When I was in the initial stages of writing Ode to Mourning Doves, it became clear that the melodic lines I was creating evoked birdcall. Once this idea of birds had gotten into my head, it began to overtake the project; I couldn’t help but conceptualize this piece as a plethora of birds, singing and flying around together. Throughout the piece, you might catch the moments when the birds emerge at sunrise, sing from the treetops, fly by the oceanside, and engage in several other escapades until the sunset quiets them.

All of the birdcalls in Ode to Mourning Doves are fictional, with the exception of one: the mourning dove’s. This bird’s beautiful song, which I used to imitate with my sister when we were kids, first appears in its entirety after the first complete silence of the piece (mm. 24-25). The flutter-tongue and pitch-bending used on the flute to imitate the mourning dove’s call create a beautiful, but lonely sound. As the piece progresses, certain aspects of this call, such as the subtle downward slide (pitch-bending) at the end of notes, are transferred from the flute to the strings, who eventually play the full melody at the climax of the piece (mm. 64-65).

With this work, I hope to have captured the beauty of a spring morning, and the tranquillity that washes over us as we let nature become our escape.

When I first stumbled across Henri Frédéric Amiel’s La rêverie, I was instantly charmed by its colourful and warm character. Amiel’s comparison of daydreaming and morning mist touched me deeply, as the landscape that he describes (the rising sun revealing a beautiful morning mist), is one which I have watched in appreciation and awe many times. Seeing as the poem is written in two parts, one describing the mist and one comparing it to dreaming, I explored a similar structure within my music. As the piece opens with the rising of the sun, the singers present long, expanding chords to imitate the gaseous nature of mist. In the second half of the piece, a waltz takes over in order to portray the wonderful way that, as Amiel writes, daydreaming beautifies our thoughts and is the key to their fruition. At some point, the dance is interrupted by the expanding chords from the beginning of the piece; Amiel refers to the “vapour” (mist) during this moment of the poem, so I decided to incorporate the mist-like chords into the dance.

To celebrate Johns Hopkins University’s 150th anniversary, the Lemon Stick ensemble commissioned me to create a piece for their new album, which explores Johns Hopkins University’s motto “the truth will set you free.” Johns Hopkins University, through one of their generous Artistic Lens awards, have supplied the funding for this project. Thank you Johns Hopkins University, and happy 150th anniversary!

Truth is such an interesting topic, which can be explored at great lengths, but the truths that set me free are often small, intimate, everyday truths about my human experience.

In my search for a text for this project, I stumbled across the poem My Help is in the Mountain, and felt an instant connection with the spiritual experience that Nancy C. Wood illustrates through a mountain trek. This poem, as well as the full collection of poems and photographs that it was published alongside (Hollering Sun (1972)), are heavily inspired by the beliefs and legends of the Pueblo People of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. My Help is in the Mountain, specifically, draws from their belief in the true importance of human connection with nature.

Recently, I have been hearing people my age use the expression “I needed to touch grass” to express their need to disconnect from a situation and reset their thought patterns. While most seem to use this expression jokingly, I believe that there is an undeniable truth, in my life, to this need to “touch grass;” grounding myself in nature allows me to recontextualize my life and experiences in relation to the rest of the world. I believe that a connection with nature is an innate human need, which many of us are slowly losing touch with as technology continues to overtake our daily lives.

As I set My Help is in the Mountain to music, I could not pretend to be able to represent the Pueblo People of Tao’s beautiful and rich culture, which has existed long before me, and whose story I have not the appropriate voice to tell. I, instead, approached my music making through the truth that Wood’s words speak about my own life, and of my deep need to lose myself in the chirping of the birds that adorn a forest’s branches or in the gentle embrace of wind traversing the oceanside. That being said, in the most hypocritical of ways, I have spent many hours hunched over this score, holed up in my apartment; I need to go “touch grass.”

I wrote these two pieces while I was serving as the composer in residence for the vocal department at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. When writing vocal music, I always begin my process by reading a ridiculous amount of poetry; it is important to me that I connect with the text to a point where I feel that I can do it justice through my music. The poems Nuit de printemps (by François-René De Chateaubriand) and Un soir d’automne (by Antoine de Latour) immediately grabbed my attention when I first read them; they capture the feelings of awe and peace that I, too, experience when surrounded by nature. In addition, spring and fall happen to be my two favorite seasons, so I felt that these two poems would make a lovely set.

François-René De Chateaubriand describes, in Nuit de printemps, an evening during which he loses himself in the comforting aromas, sounds and new life that arrive with spring. As I set his poem to music, I did my best to illustrate, through changing textures and colours, his experiences as colourfully as he describes them. The clearness of the spring sky, the smell of the warm, humid air and the sound of birds singing; I created music that elicits the same feelings in me as these things.

Un soir d’automne opens with a dark, damp mood; Antoine de Latour describes (much more beautifully than this) a moment during which he is working on his poetry next to a stream, under the falling leaves. As I considered how to set this section of the poem to music, I settled on a somewhat “muddy” texture, with just a few too many notes in each chord. As the poem continues, the changing colours of the hillside, as well as the sunset on the lake, bring a beautiful change of mood, whose glorious colours I did my best to represent through my choices of chords and textures. In the middle of Un soir d’ automne, Antoine de Latour writes of a mysterious white vessel that he believes to occasionally see; I translated this mysterious passage of the poem into a dream-like section.

There is something so beautiful about nature reclaiming parts of the earth that were previously inhabited by humans. This may simply be a niche interest of mine, but I find it intriguing how life can spread out and cover up old ruins, or even abandoned buildings; the contrast between an old, decaying structure and new, quickly-spreading life has always been so beautiful to me. As I was writing this piece, a section reminiscent of music from a more ancient time emerged somewhere along the way. As I continued to write, I could not help but imagine an old castle, which was once full of life and magic, being overtaken by the vegetation of the surrounding forest. As you listen, you may hear echoes of the joyous feasts and courtly dances that once filled the castle.

As a Swiss-Canadian who has grown up entirely in Canada, I like to joke that I am a “fake” Swiss citizen when the subject is brought up. I thought it could be fun to explore a Swiss myth in an attempt to feel a little bit closer to the country where my father spent part of his childhood. When I came across the myth of die Teufelsbrücker (the Devil’s bridge), it drew me in right away.

This myth surrounds the history of a bridge built over the Schöllenen Gorge in Uri, Switzerland. As the myth tells it, the bridge was so difficult to construct that, after many failed attempts, the townspeople reached out to the devil for help. He agreed to construct the bridge, but demanded that the first soul who crossed it be given to him as compensation. After the bridge’s completion, however, the devil was tricked by the townspeople, who sent a goat over the bridge. The devil was furious and wished to destroy the bridge, but was scared away when he caught a glimpse of a cross pendant around the neck of an old lady.

What I love about this story is how naive and simplistic it is; it is almost humorous how black and white the story is. I was also inspired by its imagery, and saw that it had a lot of potential, musically. Hopefully, if I have done my job well, you will be able to hear the story unfold throughout the piece.

Wandering was written for my first composition class at McGill University in 2023. Having never composed for an instrument other than the piano, I was extremely excited to work with the violin. As I wrote this piece, I felt like I was wandering around, exploring the different timbers of the violin for the first time, hence the title Wandering. The main melodic idea is introduced by the piano in the first measure, and is then developed upon, and transformed, as the piece progresses.

My goal when writing these pieces was to translate a few vivid moments that I recently experienced into music.

Window Left Open on a Rainy Day was written as I sat in a practice room and heard the rain begin to slowly fall outside the open window. As the storm picked up outside, the crashing of the thunder that soon began made its way into the piece by way of the low chords in the middle section.

A Day Out at Lake Wallace is not quite as programatic as the previous piece, but was inspired by the feeling of leaving the city for a day to enjoy lake Wallace; the tranquility offered by the surrounding nature and the peace that the waves brought to me.

Sleepy Cat Lounges by the Fireplace was inspired by a trip back home for Christmas. Late one evening, I sat alone and watched as my cat, Stella, relaxed by the fireplace. I wanted to translate the warmth and repose of that moment into the piece, whose texture is, evidently, inspired by Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies No.1.

Gazing at the Sunset One February Evening recounts a moment when I watched the sun shine down powerfully during a sunset, cutting through the cold winter air. The piece has a similar quality due to its moments of warmth and of coldness.

Waves of Nostalgia began as a study of extended techniques on the violin. As I sat in a studio with my friend Jonathan, an amazing violinist, we recorded every extended technique that we could think of. I had created a long list of sounds that I wanted him to play for the recording session, but Jonathan came up with so many surprising ones that I could have never thought of asking for, such as strumming the violin like a ukulele, and making uncannily realistic seagull sounds.

After, as I sat and listened to the recordings, a lot of them felt nostalgic to me; they were reminiscent of the ocean, which has a special place in my heart as I went on family trips to the ocean every year as a kid. Every single digital sound that appears in this piece was created from the sounds that Jonathan played for me at our recording session. Even the wave-like sounds, which appear throughout the piece, were created from a recording of Jonathan using his bow on the body of his violin.

The piece has three large sections. As we arrive on the beach, at the beginning of the piece, a folk-like melody emerges from the violin part, behind which the electronic part creates a gentle harmony decorated with seagull and wave sounds. Somewhere in the middle of the piece, we go underwater to swim with little creatures and whales as a menacing horn begins to sing out. Near the end of the piece, we emerge from the water and the folk tune from the beginning returns.