A collection of recent works, including scores, videos, excerpts, and full performances. For a more complete list of works please go HERE
Tell Me a Story
(fl, sop, electronics) for Sydeboob Duo 9’30”
Commissioned by NYC-based experimental flute and soprano ensemble SydeBoob Duo for Operator, a sex-positive showcase with new music inspired by Sydeboob Director’s experience as a sex worker. Tell Me a Story uses an algorithm written by composer and technologist Carmine Cella called the sound types as its primary synthesis engine. I also used IRCAM’s Dicy2.
View the score HERE
The Square
(fl, ob, cl, bsn, hrn, tpt, tbn, perc, vln, vln, vla, vc) for Eco Ensemble 11’30”
Based on my short story, The Square, excerpted in the preface to the score.
View the score HERE
Abigail, Martin, the Virus and the Voice of God
(fl, cl, vln, vc) for Ensemble l’Itinéraire 15’00”
Based on my short story, Abigail, Martin, the Virus and the Voice of God, included in the preface to the score.
View the score HERE
Excerpts 1:
Excerpt 2:
Excerpt 3:
Excerpt 4:
Õs Grândė Fædeur dî Rïdiendo
(curdlephone and electronics) with Juna Toksöz Winston 60’00”
Theatrical lecture-recital written and composed by Juna Toksöz Winston and Curtis Rumrill. Based on my short story, A Tape for the End of the World. It also serves as a prequel to my opera, Her Holiness, the Winter Dog.
Juna Toksöz Winston drives across the landscape tuned into radio static, hunting the ephemeral traces of a long-abandoned cult of sonic worshippers whose pirate transmissions are the fabric of legends. Decades after their storied feats of eco-terrorism, Li-ists have drifted from the front pages of newspapers to the footnotes of academic dissertations, having become the reluctant subject of study for a small community of scholars invested in their eschatological lamentations.
Below is a short collection of excerpts. For the full video go HERE
Unky Dead Bones McGringo
(two trombones, singing, augmented auto-harp and augmented banjo with multimedia projections), composed for Rage Thormbones 40’00”
I decided to do some funeral planning, so I wrote my own funeral service. It’s a full service with a sing-along, of course, composed for Rage Thormbones. I’ll never know, but I hope they’ll play it at my actual funeral. Actually, consider this a formal request. I haven’t gotten to editing the documentation, but here’s the video that plays before the funeral, as folks mingle around and chat with each other. It begins before the doors open, and the performers play the Prelude as the audience enters.
In this video the recording of them playing the music starts around 4:30, but if you want to read my full remembrance you’ll have to start at the beginning. The next movement, La Villanelle, starts at the end of this video, and marks the beginning of the funeral service. I’ll edit that stuff eventually, but for now, there is a score, and your imagination. And then there is also my future funeral, if video documentation feels insufficient.
The score you can view HERE.
The Fur Rabbits of Toft Farms
(haegeum, cello) composed for Soo Yeon Lyuh and Ashley Bathgate 17’30”
A litter of rabbit kits learn the songs of the farm on which they live while gradually coming to terms with what it means to be raised as a fur rabbit on a rabbit farm.
In 1726 Mary Toft began giving birth to rabbits, or so the story goes. Toft, who claimed to have become supernaturally obsessed with rabbits during her pregnancy, repeatedly offered to give birth to the creatures in whole or pieces. She did so in the presence of anyone who doubted her, much to the fascination of the British Royal Family, who sent representatives. Many a fine physician lost their reputation when Toft’s hoax was revealed.
Ever since then we at Toft Farms™ have proudly delivered the finest in rabbit meats, furs and byproducts. Toft Farms™: “rabbits the Toft way.”
Today I Made Not a Sound
(chromelodeon and heckelphone) performed by the ghosts of Daniil Kharms length indeterminate
This work is deliberately unperformable, or, more accurately, the definitive performance of the piece is the act of reading the score and notes, and imagining the piece.
The score is available here, if you would like to imagine its performance.
Songs of an Unnamed Kingdom
(cl, tbn, sop, sop, sop, mezzo, perc, vln, vc) performed by Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Eco Ensemble 15’00”
Songs of an Unnamed Kingdom is the retelling of an Irish folk song often named Polly Vaughn (though there are many variants). In the original Young Jimmy shoots and kills Polly Vaughn, then claims he mistook her for a swan. He is tried for her murder, but during the trial Polly Vaughn’s ghost appears to explain that her killing was not Young Jimmy’s fault, as she herself had made the fatal mistake of looking like a swan.
Her Holiness, the Winter Dog
Opera (fl, cl, perc, sop, sop, sop, sop, mezzo, microtonal organ, vln, cv) 80’00”
In a dystopian future, humans cause the extinction of nearly all animals. In response wealthy families hire people to dress and live as animals in their homes. Following the death of their beloved Autumn Dog, three sisters hire a new dog of dubious lineage.
Commissioned by Kamratōn, the opera is a collaboration with librettist Zachary Webber, and premiered under the musical direction of Daniel Curtis, by Kamratōn, Quince Ensemble, and Shana Simmons Dance.
The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers
(sop, sop sop, mezzo) composed for Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble 45’00”
The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers is the story of a mother and her children, animals of indeterminate species. At the opening of the piece a blight of mold comes that wipes out her their only source of food for the winter, the Ilex, or winterberry as it is commonly known. Unable to produce milk, and starving together as they hibernate in their burrow, the mother, our protagonist, eventually makes the decision, conscious or not, to eat her children. She emerges from the ordeal speaking a new language acquired while in the throes of a starving sleep and amidst blood dreams. The work, a concert-length musical drama in eight parts, was commissioned by Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and composed based on text written by Zachary Webber.
Excerpts are posted below.
To listen to the complete work, visit http://curtisrumrill.com/wiltmold/
Excerpt 1, Part II, Which describes an unpleasant dream, and other things: Start (page 20) – Rehearsal D (page 23)
Excerpt 2, Part III, A plea for the impossible: Rehearsal D (page 33) – end (page 36)
Excerpt 3, Part IV, The part about the eating: Rehearsal C (page 49) – Rehearsal G (page 54)
Excerpt 4, Part V, Hymn and soliloquy: Start (page 60) – Rehearsal L (page 62)
The Long Hibernation
(sax, perc, sop, pno, vln) performed by Ensemble Dal Niente 15’00”
The Long Hibernation is the story of an animal of indeterminate species that dies in her sleep. She is then lamented through a folk-song in an imaginary dialect of English (presumably the fictional folk-dialect of her species).
Excerpt: Rehearsal R (page 14) – Rehearsal Z (page 22)
Complete Work:
Sex Poem for Lightbulb by Beetle
(sop, fl, gtr, perc i, perc ii) for soundSCAPE Festival, Liz Pearce, soprano 10’00”
A beetle bashes herself to death against a lightbulb, for love: this lightbulb a god to the beetle’s bugness.
Excerpt: Rehearsal D (page 6) – Rehearsal N (page 16)
Complete Work:
In this Styrofoam Room
(fl, ob, cl, sop, vln, vc) performed by Kamratōn 8’00”
In this Styrofoam Room is the story of a bug, living in a trash heap, continually watching her unfertilized eggs wither and die, and begging for a lover to come along.
Audio:
Last Night at Mom’s House
(gtr, gtr) 46’00”
A set of improvisations my brother, Tristan, and I recorded in 2020 the last time we were in our mother’s house when we met to finish cleaning it out and sell it after her death 6 months earlier.
Available HERE to listen