b. 1982 || Website || YouTube || SoundCloud || Twitter
J. M. Gerraughty is a composer who grew up in the New England area participating in music groups from a young age. These influences greatly affect his composition. His website describes his music as “combining innovative approaches to form, color, and texture with a direct and intuitive musical framework” while producing “new and peculiar blooms from its roots in the classical tradition.”(http://www.jmgerraughty.com/)
Simple Carbs is a piece written for Soprano Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, and Piano. From his program notes Gerraughty explains that the piece “recreates the experience of excessive sugar consumption, known colloquially as a ‘sugar high.’” It then goes on to tell the story of how a sugar high works. The saxophones dance along with the piano who creates rhythmic adjunct movements until the crash happens around 2:30/2:35. The piece then goes into recreating the first “movements” of the piece with less enthusiasm until it slowly builds back up towards the previous liveliness. However, before it can get to the dance-like pace of the first section, it cuts off and finishes on high notes in the saxophones.
Slant of Light is a piece written in 2010 for Four Female Voices (doubling on harmonicas), Alto Flute, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, and Trumpet (offstage). For the lyrics, he uses texts by Emily Dickinson combined with Ave Maria. A beautiful piece with many moving parts, he explains that his influences include both Ligeti and Ockeghem. A wonderful mixture of ancient and modern techniques and settings, this piece creates a calm and moving relationship between the voices and instruments that move along almost like a river as it fades away, reemerges, then fades again.
The Air is a Chamber is a piece written for piano and violin. The piano starts with slow rhythmic chords. The violin enters with an adjunct line that creates an almost sad or eerie melody with the piano’s continuous rhythmic lines. Around the 3 minute mark the piano starts to play more broken chords and the two dance in tandem until they fade again about half a minute later. Around 4:00 the piano picks up it’s rhythmic chords again at a faster pace while the violin joins in with his beautifully ominous melody. Again, they dance around each other creating a swirl of movement until the piano again breaks away to play the broken chorded melodic line. They quietly continue in conversation like this as they drift into nothingness.
J. M. Gerraughty is a fantastic composer who is based outside of Los Angeles. To follow his career or listen to his music, please visit his Website and Twitter account, or subscribe to his YouTube and SoundCloud channels.
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I do not own any of the music in this blog post or in any other posts that you may find in this blog.
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