Sometimes the songs I hear don’t exist yet, so I get to write them!
(Here’s just a selection of my composition work. Reach out for a more complete list.)
AMASS, March 2024
A Latin Mass, commissioned by the Early Music Access Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This piece sets the traditional Latin words to a combination of musical textures from the Black church and baroque music, inviting people of many traditions to lift their voices and sing.
I was one of the three singers in the premiere, and it was an INDESCRIBABLY beautiful feeling to stand in the middle of a six-piece instrumental ensemble, in between my two incandescent singer colleagues, as this new piece of mine came into being.
Here’s the Sanctus, as a taste of this joy: https://youtu.be/b3tMB_0vbwg
Intricate Beauty, premiering Fall 2024
A song cycle setting the words of Nayyirah Waheed, commissioned for the Afro-Latinx Song & Opera Project. These luminous poems preach the beauty of people of color, and my music is tailored to the soaring voice of Dr. Zuly Inirio.
Recent/ Upcoming Work
Film score for Plot, October 2023
An experimental short film based on Dr. J. T. Roane’s study of Black ecologies of resistance, cinematography by Huewayne Watson, editing by Alexis Young, with choreography by Johnnie Cruise Mercer. All this was supported by Princeton University’s The Crossroads Project, and Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. See it here!
i wait for you, for FUSE and Catalyst New Music, February 2023
words by Diego M. Campos, written for Jiayu Li, as part of the FUSE initiative: they put poets, composers and singers together in teams, and challenged us to write song cycles in about 3 months: new poems in November, new music by January, premieres in February 2023. It was a wild ride, and the 3 songs we came up with were fire!
You can see Brianna Robinson’s performance of the cycle here: https://youtu.be/Xqwo0N8fR-s?si=Apj2BbCoeVPX3eXL
Calvaried; Swing Low In Gilead; Tree Of Life, for Early Music Access Project, March 2022
Arangements of spirituals and a ring shout for a program called Sacred Music of Monticello, with fabulous baroque instrumentalists and singers.
Calvaried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4qLezqjf2M ;
Swing Low In Gilead, Tree of Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htS8BoofQvQ
An Hymn To The Evening, words by Phyllis Wheatley, July 2021
The first of a two song set, setting an outrageously lush poem by Wheatley for a wide-ranging voice and colorful piano: https://youtu.be/vh9ASsjSImg
If you’d like new music or arrangements for voices (kids or adults), keyboard instruments, strings, winds, percussion, or any combination thereof, reach out to me at roizhems@gmail.com!