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Word for Word (2011, 10 min.)
Trumpet Concerto (2010, 20 min.)
Patriot (2007, 9 min.)
Song to Craving (2003, 9 min.)
back to top
Partition (2010, 21 min.)
Cantata: Songs for the Divided (2004, 20 min.)
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Cutest Little Arbitrage (2011, 15 min.)
Is it Dirty (2010, 8 min.)
Eyelid Margin (2009, 12 min.)
Snowball (2008, 6 min.)
Illuminating the Maze (2008, 14 min.)
My Catalonia (2008, 7 min.)
Make it out (2008, 5 min.)
You Have AIDS (2008, 5 min.)
Katrina Ballads (2007, 1 hour)
Cordavi and Fig (2007, 8 min.)
Seven Small Love Songs (2004, 8 min.)
Antiphon (2003, 8 min.)
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Parlor Diplomacy [solo piano] (2011, 20 min.)
Electric Guitar Quartet (2011, 60 min.)
String Quintet (2011, 20 min.)
The One you Guard the Most (2009, 6 min.)
Thaw (2009, 12 min.)
Ghostspace (2009, 8 min.)
Vessels (2008, 10 min.)
Crib Dweller (2007, 8 min.)
I Remember (2007, 8 min.)
Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)
Variations and Filters (2006, 12 min.)
23 (2005, 8 min.)
One of Us, One of Them (2005, 8 min.)
Greyhound to Santa Fe: 4am (2005, 8 min.)
Once the Search (2004, 17 min.)
Spin (2004,8 min.)
Brass Quintet (2001, 4 min.)
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Room for Something (2011, 8 min.)
Away (2010, 6 min.)
Privilege (2009, 14 min.)
Mass for St. Mary’s (2008, 10 min.)
Because (2006, 6 min.)
Fortress (2005, 8 min.)
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
(2005, 7 min.)
Stratagems (2004, 8 min.)
Murder on the Road in Alabama (2003, 6 min.)
Todos Parense (2002, 5 min.)
Ubi Caritas (2000, 5 min.)
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Intimacy and Resistance (2010, 5 min.)
Charleston Songbook (2008, 20 min.)
I Remember (2007, 8 min.)
I Carry Your Heart (2007, 5 min.)
(mis)communications (2001,15 min.)
Rise up, my love (1999, 3 min.)
Early Songs (1996-2003, 15 min.)
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Is it Dirty (2010, 8 min.)
359 Each Time (2010, 8 min.)
Last Man Standing (2008, 4 min.)
Illuminating the Maze (2008, 50 min.)
My Catalonia (2008, 7 min.)
Make it out (2008, 5 min.)
Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)
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R We Who R We (2011)
Music from 'la plage'(2010, 40 min.)
Music from 'under the house'(2009, 10 min.)
Music from 'Checkmate' (2008, 10 min.)
The Coffin (2004, 6 min.)
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide (2002, 4 min.)
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The following songs are adaptable for different band combinations:
359 Each Time
All The Things
Ambitioning
Ashley Nelson (from Katrina Ballads)
Barbara Bush: 9.5.05 (from Katrina Ballads)
Body Moving
Burning TV Song
Dennis Hastert: 8.31.05 (from Katrina Ballads)
Everything You Do
I Mean Well
I Want Never
Is It Dirty
Kanye West: 9.2.05 (from Katrina Ballads)
Make it Out
My Favorite Ride
Never Said Nothing
Protection
Shame Campaign
This Time
We Didn't Know
 

 

The One You Guard the Most (2009, 5 min.)

string quartet

commission:
Carlsbad Music Festival

premiere:
The Calder Quartet
Carlsbad Music Festival, Carlsbad, CA
September 2009

above art: from location/relocation/delocation, by Gabriela Salazar

program notes:
Recent neurological studies have suggested that the more often we revisit one of our memories, the more inaccurate that memory becomes. When we think about a time in our past, we are recalling not the source event itself, but only the last time we remembered it. A copy of a copy.

If this is correct, it means the most potent recollections of the past are the memories that lay dormant for a long time. Their appearance to us in a flash brings us much closer to the truth of our past experiences than the comforting stories we tell ourselves over and over. The memories that we have left alone - for whatever reason stored deep in our mind - may be the clearest and most unadulterated representation of time passed.

Do we selectively guard particular memories in order to protect ourselves, to protect certain important events from our past? Or is it the other way around - are our personal identities constructed by romanticizing merely those past events we happened to have forgotten for a while? The One You Guard the Most imagines the uncovering of a buried memory and its mysterious and vital role as a vessel to the past.