Portfolio for Princeton
1. The Church of Quesadeity, Act 1 - a heavy metal opera
The Church of Quesadeity is a heavy metal opera about a cult that worships quesadillas. It is an opera in three acts, set to be around 75 - 90 minutes long, and is written for clarinet, piano (and electronics), two electric guitars, electric bass, drums, and 2 metal vocalists. Act 1 is written; I am currently writing Acts 2 and 3.
The first act is 45 minutes long, but I would like to focus on the excerpt as the main entry for my portfolio. I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in summer of 2021 to finish and record The Church of Quesadeity as an album. I am currently in the process of recording the first act, so some parts of the first act are demos and are not professional recording quality. If you would like to listen to the entire first act, it is provided below.
Click on [SCORE] for the score for each section (scores will open in new tabs)
Excerpt of Act 1: [6] - [18] ; [23] - [32] [SCORE]
Story Synopsis:
The Church of Quesadeity follows the story of Dante, the 20-year-old son of the leader of the cult. After a typical service, Father, the current Leader, announces that he will step down as Leader and will perform the Final Act of Leadership, the most sacred ritual in the Church. Father nominates Dante as the next leader of the Church and puts him through the Three Tests of Leadership: the Test of Worth, the Test of Knowledge, and the Test of Temptation. Through these Three Tests, Dante must summon the Quesadeity and be deemed worthy, must recite every detail about the practices and rituals the Quesadeity demands, and must journey to the Holy Grocery Store and face temptation, the likes of which he has never faced before.
Act 1 (Full, Demo Recording): [SCORE]
2. Who I Was, and Who I Am Now - for piano quintet [SCORE]
Program note:
Throughout my composing life, I have gone through many different mindsets. The first piece I ever wrote down was a jazz combo chart, then I basically worshipped minimalism. After that, I discovered more styles of music, tried to combine all of them together, and somehow ended up in the middle of writing a heavy metal opera about a cult that worships quesadillas (The Church of Quesadeity). I have been diving into the heavy metal mindset for a while, and I wanted a change. I decided to look back at my older writing styles, and the pieces that had a huge impact on my life, so I tried to pay homage to my younger self and to those pieces. But, during the writing process, I realized that I could not ignore who I am today. This piece is a mixture of who I was, and who I am now (as of May 2019).
3. Feedback - for clarinet [SCORE]
Program note:
During my undergraduate degree at Rutgers, my clarinet teacher, Dr. Maureen Hurd Hause, showed me the first multiphonic I ever heard, and it sounded like feedback from an amplifier. My life was changed for the better that day. I went on to attempt to learn some clarinet music from Eric Mandat and William O. Smith, like Mandat’s Preludes Book II and Smith’s Variants. After I got more comfortable with these techniques, I began incorporating them into my improvisations, which then ended in a piece for myself that used some of the techniques I learned from those composers and my teacher.
4. Dive In - for fixed media (no score)
Program note:
This piece combines two of my favorite genres together: djent and trap. I love djent for the rhythmically complex, in-your-face distorted guitars; I love trap for the intricate hi-hats and booming bass. I tried some metal techniques on some of the trap elements, and vice versa, like Meshuggah-esque large-scale rhythmic patterns on the hi-hats, and a high-pass filter sweep before the drop on the distorted guitars. This is what I wish some bands would do: go completely digital and see what happens.