Conductor: Heejung Park
Recording Engineer: Eugene Kimball

large colored fields Mark
comes by
and leaves

a death

the death
a kiss on a forehead

blood everywhere love is

Recorded by Eugene Kimball
Violin I - Ruda Lee
Violin II - Jing Yang
Viola - Hyeree Yo
Cello - Yifan Wu
Piano - Chenxing Huang

Even though the piece is relatively quiet and piano (as an instrument) does play a very prominent role in it, my idea was to focus on less obvious and known meanings of the Italian word piano. Think about possible plans, plots and schedules, undergirding the flow of time, notice various layers, how they can never be fully grasped by looking at them only vertically (pitch) or horizontally (time), they seem to require an additional plane of existence, a dimension of their own. While the design unfolds gently, exploring various arrangements of plain sameness, we hear : piano, piano, piano.
When listening to the upcoming piece, I would encourage you to ask yourself a question: what is it that I am listening to? In many pieces it is easy to segregate a musical object from its context, and imagine a certain hierarchy and then, perhaps, get closer to the essence of the piece. It seems to me that this quintet could be rather understood as context contextualizing context with only an illusion of emergence of objects. Think of it as light shining on a different light. Well, but if there is no surface what it is that I am looking at? Which one is the object and which one the context? context contextualizing itself. Hopefully this is all only to realize that we have been inside the object, which is the piece itself, for a while. Therefore, the question to ask is: is my mind the context of the piece or is the piece contextualizing my own mind?

Performed by a Boston based ensemble Antico Moderno.
Recorded by Eugene Kimball.

- What if I wen out into the fields and pondered over the romantic nature of slowly moving mechanical bodies?
- Oh, Isaac, you dreamer...
Newton's Pseudologoi, § 9.8 m/s

Performed by members of Yale Philharmonia
Recorded by Eugene Kimball.

Performed by a Brooklyn based percussion quartet Sandbox Percussion.
Recorded by Eugene Kimball.

Time. River. I believe you already know the rest.
Performed by Sandbox Percussion:
Jonathan Allen
Victor Cassese
Ian Rosenbaum
Terry Sweeney
Recording Engineer: Eugene Kimball

Commissioned by Latvian Radio Chamber Singers for a new music festival "Arena".

Conductor: Kaspars Putnins

The piece received a recommendation in UNESCO Rostrum of composers, "under 30" category.

Everything began with a title and initial concept for the concert the piece was written for, called "Greed" and the fact that the piece had to be written for 12 voices and electronics.
Greed, craving and desire lead to suffering. I think, we don't need all of that, the existence is already more than enough, no need for anything else, rejoice in "here and now".
Walt Whitman contemplates: "I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait."
Little by little working with the text, I came to understand that even all of that is too much and it's enough with "I exist as I am, that is enough".
12 voices became a starting point for the musical content: my bricks are 12 different pitches, resulting in a chromatic scale but then, opposite to the dodecaphonic idiom, they are organised in 2 octaves (1 pitch in 1 octave only, not repeated), that, instead of a chromatic cluster, results in a specific colored sonority. In all quarter-of-an-hour long piece no other pitches are used.
The next step is to find a way how to deal with these 12 pitches. Simple maths helps: 1x12, 12x1, 2x6, 6x2, 3x4, 4x3; however, one can immediately notice that even though mathematically 3x4 and 4x3 are quite similar, musically they tend to result in something radically different. This also happens to be the moment where self-sufficiency of this "12" appears. First, I tried to split in 3 modally sounding chords, each having 4 pitches, besides, in a way that the 2 outer chords are symmetrical to the central one. Afterwards, taking each chord's top, 2nd, 3rd and bottom pitch, it's possible to get to 4, also modally sounding but completely different, chords, each consisting of 3 pitches. And all of that within 12!
Gradually, traveling through the magic of numbers, the piece becomes an ode to the sufficiency of existence. In the very beginning, revealing the full sonority of the 12 pitches that is created by repeating, almost as a mantra, the 3 chords and just giving a glimpse of the text, then wandering through counterpoint of multiplications (because 3x4 and 4x3 are so different), combining them in various forms, then, slowing the process down to an absurd, there is enough time to arrive to a revelation that everything already IS, that in the end 3x4 and 4x3 are nothing but 2 different ways to describe "12", that all is this One, Wholeness, Completeness. And maybe that is when the opposite happens: instead of having enough time, it stops existing whatsoever?
When this new enlightenment of Completeness has happened, I try to reach deep down in the consciousness of a listener and to confirm: I exist as I am. That is enough. For that I use a vocoder, a device that allows me to "carve" Whitman's text out of the monolith 12 -tone chord. Even though recorded with my own voice, the sonic result is the 12-tone chord "speaking" the text of Whitman, the speed and pacing are still mine; however, without any timbral aspects of my voice. In this way I offer and ambiguous view on the composer's presence in his own music, sort of present, sort of not. Exactly the same amount of presence as when the listener thinks "I exist as I am".
The ending serves as a coda, similar to contemplation on what is it that one can do with this new, liberated consciousness. The piece doesn't give an answer, instead it's taken over by all 12 voices reciting the mantra "I exist as I am. That is enough".

Dedicated to my teachers Peter Adriaansz and Guus Janssen

Subhuti was one of Buddha’s disciples. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness - the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity. One day, when Subhuti was sitting under a tree in a mood of sublime emptiness, flowers began to fall around him. "We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him. "But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti. "You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuti like rain.

Premiered in Oct, 2012 | Kees van Barenzaal, The Hague, The Netherlands
Pianists: Noah Rectenwald, Tiah Iskandar
When the same phrase is played simultaneously in different octaves, it is rather perceived as one line with a specific timbre than as 2 separate melodies played at the same time. In "The Ebb Tide" I try to explore all the possible timbres one can get from combining 2 lines in different (or the same) octaves split between 2 pianos. In order to investigate not only different timbres but also echo and reverb, one of the pianos always enters a little bit later, creating a canon. The form is made as a catalogue presenting different colors in time but due to ascending pitch organisation (in a scale of the piece not a single phrase) and changing durations of the rests in between the phrases, an impression of development is achieved.

Premiered in Apr, 2013 |Arnold Schoenberg Hall, The Hague, The Netherlands
Conductor: Gerard Bouwhuis
Piano: Amaya Oses Ruiz, Tim Sabel
Harp: Roelina Schouten, Doriene Marselje
Accordion: Elisa van Kesteren, Tara Diepenveen
Marimba: Marianna Soroka
Vibraphone: Ruben Castillo
Sound Engineer: Hans Erblich

Time is enough.
Time is the biggest drama of the humankind. Our perception - the theatre of time.
Through perceived illusions - contractions and expansions - of time we can learn something about timelessness.
Line is a good way to begin.

Excerpts from Latvian National TV

Full Length Radio Broadcast

Unless you speak Latvian, skip to 10.00
Commissioned by Latvijas Koncerti for Riga: European Capital of Culture 2014.
Written for vocal group "Framest"
Libretto: Inga Abele & Edvins Raups
Director: Zane Kreicberga
Visuals/light: Ineta Sipunova & Ugis Ezerietis
Musical director: Martins Klisans
We get to the airport where everything has stopped due to the Wind of the Sun. For a moment a space is offered where one can find or lose his or her identity, ponder on the origination of consciousness, on how a wave changes into a particle, power into matter, and how light breaks out of darkness. Airport as a present-day sanctuary. Time where a minute can become both an hour and a second. And a human calls out as if expelled from time: Do you hear me, I am being called! Good bye, may God be with you! Yours or mine? He is said to be one. Love.

Excerpts from a concert (Sep 2013)

Excerpt from a recording session (Jun 2014)

A performance (Jan 2014)

The trio was based in The Hague and played several rather misterious concerts (members got kicked out of a jazz club, broke piano strings, etc.)
Guitar: Edgars Rubenis
Drums: Pauls Pokratnieks
Piano: Krists Auznieks

Written for vocal ensemble "Anima Solla"

Premiered in Oct, 2013 |Riga A Capella Festival, Riga, Latvia

The piece is based on a melody of a Latvian folk song "Noiet Saule Vakara", however, the lyrics are made out of several folk songs dealing with various sunsets.

Premiered in Feb, 2013 | Gaudeamus Young Composers Meeting, RASA, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Drums: Pauls Pokratnieks
Trumpet: Magnuss Baugis
Double Bass: Giovanni Bermudez
Piano: Krists Auznieks

Premiered in Apr, 2012 |Kees van Barenzaal, The Hague, The Netherlands
Voices:Aurelie Lierman and Veronique van der Meijden
Bass Clarinet: Enrique Sans y Moreira
Clarinet: Panagiota Giannaka
Flutes: Comaci Boschi and Ieva Langaite
Piano: Tia Iskandar
One of the weirdest predictions of quantum mechanics is that the vacuum of space isn't really empty. Because of the uncertainty principle, quantum theory predicts that a constant foam of "virtual particles" are flitting in and out of existence inside the void. Even weirder, these virtual particles can have real effects. If you jiggle a mirror very close to the speed of light, you can turn pairs of virtual light particles into real ones. "Tout pour moi devient allegorie" is a symbolic reproduction of this experiment using the Great Compassion Mantra, chanted in Sanskrit and being spinned around the hall, as a representation of mirrors moving at the speed of light. It also uses quotes by Baudelaire, symbolising the light particles.

Written for vocal group "Framest"

Cigarettes (voice: Magnuss Baugis)

Written in collaboration with sound artist Stefano Sgarbi for a theatre play "Panikos", directed by Lorena Briscoe
Premiered in Rietvelt Theatre, Leiden, The Netherlands

Her Sea is Lonesome Poetry

One Who Listens

A Cup of Kindness

The Paris Passions

The quintet was formed to play a single concert of contemporary music in an unusual setting in The Hague.
Voice: Rugyle Daujotaite
Bass Clarinet: Enric Sans y Moreira
Electric Bass: Janis Rubiks
Drums: Pauls Pokratnieks
Piano: Krists Auznieks

Elegy I

Elegy II

The trio was formed in Riga, Latvia
Voice: Beate Zviedre
Electric Bass: Janis Rubiks
Piano: Krists Auznieks