MMTA is dedicated to supporting the creation of new works by American composers. We are excited to announce that composers Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, Alexandra du Bois, and Vartan Aghababian will present their new commissioned works at the upcoming Quad State Conference. The Commissioned Composers Concert will take place on Saturday, October 5th at 10:45am in Rose Hall at Endicott College.

Opening the program is the commissioned composer from Vermont (VMTA), Dennis Bathory-Kitsz. His piece, entitled Fugue States, "is a nonpop song for voice with looper, flute, and metallophones. The text is a multi-level exploration of travel, discrimination, power, and the poet’s psychic reaction to all of them. The music uses the color of the metallophones—vibraphone, glockenspiel, triangles, Chinese opera cymbals, mixing bowls, suspended cymbal, and thud drum—to paint both a counterpoint and underscore to the impression of the text.”

Next on the program is composer Alexandra du Bois,who was commissioned jointly by Maine (MMTA) and New Hampshire (NHMTA). Alexandra’s piece for solo piano is entitled Oh Monarch, How Beautiful You Are.

Walking in my garden

I touch the present moment.

I am the flower.

I am the cloud.

I am the butterfly.

—Thich Nhat Hahn

“Oh Monarch, How Beautiful You Are was inspired, in part, by a gatha (excerpt above) from Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, poet, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn. The piece is a sonic meditation on balance and distraction, pull, and contrast, inherent within current human awareness, denial, and acceptance of the evidence of climate change—with its effect on not just our migratory monarch butterfly population, but as a microcosm of climate change’s effect on all physical life. This dichotomy of the butterfly’s metaphor sometimes represents beauty and at other times, struggle; the work ends with an improvisation upon the ‘invitation of the bell’.”

Vartan Aghababian was chosen by Massachusetts (MMTA) and will close the Commissioned Composer program with his piece for flute, clarinet, bassoon, and hand percussion, entitled Modal Dances. "Modal Dances is a suite in seven movements, each dance being a character piece in its own right. For each movement, I have employed a different modal scale (one of the six original church modes or their adopted sibling, Locrian mode). I also have varied the tempo, meter, tonal center, tonal nature and musical form of each dance so to provide an individual character to each of the movements. In addition, while I have kept the trio intact for the odd numbered movements, I have removed (in alternating fashion) one of the instruments from the trio in each of the even numbered movements (while replacing it with a 'primitive' percussion instrument to be performed by the instrument with the tacet) to enhance the textural and timbral diversity of each movement.”