continuous sweep.  It was here that Chamberlain was placed; the very beginning of his career at the bottom of the ramp, and his last works at the top.  Thus, the upward spiral followed Chamberlain’s career chronologically, yet I was equally stunned as I made my way back down the ramp, and was able to see all of it in reverse.  It dawned on me how incredibly different my experience would have been had I started at the top and worked my way down. These ideas informed the concept of before/behind.  This piece is an exploration of context, perception, and the manipulation of the two.  An “object” is presented at the outset. The object itself does not change, but the piece places it in multiple contexts, allowing multiple unique perspectives and opinions of it.  In the sense that watching the Chamberlain exhibition unfold forward in time altered my experience of it in reverse, so too is the overall attitude toward the object transformed from beginning to end.

Flute, Cello

Care Aktor Sket Chez was written as an exercise in character miniatures in 2010. It was revised to add depth and narrative in 2017.

Percussion Duo

Cloister was written in the fall of 2015 for Mike Hardin and Adam DePersio. I had recently moved to New York City, and was still trying to adjust to a new place, new job, new relationship, and overall new environment. This piece is a conversation of sorts between what I imagine as a young apprentice (the new) and an old master (the familiar); the younger increasingly chaotic and out-of-control, the older providing stability and a call to refocus. When everything around us changes, we are forced to turn to that which is familiar until we can stabilize enough to process and adjust. Inspired by the sound of the prayer bowl, which both interrupts our mental jabber and calls us to focus our energy, Cloister is an exploration of the duality of change and how we deal with it as life’s only real constant.

Cello

The Dances of Purgatory's Chasm was commissioned by the phenomenal cellist and educator, and my very dear friend, Anna Seda, and it was premiered in Cuzco, Peru, in February of 2014 . Its title is a reference to the deepest and most intense of humanity’s emotions: “purgatory” as defined by “heaven in hell,” the dichotomy of these feelings, and “chasm” as their bottomless depth. These states of being, each represented by a dance, are what makes us human, but also make the human experience both the most difficult and most wonderful experience there is.

String Septet

Dante Landscapes is an attempt to explore the questions of the effects of the geography Dante's Afterlife on one’s psyche: How does one think when the landscape itself is becoming more claustrophobic, or when the largest thing is in the smallest space, as is the ice-encased Lucifer? How does it feel when, as one climbs a mountain, it gets easier instead of more difficult as one ascends? What does eternity look like to human eyes when seen from above?  Each movement is a different area of the afterlife, loosely following Dante’s journey. I attempted to avoid overt theology, focusing rather on the emotional and psychological effects of these places and their geography. I try to treat them as places, illustrating the closeness with which medieval thinkers felt connected to death, their souls connected to God. To our modern minds, often these seem as fairy tales, setting up a code of morality that requires a little too much sacrifice with not enough immediate and tangible gain. We have separated the physical and the metaphysical: we know that the  Earth is not the center of the universe, that it revolves around an ordinary star in a quiet part of a galaxy, which in turn is part of a cluster of galaxies, which forms a part of a supercluster, and on and on into infinity. We also know that Hell is not in the center of the Earth, and there is no mountain of purgatory in the water hemisphere. In our modern universe of relativity, holes in the fabric of space-time, and the physical infinite, how far, then, must we go to find God?

Piano

Enclave was composed between July and August 2015. It was born out of a need to directly face the feelings of frustration, anger, and fear that had pervaded my life during that time. The title is a loose reference to the small pocket of darkness surrounded by my optimism; this enclave of pessimism rarely shows itself, but it is powerful and all-consuming when unleashed.

Violin / Marimba

Entanglement was written at the request of Laurel Black and Natalie Calma for their duo Balletik.  It is loosely inspired by the image of a manic, unbalanced motions of a dancer, favoring the more savage and angry side of dance rather than the polished delicacy.  It is also a very abstract sort of narrative.  The two instruments interact with each other in a variety of “divergencies” (levels of togetherness) from unison lines to hocket.  Thus, the picture can be painted of a relationship that is strained and pressured and stretched until finally something snaps.  Because of their entanglement, however, the two entities must reconcile, this time on new, but not necessarily better, terms.  Lastly, Entanglement is a work written to show off the skills of its dedicatees.  The driving pace and constantly shifting pulse reflects the unabashed and inexhaustible energy of their performance.

for Clarinet in Bb and Marimba

The Latin phrase “In medias res,” translated to “in the middle of things,” refers the the literary device of beginning a story in the midst of action. As the title would indicate, the piece begins without introduction, jumping into itself without warning or explanation. “Fortuna,” which is also Latin and means “luck” or “chance,” describes the construction of the piece: several overlapping layers of rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns decided upon by the rolling of dice. These generally do not coincide with each other, rather provide a cohesion that is felt more than heard.

Fortuna, In Medias Res was an attempt to upset what had become a predictable form in my writing. By beginning the piece somewhere other than the beginning, it contrasted with the more narrative style I’d found myself writing. Here, there is no beginning and no real end, and the piece starts and stops in medias res.

Trombone Solo

Four Poems for Trombone was inspired by a lifelong love of poetry and different poetic forms. Each movement takes its form and character from a different type of poem, drawing from both the physical format of the words as well as the typical thematic characteristics in each type.

Organ Solo

In his book Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan gives a brief history of astronomy framed as a series of steps he

called “Great Demotions.” From the geocentric beliefs of the ancients through Galileo, Newton, Kepler, & Einstein, and many others, Sagan asserts that humans continue to be “demoted” from our perceived place in the cosmos. We were the center of everything, but with each new discovery we become more infinitesimal in the grand schemes and structures of the heavens. Yet, as we understand more of the universe and how it functions on larger and smaller scales, our importance in those very structures is rooted in how we are here to be aware it exists at all.

Great Demotions examines this inverse relationship as a theme and variations based on the hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” The variations come first, each more closely related to the theme than the previous. Conversely, the sound of the full organ slowly swindles through each variation, until only the hymn in its purest form floats through a single pipe.

Piano

Gymnopedies is fashioned after Satie's Gymnopedies, was written as a meditative piece, and is dedicated to Sally Vanderploeg.

Clarinet / Violin / Cello / Contrabass (rev. for String Quartet 2016)

Hopeless Gravity was conceived with the process of nuclear fusion in mind.  Fusion - that which created the elemental materials of the universe - begins with a single cloud of atoms.  These particles are drawn closer together by gravity, until they are so compressed and the pressure is so great that two atoms fuse together into one.  However, as atomic elements are defined by the amount of particles in their makeup, this conjunction begets a single atom of a different element, not two atoms of the original.  In this way, 1 + 1 = 1 of something else: 1 hydrogen + 1 hydrogen = 1 helium; 1 helium + 1 helium = 1 lithium, etc.  Eventually, through the repetition of this process (and a lot of sacrificed stars), a single cloud of hydrogen begets all the elements that make up the universe, including the carbon in our bodies, the oxygen we breathe, and the iron that courses through our blood.  Without it, everything we know, including ourselves, would not exist. This piece, while not specifically depicting nuclear fusion itself, creates an ever-evolving narrative where each new idea is spawned from the expansion and eventual contraction of the one previous; a musical structure becoming so dense that, from it, something new is born.

Violin / 5-string Violin

Icarus Still Flew comes from a poem by Jack Gilbert. The entire line is “everyone forgets that Icarus still flew,” and, for me, it is a reminder that for things to fall, they must first be high in the air. The story of Icarus teaches us about pride and foolishness and youth and growing up, and all of their sundry consequences. But despite all of this, for a brief time, Icarus still flew, still soared with the birds and danced in the clouds. This piece is an exploration of that kind of bliss: not that which comes from ignorance, but that which comes from success, from courage, from faith, and the freedom of stretching one’s wings to fly higher and higher in spite of an inevitable sun.

Cello

Infinity Sonata was written for cellist Bryan Hayslett over a two-year period. ...the first movement begins in chaos and ends in peace (one could say moves in an “upward” direction), the second movement begins and ends in peace (one could say a movement of “stasis”), the third seeks to meld the two into an energetic ecstasy.  Instead of a traditional arc-like trajectory, it subverts the parabola and reaches upwards, racing gleefully to its highest potential...

Bassoon / Piano

Iridescent was composed between January and April of 2014 at the request of bassoonist Daniel Beilman.  It explores the blurred lines between the traditionally “warm” and “cool” colors of a rainbow.  The title refers to these colors as well as the kaleidoscopic vibrance of their relationships.

Flute (or Alto Sax) / Clarinet / Piano / Percussion / Violin

Kaleidoscope was inspired by a Ray Bradbury story of the same name in which, after an accident in space, a group of astronauts are flung in all directions. They are powerless to stop their hurtling trajectories, but their intercoms still work perfectly. As they fly farther and farther away from each other, their conversations reflect the stages of death. They are all alone, but share a common experience. Finally, the main character falls into the earth, poignantly mistaken by a young boy for a shooting star. This work is an exploration of this “alone together” concept. It loosely follows the story through entropy, calm, and a final fall to Earth.

String Quartet

Laniakea is the most pure melding of my love for music and my love for astronomy: In 2014, an international team of astronomers completed and published the results of a 5-year study tracking the movements of around 8000 nearby galaxies. Previously defined by mere proximity, their finding regrouped these galaxies into a more complete picture of superclusters (vast structures made of clusters of galaxies), based on which directions the galaxies were moving. Our home, the Milky Way, now inhabits a newly-defined supercluster made up of clusters moving towards a specific point in the universe. The team named it Laniakea, a Hawai’ian word meaning “immeasurable heaven.” The images released with the study of these trajectories do not seem to show pathways inside the immense architectures of the universe, but the processes of cell division, as if the very systems that give us life also give life to the universe in echelons nested from the infinitely large into the infinitely small. One eventually begins to wonder whether these infinities are part of a linear continuum, or if they are circular, or some combination of both, as the natural repetitions of process blossom from basic building blocks here inside us to the grand designs of immeasurable heavens.

Cello

Laughter Ballet was commissioned in the summer of 2014 by Bryan Hayslett.  It is part of a larger project involving several different composers, each writing him a short piece involving speaking and playing simultaneously.  The text is from William Carlos Williams, from a selection of poems chosen by Bryan for the project; the poem I chose is entitled ‘Ballet.’  As I was designing the piece, I realized that when Bryan and I get together, all we seem to do is laugh.  The poem struck me as akin to a laughing dance, with sounds flitting around each other in masterful floor crafting as well as a tale of turning away from one’s societal constrictions to dance with the kind of joy that nearly tears one apart. 

2 Alto Saxophones

Look at the Harlequins! involves three characters from the Commedia Del’Arte’s heyday in a miniature "Harlequinade" split into 6 episodes. In the 14th-16th centuries, he general plot of these plays involved the Harlequin, the devious acrobat, falling in love with Columbina, the wry temptress, who is married to Pierrot, the sad clown. While Columbina is obviously interested in the Harlequin, she is, for her own reasons, unwilling to leave her husband. The drama that ensued revolves around this situation and its endless variations. The plotline of the piece involves three character introductions, the Harlequin’s love for Columbina and his frustration at her marriage to Pierrot, and a fight scene in which both men are wounded. In a modern-day twist, the denoument is Columbina’s rejection of both men.

The title of this work comes from a Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name. It is beautifully written prose regarding the long, rambling life of a writer, in which he regarded everyone, himself included, with a sort of detached bemusement, as if they were all Harlequins. And he the spectator…

String Quartet

“A newborn baby is as old as the cosmos. The form is new and unique, but the materials are 13.6 billion years old.” ~ Phil Hellenes

Marimba & Percussion

Mortal Coil Dance is my gift to my uncle Mike, who passed away during its composing.  It a sort of off-kilter Montuno groove, exploring the asymmetrical rhythms to which we all dance throughout life.

Violin, Cello, Optional Dancer

Orbits was conceived out of my love for astrophysics and my long-time interest in converting the mechanics and elements of the cosmos into both musical forms and metaphors for the equally complex human experience. A basic law of the universe is that everything orbits something else: the entire universe operates in an infinitely complex system of balanced motion held in place by equal-yet-opposite forces and mutual attraction. There are many different types of orbits, and each could be a metaphor for a different type of human interaction. Orbits explores these types arranged as snapshots across an arc, revealing a full narrative out of the moments of which it is comprised.

For Marimba and 4 Woodblocks

Realizations was born out of a very odd month of crossroad, growth, and perspective shift I had in early 2013. Each movement grew from a “realization,” which is spoken at the beginning of each with the date the realization occurred. They range from the excessively deep to the somewhat obvious, but each resonated with me long after the initial thought occurred. They are presented here as a “fractured ensemble:” the marimba is the ‘main character,’ and each woodblock represents an alternate existential self illustrating the shift brought by each respective realization.

Brass Sextet

Seven Shades of Blue grew directly out of one of the more controversial passages of David Hume, the renowned 18th-century Scottish philosopher: his example of the “Missing Shade of Blue,” a thought experiment dealing with the nature of human perception.  The experiment is designed to illustrate that the human mind can imagine something it has never experienced before.  Hume supposes that there is a person who had never seen a particular shade of blue.  He then submits that if all other conceivable shades of blue were placed before this person, they would be able to imagine the missing one without actually experiencing it.  The idea that a thing can be identified by its absence in contrast to those around it, was the inspiration for this work, in which each movement utilizes the ensemble in discreet combinations.  In the second movement, “Duets,” for example, no more and no less than two instruments are playing simultaneously, but the combinations of these instruments are changing constantly, highlighting not only the instruments playing, but also those not playing: the missing shades of blue.

Snare Drum Solo

Simple Complications was written to explore the sonic and expressive qualities of the snare drum.

The title refers to the motivic idea, presented right at the beginning, and its variations throughout all three movements.

Viola Solo

Three Saccharine Miniatures was inspired by a trip to the track. Two horses in the same race were named “Cupcake Justice” and Dr. Sprinkles.” The need for a piece with these movement titles was immediate and inevitable. The music follows from the images these names conjure.

for Percussion Duo

Tribal Times was conceived as a study in misaligned, overlapping, and competing time signatures. The off-set grooves created by this technique recall both the music of industrial machinery, and deeply-felt ancestral structures, building a bridge between our natural past and digital future.

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Marimba / Percussion Ensemble

There are certain ideas that humans intrinsically cannot fully comprehend: the idea of God, the concept of eternity, the depth and vastness of love. Vestiges of Oblivion was conceived with these sort of “incomprehensibles” in mind. “Vestiges” connotes the remains of something grand and inconceivable; the piece imagines that oblivion itself has shattered and the remnants are now floating through the infinite vastness of abstract space.