1.7k words across 15 entries.

Senior Recital Listen on: SoundCloud

Jebb: (wiki editor)

Cover art for this set was taken by James Dever from Sand Molding.

The Fall Listen on: SoundCloud, YouTube

James Dever: (SoundCloud description, excerpt)

Written in 2014, The Fall only recently was premiered in April of 2016.

The Fall is written for a women's choir in four parts (divisi, eight lines) and utilizes and old Scottish Gaelic poem.

James Dever: (YouTube description, excerpt)

Premiere performance from April 28th, 2016 at UNC's Frasier Hall, conducted by the wonderful Will Ecker. A huge thank you goes out to him and this group of fantastic volunteers for supporting my music and senior recital!

The Fall is my first attempt at writing choral music. Back in late 2014 I was still in my first year of the composition program and working with Dr. Robert Ehle when the first idea of writing for voices came to me. My music performance experience has been almost entirely instrumental, and specifically rhythmical, so I wanted to challenge myself by writing for a completely different ensemble than I had in the past.

The text is from an old Gaelic hymn. When I first started working out ideas of how to set the text the idea of a rising line that encompasses an entire diatonic scale jumped out at me (that first passage can be heard at 1:47). From there, I decided that a closer knit group of voices would best be able to accomplish the smaller range of the piece which is why the piece eventually became for female voices.

The music of Ola Gjeilo, Morten Lauridsen, and Eric Whitacre played a key role in the composition because of their music being the first choral music I really bonded with. The idea of the close intervals and clusters was not inspired entirely by their music, however, and I definitely credit the first ideas I found for this piece to the opening material of Richard Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie.

I hope you enjoy!

Soliloquy Listen on: SoundCloud, YouTube

James Dever: (SoundCloud description)

Soliloquy was written for solo viola and electronics in the Spring of 2015. It was premiered on viola at the call for scores winners concert at the 2016 Open Space Festival of New Music in Greeley, CO. It is dedicated to my good friend Abi Evans and all of her help in creating it.

For this performance, it was adapted for cello and electronics and performed by Brett Andrews. Both versions are available.

The idea for the piece came from thinking of how to blend a string instrument with electronic playback. My solution was to record a viola and put the recordings through filters, samplers and oscillators. Midway through is a repurposed old vinyl recording of a viola concerto that I also manipulate through an oscillator. The hope was to make a more organic connection between the playback and the soloist.

James Dever: (YouTube description, excerpt)

Performed at my senior recital at UNC's Frasier Hall on April 28th, 2016. Written for viola, this is the premiere performance on cello by the amazing Brett Andrews.

Soliloquy was written in early 2015. It was one of the very first projects I worked on with my professor Dr. Paul Elwood. It was first formulated from a project I had in a digital composition course I was taking at the university. The project was to create a 90 second to 3 minute track using recordings and editing them in a DAW (in this case, Digital Performer).

I enlisted my colleague and fellow composer Abi Evans to help get some recordings. She would play very brief passages on the viola using many different extended techniques. I manipulated those recordings with various filters and samplers to create the electronic background for the solo instrument.

Originally, my intent was for the electronics accompaniment to purely be edited samples from a live viola that I recorded. Eventually I decided to include an excerpt from a viola concerto as well as a few small effects (like a noise filter near the beginning) to further flesh out the piece.

Compositionally, I really wanted to explore the interesting different extended techniques string instruments could perform. I was also very inspired by composers like Joseph Schwantner being able to utilize pitch sets and serial concepts in more tonal leaning compositions. With that idea in mind I decided to make a reverse 12 tone inspired piece where instead of the row being defined at the beginning before being adapted and augmented, I began with a pitch set and more octatonic passages that slowly opened up more into atonal serialism by the end. The row, and one variation, are only stated in full at the very end of the piece.

Thank you for listening!

Sand Molding Listen on: SoundCloud, YouTube

James Dever: (SoundCloud description)

Sand Molding was composed in late 2015 and premiered at the University of Northern Colorado in April of 2016. The premiere performance was by Jeff Perry and Breana Meyers.

Sand Molding explores the process of, well, using sand to mold iron and steel. Throughout the composition, the sounds of metal overtake the sounds of wood as the natural becomes the artificial.

The piece is written in seven sections that repeat in one large arc. Each section continues to become more aleatoric until the mid point is reached before the piece wraps back to the beginning.

James Dever: (YouTube description, excerpt)

Premiere performance from my senior recital on April 28th, 2016 at UNC's Frasier Hall. Two wonderful colleagues from my percussion studio, doctoral candidates Jeff Perry and Breana Meyers, wonderfully realized this piece!

Sand Molding was born from my increasing love for aleatoric music in my final undergrad year of studying composition. The piece explores aleatoric passages but is definitely not fully free form. The middle third of the piece becomes the most chance dependent before moving back into more traditional notation.

As a percussionist, I've always been very much in love with all of the timbres and effects we create within multi percussion pieces. I had an idea floating around for years of having a wooden vs metallic battle between two percussionists and this project seemed like the perfect time to explore that concept.

I was also very interested in mathematically assisted compositions by Iannis Xenakis which definitely played a role in the formulation of this piece. I began with a number sequence that I randomly created and explored that in as many different ways as I could throughout the composition.

The other concept I've always found fascinating is a much older form of music: crab canon. The idea that if the piece was reversed, it would still be performed the same way creating a musical palindrome. I also found a way of encompassing that form into this composition by having the wooden percussionist rule the first half of the piece, meet in the middle with the metal percussionist, and be taken over by the metal by the end, arriving back where the piece began.

I hope you dig it as much as I do!

Toward Eternity Listen on: SoundCloud

James Dever: (SoundCloud description)

Toward Eternity was composed in the fall of 2015 and is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Dale Dykins, who taught at the University of Northern Colorado for over thirty years. The piece was premiered in November of 2015 at the Currier Inn in Greeley, CO by Jordan Ortman. This recording is from April of 2016, Jordan Ortman.

Toward Eternity is a journey through death. Inspired by Emily Dickinson's famous poem Because I could not stop for Death. The piece goes through the emotions of acceptance of death from the departed. From the fear of the unknown, to the nostalgic pull of past memories, finally to acceptance.

unrequited Listen on: SoundCloud, YouTube

James Dever: (SoundCloud description)

unrequited was composed in the latter half of 2015 under a different name. It is for solo five octave marimba and is the first of two planned movements.

The premiere of the work was performed at the University of Northern Colorado in April of 2016 by Breana Meyers.

James Dever: (YouTube description)

First: Apologies for the phone quality and especially for me accidentally kicking the stand and dropping the phone early on! My camera power supply died and this was my only solution! Higher quality audio (where the cell phone drop is much less jarring) is available on my Soundcloud page here.

Premiere performance from my senior recital on April 28th, 2016 at UNC's Frasier Hall. Thanks to Breana Meyers for the great performance!

unrequited was created from my absolute love of the marimba. It is without a doubt my absolute favorite instrument to play. The range, the tone, the timbre, everything about it sings to me. I've wanted to write for it for a very long time but always held myself back by fears of not being good enough as a performer/composer for the instrument.

Eventually I decided I couldn't be afraid forever and set out to write a piece. I chose to be significantly more traditional in my tonality in this piece for a lot of background reasons surrounding the piece. The piece explores multiple different melodies that never quite fully become fleshed out, constantly getting in each other's way. A series of stray paths and half concepts that never fully are realized.

Thank you for listening.

New Irish Stew Listen on: SoundCloud, YouTube

James Dever: (SoundCloud / YouTube descriptions, excerpt)

New Irish Stew is a graphic score written in early 2016 and premiered in April of the same year. The piece is written for three indeterminate musicians and two narrators.

The score is written in a literal circle with no beginning or ending given. It is up to the performers to decide where to start, when to end, what tempo, and if they wish, when to improvise.

Surrounding the music is a slew of cherry picked quotes from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The narrators can either be cued by the outer, melodic line, or free to choose when to quote each line. The other voices heard besides the two narrators are audience members who were given specific quotes and told to say them whenever they wanted.

The premiere was performed at the University of Northern Colorado by guitarist Conner Shaw, marimbist Breana Meyers, bassist Ben Hornacek, and narration by Joe Darpino and Cathy Verbyla.

James Dever: (YouTube description, excerpt)

I absolutely loved writing this and I hope you love listening!

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Also released as part of "Music in Circles" (3/18/2020) — see the page archive in this track's additional files. Includes touched up commentary based on the SoundCloud description, and an updated photograph artwork.

James Dever: (Bandcamp artwork, from "Music in Circles")

James Dever: (Bandcamp about blurb, from "Music in Circles")

New Irish Stew is a graphic score written in early 2016. It is written for an indeterminate amount of musicians (minimum of 3) and narrators.

The score is written in a literal circle with no beginning or ending given. It is up to the performers to decide where to start, when to end, what tempo, and if they wish, when to improvise.

Surrounding the music is a slew of cherry picked quotes from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The narrators can either be cued by the outer, melodic line, vice versa, or free to choose when to read each quote. The other voices heard besides the two narrators are audience members who were given specific quotes and told to say them whenever they wanted.