Category: Compositions

Categories
Chamber Compositions Postclassical

Linea Nigra, for string octet

Linea Nigra (2015) began as an orchestration of my piano piece Canon Chorale (2005). It is scored for string octet, in this case the same configuration as a double string quartet. Most of the structure and content of the earlier work are retained as a kind of continuo, to which newly devised material adds range and contrapuntal detail.

The general technique is a variation of first species counterpoint. A set of short melodies in each of the modes of C major are heard in two- to six-voice, note-on-note canons at the unison and octave, creating a sequence of block chords, or a chorale. The resulting harmonic progressions may have a cloud-like feel to them especially as melodic lengths and part density increase, and chord roots become ambiguous. Towards the end, faster melodic lines develop out of a recurring a triplet pattern.

The title of the piece reflects my own quest for my biological and cultural roots. Linea nigra (“black line”) thus references the vertical line that appears on a woman’s belly in some pregnancies, while it also suggests Black lineage and survival. It could also stand in the sense of a melodic line, printed or otherwise.

My great thanks go to Ashil Mistry, who suggested the instrumentation and generously edited the score, as well as directing the performance heard here.

Recorded July 3, 2016, London, UK
Scheme Ensemble
Ashil Mistry, conductor

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2016

Categories
Compositions Piano Postclassical

Children’s Suite

Children’s Suite comprises a trio of three-movement works for piano I composed for my children Remi, Kenza and Tijani in the respective years of their birth. All nine movements are written in diatonic C major/A minor. The cycle opens and closes with fast movements, otherwise the music is slow to moderate. Forms and structures are for the most part simple and pop-song like, with a limited amount of complexity and abstraction in the details. In several instances, I take inspiration from Bach’s Prelude in C major, in the idea of a repeating pattern with changing harmonies.

Remi (2007)
I. Oh Seven
II. Queen Peace
III. A New Day

Kenza (2012)
I. Fourths + Fifths
II. Moon
III. Golden

Tijani (2014)
I. Son’s Light
II. Lullaby
III. Young Afro Future

Recorded 2013-2015, Roland digital piano direct to file

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2015

Categories
Compositions Piano Postclassical

Tijani, for piano: Young Afro Future

This is the last movement from my piano work Tijani, and the closing part in a cycle of three, three-movement works for piano I’ve composed for my children (which include Remi and Kenza). All nine movements are written in diatonic C major/A minor. Like the opening movement of the cycle, “Oh Seven,” this is a fast piece. The title is based on a combination of my wife’s nickname for our son and the cultural realm of Afrofuturism.

There are three main melodic ideas; the first, a pattern of ascending fourths in the right hand which goes through changes in pitch and harmony; the second, a bassline of staggered octaves which becomes a root-fifth-octave pattern in the second section. The first section of the piece is based on a rhythmic pattern of nine beats; the second, fours alternating with threes. The third idea arrives in this section: progressions of four-note chords, moving in half notes (minims) alternating with dotted quarters (crotchets) and later, dotted half notes (minims).

As with the rest of the cycle, the form and structure here are simple, almost pop-song like. There is a limited amount of complexity and abstraction present in the harmonies and rhythms. Once again I take inspiration from Bach’s Prelude in C major, in the idea of repeating a musical pattern over and over but substituting new harmonies each time.

Composed November 2014
Recorded June 2015, Roland digital piano direct to file

Photo by Remi

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2015

Categories
Anniversary Compositions Piano Postclassical

Tijani, for piano

Today marks one year on earth for my youngest, our son Tijani. In the year of his birth I wrote a three-movement work for piano. The second and third movements are presented here.

As with the pieces written for Tijani’s older sisters Remi and Kenza, the music here is diatonic, in the key of C major/A minor throughout. I work with simple forms and materials to create something that is childlike, quotidian and yet abstract; composed systematically with a sensibility that wanders between intuitive and arbitrary.

https://soundcloud.com/brussell/lullaby

“Lullaby” is a canon of overlapping broken chords in a set of progressions. Each voice in the canon has the range of a fourth. The chord voicings are slightly more sophisticated than in the previous movement, though still based on diatonic roots.

The title “Young Afro Future” is based on a combination of my wife’s nickname for our son and the cultural realm of Afrofuturism. There are three main melodic ideas; the first, a pattern of ascending fourths in the right hand which goes through changes in pitch and harmony; the second, a bassline of staggered octaves which becomes a root-fifth-octave pattern in the second section. The first section of the piece is based on a rhythmic pattern of nine beats; the second, fours alternating with threes. The third idea arrives in this section: progressions of four-note chords, moving in half notes alternating with dotted quarters and later, dotted half notes. Once again I take inspiration from Bach’s Prelude in C Major, in the idea of repeating a musical pattern over and over but substituting new harmonies each time.

Happy birthday, dear Tijani!

Composed 2014
Recorded 2015, Roland digital piano direct to file

Photos: Bruce Russell (“Lullaby”), Nehal El-Hadi (“Young Afro Future”)

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2015

Categories
Anniversary Archive Choral Compositions Electronic Experimental Memoir Percussion Piano Pop Postclassical

Like It’s 1994/95: Uhuru

A recurring introspective retrospective of my music as it sounded twenty years earlier. In early 1994, I took my first trip to Europe, spending a week in Lyon where my music was heard at a university dance festival as well as in the subway for a pop up freestyle contemporary dance event. I spent the latter part of the year working on the indie cassette release Uhuru, which would come out the following spring, and playing keyboards and percussion in a post-punk band. In early 1995, another dance score was heard in London. In late 1995, I began graduate studies at York University, returning nine years after I had first arrived as an undergraduate.

Throughout this period, I continued to hold down a full time retail job selling classical and jazz CDs in Yorkville, as well as freelancing as a composer for dance and theatre. I also got my first taste of hosting college radio. It was my most active period being involved in music in general.

November 1994 rec. February 1995. 8 voices (2 per part), 8 track reel-to-reel. Begins with a row on the seven pitches of the diatonic scale. The pronunciation of uhuru was conflated with “yoo hoo” although I now prefer the proper initial “u” sound. This is life before autotune, for better or worse. Photo: handwritten score excerpt, 1995

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2014

Categories
Anniversary Compositions Journal Piano Postclassical

Kenza, for piano

Today is the second birthday of my second child Kenza, firstborn to my wife Nehal El-Hadi. Just before her birth, I wrote a short three-movement work for piano dedicated to her. I have posted the first movement here.

Like the work written for her older sister Remi, the music here is diatonic, in the key of C major/A minor throughout. I work with simple forms and materials to create something that is both childlike and abstract.

“Fourths + Fifths” is structured around a sequence of six diatonic modes, each associated with a melodic pattern. Each pattern is built up from a single arpeggio into a chordal canon by layering the pattern against copies of itself with different starting points or octaves, although this process is only made clear with the first pattern. The intervals of the fourth and fifth predominate both melodically and harmonically throughout.

Happy birthday, dear Kenza!

Composed 2012
Recorded 2013, Roland digital piano direct to file

Photo by Nehal El-Hadi

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2014

Categories
Anniversary Compositions Percussion Postclassical

Lonely Little Boat

for Hugh Tracey alto kalimba tuned to G-flat major


Composed April 2004
Recorded September 2004

Music copyright Bruce A. Russell 2014

Categories
Anniversary Compositions Postclassical

Remi, for Piano

Today marks the seventh birthday of my older child, Aderemi. In the year of her birth I wrote a three-movement work for piano which takes the short form of her name as its title.

The music is diatonic, in the key of C major/A minor throughout. It has a childlike quality to it and is simply conceived, although not necessarily as children’s music. I have posted the third movement here.

“A New Day” features short, two-voice canon loops in the right hand, and includes two patterns from my string quartet Madra as well as some new ones. It was written while my left hand was in a cast due to a cycling accident. The parallel fifths in the bass were all I could manage, and they connected this movement to the opening one as well as bringing forward a chorale texture overall.

Happy birthday, dear Remi!

Composed 2007
Recorded 2013, Roland digital piano direct to file

Photo: Toronto Island, July 2008

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2014

Categories
Compositions Journal Memoir Piano Postclassical

I Am Somewhere

For most of my life, I have been someone who was for the most part visibly, identifiably mixed race black, but lacking any other evidence of my ethnicity — biological relatives, genealogy, language, cultural items or history — beyond an adoption file that listed me as “Negroid.” I had no roots.

I knew that my white heritage was English and Irish. Unlike black peers who have often been asked where they were really from and to protect their dignity might simply answer “here,” I didn’t even have somewhere to refer back to had I chosen to disclose. Beyond being racialized, I was/from nowhere.

This year, I made contact with a birth relative, learning more about my background in the process. At the same time, joining a personal genetics site revealed numerous possible points of origin in the Global South.

With this in mind, the title of the piece is a reference to the poem “I Am – Somebody” written in the 1950s by Reverend William H. Borders, Sr. and widely popularized by Jesse Jackson.

There is a procedural approach to harmony, with root-progression clusters moving in parallel, alternating diatonic, harmonic major and melodic minor scales. The music has nothing to do with the subject per se, but seems to fit with it terms of weight, density and tone. It is a reflection of my frame of mind during developments at this point in time.

Composed August 2013, recorded October
Roland digital piano direct to file

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce Russell 2013

Categories
Anniversary Archive Compositions Electronic Memoir Postclassical

Birthday Music

Today would have been the 85th birthday of my father Samuel Lawrence (Larry) Russell. He died two months short of his 65th, so this year is also the twentieth anniversary of his passing. Although as a transracial adoptee I have travelled on an outlying cultural path from that of my adoptive family, they are the original source of love in my life.

If my father was a little out of his era and his element in following what I did as a young musician—his natural musical heroes were Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly—he always had time to listen to whatever seemingly strange, novice piece I was working on and the even stranger theory behind it. He would encourage me and then gently mention “making it accessible.”


I don’t know what he would have made of Birthday Music, one of a number of pieces I composed and dedicated to him in the year after his death. Created for my demo reel as a composer for dance, it’s an admittedly bizarre concoction incorporating just intonation tuning, drones, my quirky programming style and the strongest evidence of Steve Reich’s influence on my work. With all that in the mix, I still relied on good-old, I-VI-I-V-I blues structure in the bassline, and a snare-kick backbeat, albeit in 3/2 time.

For Larry, with love

Composed and recorded on a Korg M1 workstation, May 31, 1993

Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce Russell 2013