Alien: Abandon OST now available!

I had such a blast writing this one. The audio drama is probably the best thing we’ve ever done as a podcast, and you can listen to the full thing here! The score is created almost entirely with the waterphone—a stainless-steel idiophone partially filled with (you guessed it) water. I actually purchased one explicitly for this project, so I had to learn to play it while also scoring the piece!

I definitely work best when I’ve got hard limitations hemming me in, so limiting my sonic palette to such a weird instrument (occasionally supplemented by synths and voice, to be fair) was a ton of fun.

You can listen at Bandcamp, and if you’d like to support these sorts of projects in the future you can buy a copy to keep! As always, it’s pay-what-you-want.

New piece! Balloonist's Prayer, for three voices

First choral commission in two years! This one is for a very dear friend who recently earned her hot air balloon certificate. The text is a short, traditional prayer recited before taking to the skies.

This is the “concert version” of the piece, for technically skilled singers. I’m also planning on making a simplified version for untrained singers to intone together before flying.

Speaking of flying: that’s exactly what it felt like to write for voices again! All three of the pieces I was working on when COVID hit were vocal: a song cycle and two choral works. None of those commissions survived the pandemic, unfortunately.

I’m so grateful for this commission (which supported the Greater Boston Food Bank) and for the friendship that brought it about.

The soundtrack for ALIEN: THE TIDES OF NIGHT is now available!

I had a wonderful time scoring this original audio drama by Conar Murdoch. To listen to the full audio drama (with killer direction and sound design by Jaime Prater), follow Perfect Organism: The Alien Saga Podcast wherever you get your podcasts!

To purchase the EP (and support future audio work), head over to Bandcamp.

Thanks!

Emergence: Program Note

Emergence premieres on Zoom on April 11! Stay tuned for more details on my Performances page as it gets closer. Here’s the program note!

“Like so many others living through this bizarre COVID-19 period, I’ve spent much of the past year inside a sort of cocoon. So much changed so quickly. We shifted our lives to make sure our children were safe, our livelihoods secure, our parents protected. And music, that lifeblood so many of us rely on, felt like it vanished for awhile. This commission, from my friend and collaborator Ann Bobo for her gifted student Alicia Kim, was a personal emergence for me: the first project I worked on since COVID-19 changed everything.

But the title also refers to something Ms. Kim wanted the piece to express: self discovery. The ending of Emergence is unwritten; I’ve supplied some colors for her palette, but other than that the ending is completely up to the performer. It is my hope that this act of spontaneous composition gives Ms. Kim an opportunity to end the piece on her terms each time she plays it.”

— Patrick Greene, 2021

My first double barline of the COVID-19 pandemic!

Hey everyone, it’s been … awhile.

Like many of you, 2020 threw me for a bit of a loop. The pieces I’d been working on were put on hold. The ensembles I was working with suspended their seasons. Even the choral music I’d planned for later in the year was derailed by the simple fact that singing in proximity with other people was, suddenly and shockingly, a dangerous activity.

I was overjoyed when Ann Bobo, Boston Musica Viva’s flautist, asked if I’d write something for one of her star pupils. This student—Alicia Kim—plays expressively, earnestly, and with tremendous technical skills, and writing for her has been a wonderful experience.

As you might imagine, all of this has been handled over Zoom. And the premiere, coming later this spring, will almost certainly be virtual.

But making music again—getting to work on something, getting to bring it into the world in collaboration with others—has been such an energizing feeling. So thank you Ann, Alicia, and everyone else making music during these bizarre times. This piece is for you, in every imaginable way.