CLUTCH

About the Program

Minoo Dixon
Air Poem no. 1
BORN 1999

COMPOSED 2024

INSTRUMENTATION alto saxophone quartet

PERFORMED BY Connor O'Toole, Jacob Feldman, Marina Salkellakis, David Bennette

Minoo Dixon  is a Korean-American composer who has been recognized by ASCAP and National Federation of Music Clubs and has been on the rise composing meaningful and exciting music meant for a variety of audiences in the concert hall. Throughout his years of composing, he has been awarded the Donald Martino Award for Excellence in Composition, Senior Composition Competition Winner by MTNA, two NEC Honors Ensemble Composition Competitions, and a finalist of the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards Competition. Minoo’s pieces also have been performed at locations such as Carnegie Hall, Busan Cultural Center, Jordan Hall, and the Midwest Clinic. To find more of what Minoo is up to, visit his website minoodixon.com or follow him on Instagram @minoodixon

Isaac Basil
A Place to Stay
BORN 2005
COMPOSED 2023

INSTRUMENTATION string quartet, piano, and voice
PERFORMED BY Isaac Basil, Sojo Gonzalez, Jack Milligan
 

ABOUT THE PIECE “And don't demand any sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it from me more than I myself and yet many things elude me, I'm sure, perhaps everything eludes me.” ― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

ABOUT THE COMPOSER At age 12, Isaac Taylor wrote his first composition: a short piece for solo piano. Although simplistic, this first piece led to a passion for composition and music in its entirety. Playing in contemporary bands, learning new instruments, and meeting fellow musicians along the way, Isaac’s high school music career was filled with a large array of different experiences and disciplines. In his freshman, sophomore, and junior years, Isaac participated in the TMTA original composition contest, multiple solo piano contests, and had his work reviewed by a number of faculty at music schools throughout Texas. He is currently studying composition at the Butler School of Music and continues to pursue a diverse range of musical skills and styles.

Kyra Hong
Dungeon Crawling
BORN 2005
COMPOSED 2023

INSTRUMENTATION three cellos and piano


PERFORMED BY William Pu, Nicole Parker, Christopher Tran, Kelly Chanpong

ABOUT THE PIECE This piece draws inspiration from the old pixelated RPGs my father grew up playing, a genre of games largely made up of epic dungeon traversing adventures full of treasure, monsters, and heroic tales. Dungeon Crawling uses many unique motifs that each represent an element of our hero's dungeon-crawling journey, phrases that come and go throughout the piece with a different twist each time. I drew inspiration largely from cinematic methods of scoring, where the listener is encouraged to draw a visual story in their mind as they listen to the highly expressive elements of this trio. The hero, the dungeon, the monster, and even an epic sword fight—what's not to love about a heroic tale of adventure and tragedy.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Kyra is an avid storyteller and musician. Some of her preferred mediums of creativity span across webcomic creation, novel writing, music composition, singing and songwriting, and visual arts. She has premiered pieces with the UT String Project Faculty Orchestra, as well as with Golden Hornet’s 2023 Winter Whoop-De-Doo fundraiser and their 2024 Young Composer’s Concert at KMFA. She started and directed a chamber ensemble of homeschooled students aptly named The Homeschool Orchestra when she saw a need for group performances for string players in the area. Kyra is currently studying music composition at the Butler School of Music with a minor in arts management and administration and is an instructor with the String Project. She is Suzuki-certified and a member of SAA (Suzuki Association of the Americas). She has been teaching students in her home studio and DSYO since 2021. Her art and music portfolios can be found on Instagram and YouTube @kyrahongofficial. Soli Deo gloria!

 

Nicholas Jimenez
Crystal Water Etude
BORN 1995
COMPOSED 2024
INSTRUMENTATION solo piano
PERFORMED BY Nicholas Jimenez

ABOUT THE PIECE This piece for piano solo represents an exploration and expansion of a two-note descending melodic line characterized by an eighth note quarter rhythm, and its reconfigurations. The aspect of piano technique, which is being challenged here in etude form, is the ability to bring out the melody amongst a bevy of fast descending and ascending arpeggios which switch back and forth between the hands. This along with two other new pieces are available streaming now under Nicholas Jimenez.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Nicholas Jimenez is a D.M.A. student in piano performance The University of Texas at Austin, but also enjoys composing for piano as well as  electronic mediums. He has won several international piano prizes and also teaches privately. You can find this piece available on streaming services now.

Brandon Shen
Friends
BORN 2006
COMPOSED 2024
INSTRUMENTATION marimba and vibraphone
PERFORMED BY Chia Yu Lin, Ashley (Yu-Chia) Hsu

ABOUT THE PIECE A fun little duet for 5.0 octave marimba and 3.0 octave vibraphone, featuring jazz and pop elements (as well as a lot of the 5/4 polyrhythm). Playing music with friends is something that makes me really happy, so I wrote a piece about it—one that I envisioned those two friends would have lots of fun playing.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Brandon Shen is a Chinese-American composer, saxophonist and pianist studying at The University of Texas at Austin under Omar Thomas. Through music, he intends to explore natural phenomena, human connection, and perception.

Joel Laviolette
Lahaina Song
BORN 1975
COMPOSED 2023
INSTRUMENTATION solo electric guitar 
PERFORMED BY Joel Laviolette

ABOUT THE PIECE I have a deep love and connection with the town of Lahaina and the island of Maui, and after hearing about the fires, I picked up my guitar to meditate on the emotions that I was feeling and to ponder the suffering that so many went through in the devastating fire. Having spent many hours walking the streets of Lahaina, I’ve often reflected on the land’s untamed beauty, and how people on the islands are intimately connected with the natural cycles of life. Fire, despite its destructiveness, is a natural part of our world. This music is born from these reflections—a meditation on both the overwhelming finality of devastation, and an acknowledging of life’s unending cycles.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Joel Laviolette is a composer, educator, instrument builder and performer based in Austin, Texas. His compositions focus on the underlying philosophical approach to music that his 30-plus years of dedication to Zimbabwean trance music has cultivated. Joel is the director of the Rattletree School of Marimba and leads the groups Rattletree, Kupira, and Mafaro Marimba. His groups have performed and taught at countless festivals, clubs, and universities around the world. As an internationally recognized expert on Zimbabwean mbira music, Joel has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR), and he has been published in Percussive Notes, Mbira Music: Structures and Processes and other journals. Joel lived several years in Zimbabwe and studied with his primary teacher Matemai for 28 years until his death in 2021. Joel has a B.A. in composition from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently pursuing a Masters in Composition at the Butler School.

Caio Campos
SFI/ILS
BORN 1996
INSTRUMENTATION electric bass
PERFORMED BY Caio Campos

ABOUT THE PIECE Eyes. Hands. Body. Fists. Stare. Shoulders. Fingers. Spine. Neck. Jaw. Feet. Knees. Elbows. Breath. Gaze. Movement. Face. Lips. Hair. Arms. Chest. Pulse. Sweat. Tension. Muscles. Grip. Stance. Impact. Resistance. Push. Pull. Force. Power. Focus. Glare. Pressure. Swing. Friction. Flex. Shake. Twist. Clench. Kick. Slap. Punch. Snap. Crush. Drop. Lash. Slam. Strike. Rip.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Caio Costa Campos is a composer and improviser from Belo Horizonte, Brasil. His recent works are related to a view of music as performance, drawing from concepts like presence, physicality, embodiment, liveness and from other performance art practices expressive materials and intentions to be articulated in music, besides the ones that happen through so called "music perception." He has experience with creative programming, live electronics and free improvisation in both marginal and concert settings and bases his work on those trying to achieve this "other" expressiveness.

Kirsten Townander
little Sax, the ghost
BORN 2001
COMPOSED 2023
INSTRUMENTATION saxophone quartet
PERFORMED BY Ethan Ashley, Ben Kaplan, Joseph Lowry, Inbo Shim

ABOUT THE PIECE little Sax, the ghost is a musical storytelling of the peculiar life of Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone. With a career so legendary, it is unsurprising that many musicians know his name...but what most don’t know is just how unusual his life was. Sax’s childhood years were permeated with near-death experiences—incidents so unique and frequent that one can’t help but laugh. Divided into five movements, the tale follows Sax’s life chronologically. The piece opens and closes warmly, with the lullaby and eulogy acting as covers of a book that envelop the story. The melodic material of these two movements was drawn from Chant Sacré, a work of Hector Berlioz that served as the platform for the saxophone’s premiere in 1844. Between the bindings, the piece delves into three specific accounts of Sax escaping Death’s grip: a dangerous encounter with a staircase, an almost-lethal mishap in his father’s workshop, and a treacherous trip down a raging river. At times obvious and others discreet, the Dies Irae is incorporated into all five movements—each time, a warning that Death may be on its way. Suffice it to say, it is nothing short of a miracle that the saxophone exists today. The intentions of little Sax, the ghost, therefore, are to celebrate the instrument and poke fun at the incredibly unlucky life of its creator!
 

ABOUT THE COMPOSER Kirsten Townander an Illinois-bred composer, flutist, educator, and first-year M.M. composition student at The University of Texas at Austin. Her work is fueled by her love of story-telling, passion for human connection, and appreciation for her multidisciplinary background in the fine arts, which spans across theatre, dance, and—of course—music. Whenever possible, she seeks to bridge gaps between these often “separate” art forms and foster spaces for performers to embrace creativity in ways that are not always readily available within the traditional frameworks of classically-rooted music in Western academic settings. Kirsten hopes that those who hear her music are left with a renewed sense of childlike wonder and curiosity.

 

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