Joel Rust

We'll all be gone is a short piece for piano, commissioned by Michael Beckerman to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sample sheet music available here.

Composed in collaboration with J. Martin Daughtry.

Some jazz solos are so famous, so familiar, that we can hear them in our mind’s ear; for many jazz musicians, they are fixed in memory like sculptures, their temporal content secondary to the contours and grain of their gestures, timbres, and “feel” – all of which can be called to presence at will. The improviser’s art creates a line from this abundance, at which point it is subject again to the tyranny of temporality. Refluent, Conspiring instead moves through this imagined music like a tidal river, such as the Hudson: it flows upstream, attains moments of stasis, and then proceeds downstream, reversing its course multiple times before it reaches the mouth.

Perusal score available here.

Commissioned by Jude Carlton.

Perusal score available here (4.3 octave marimba) and here (5 octave marimba). Please contact me for a recording.

TRIO TRIO TRIO is built in three sections, which each contain three sub-sections; its structure is a trio of trios, hence the title. However, it attempts to make the trio itself sound like more than three instruments, or like one super-instrument; or, sometimes, both at once. Against these more structural concerns, the musical material of the piece is built around continual expansion, with tiny gestures and seeds growing, flowering, and vanishing.

This recording is by the Eblana String Trio; it was commissioned for them by the Park Lane Group, with support from the RVW Trust.

Perusal score available here.

‘The End of History Illusion,’ a study led by Daniel Gilbert, showed that – across all demographic lines – people tend to say they have changed greatly over the last ten years; asked about the next decade, they predict they will stay more or less the same. We ‘regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives.’ This piece tries to reflect this, flickering between change and stasis, hope and nostalgia.

Perusal score available here.

Before its more prosaic reality came along, futurologists talked about the 'celestial jukebox' – a device that would be able to instantly play any song, anywhere in the world. I imagine that its counterpart, the infernal jukebox, would play only chromatic scales and clusters on four glockenspiels; this is what this piece does.

Perusal score available here.

Surfacing's different kinds of material lie on a spectrum from those that are only possible on the piano (arpeggios caught in the sustain pedal) to those only possible on the cello (a crescendo on a held note), with many at varying degrees in between (chords being more suited to the piano, tremoli more suited to the cello). These materials resurface in various combinations throughout the piece.

The first movement focuses on the ways the two instruments must interpret the material differently, but the second movement begins with a meeting point: the pizzicato cello matches the una corda piano's short (but not staccato) notes. The instruments diverge slightly, using more characteristic material, but remain closely allied until the 'cello returns to arco playing at the end, forcing the piece back to the soundworld of the first movement.

This recording was made by Andrew Power (cello) and Siwan Rhys (piano).

Perusal score available here.

A skein is a loosely coiled and knotted length of thread or yarn; or a tangled or complicated arrangement, state, or situation; or a flock of wild geese or swans in flight.

Performed by Siwan Rhys, Justin Snyder (pianos), Craig Apps, and George Barton (percussion).

Perusal score available here.

The title of this work comes from a propagandistic speech heard by the protagonist of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We:

“A book tells a story about a savage and a barometer. The savage noticed that every time when the barometer indicated rain, rain actually fell. And since the savage had his heart set on getting rain he tinkered with the barometer until he had let out just enough quicksilver to bring it to the level of rain. You’re laughing – but [. . .] the savage at least had daring and energy and logic – even though it was wild logic.”

The concerns of the piece that derive from this include complicating the relationships between cause and effect, and exploring the border between transcendence and failure. Removed from its context, the phrase ‘wild logic’ can be read as an intriguing description of the creative process; much of this piece, then, simply enjoys letting ideas generate themselves, commingle, and dissipate.

Performed by Ensemble Nikel.

Perusal score available here.