RELEASES || CHAMBER MUSIC || ACOUSMATIC WORKS || SPATIAL WORKS || LARGE/STAGE WORKS

HIGHLIGHTS

selections:
A Study in Exile, No. 3: Home is not a place on a map (2018-2022), theatre work: aerial dance, music [mixed quartet, 6.1 surround fixed media], storytelling
Kinaligta-án (2021-2022), for harpsichord
Pangkur (2017), modular work (sextet version)
Kinalugarán (2021-2022), for eight flutes and quadraphonic fixed media
Sa Kanyang Paglayag (2010, rev. 2013), for viola, cello, and contrabass
Time moves, straightforward… (2019), for tenor, violin, percussion, and live electronics

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RELEASES

Liham — a four-part song cycle — is a memoir and a love letter to the Filipinx spirit. In this digital online release, Liham’s four art songs interweave with four stories of Filipino Canadians to stand as “a memory set to music, a protest disguised as poetry, and a love letter to those who live between cultures” (Inside Vancouver Opera, 2025).

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The Filipino word ‘kinalugaran’ refers to the site where something is set in position. Kinalugarán highlights invisibility among inhabited places as it interrogates Filipino artists based in first-world diaspora…

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The death of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito in 1989 brought an end to the “62 year-long ‘Shōwa’ period of war and peace” (Radio NHK, 1989). Weekend Rain reimagines rain sounds…as if to mask the loneliness of death with matters of geopolitics, global affairs, and intel secrecy.

An ongoing machinery of historical revisionism exposes the gullibility of the present-day
population into forgetting histories and glorifying this [Marcos] dictatorship. Hanggang sa Paglubog ng Araw protests against this revisionism.

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Hanggang sa Takipsilim juxtaposes recordings of indigenous instruments by Jayson Palolan with an excerpt of Hannah Leah Guanlao’s Choose Your Own Perspective (2016) to capture a Filipino-Canadian millennial’s response to present-day historical revisionism surrounding the brutal dictatorship of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos...

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CHAMBER MUSIC

Kinagisnán
2023. for spoken word and ensemble. commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and Willapa Bay AiR (Oysterville, WA, United States). [see also Spatial Works]

Liham
Letter. 2021-2023. song cycle for low voice (mezzo-soprano/high baritone) and piano. texts by Riley Palanca. commissioned by Renee Fajardo with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
[1] land of the mourning
[2] child of the sun revolting
[3] with fevered dreaming
[4] hell do our soles adore

Kina-i-ngátan
2023. for trumpet and/or/without electronic fixed media in 6.1 surround sound. featuring the voice of Goombine (Richard Scott-Moore). commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. special acknowledgments to Matthew Fava, the Tranzac Club (Toronto), and Musicworks Magazine. [read the accompanying magazine article HERE]. [see also Spatial Works]

Kinalugarán
2022. for eight flutes (doubling percussion) and fixed media in quadraphonic sound. featuring the voices of Ramon Alfonso “Chino” Soberano, Marie-Luise Calvero, and Riley Palanca. haiku poetry by the composer. commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. [see also Spatial Works]

Kinaligta-án
2020-2021. for harpsichord. commissioned by Wesley Shen with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Kinamulátan
Awakening. 2019-2020. for bass clarinet and accordion. commissioned by Martin Carpentier and Joseph Petric. completed during an artist residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE). special acknowledgements to the Canadian Music Centre Ontario.

Time moves, straightforward…
2019. for tenor, violin, percussion, and live electronics. text by the composer. commissioned by the Art Song Collaborative Project (Toronto) for the music drama “Cries of the Earth.”

O forse, l’ho già perduta poco a poco…
Or perhaps, I have already lost it little by little… 2018. for piano. in ricordi di Avelina Manalo.
[score available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

In stars we’ll lose our way…
2018. for soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass flute, piano, percussion, and cello. commissioned by the Art Song Collaborative Project (Toronto) for the music drama “Coming Home.” [see also Spatial Works]

On ne se baigne jamais deux fois dans le même fleuve…
No one crosses the same river twice. 2018. for clarinet.

Ni ici, ni là-bas
Neither here nor there. 2017. for alto flute. for Marilène Provencher-Leduc.
[score @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Pangkur
2017. modular work in three versions: (1) a piano-percussion duo, (2) a mixed quartet with alto flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello; and (3) a sextet with spatial configuration. texts from Javanese macapat poetry for “Ladrang Pangkur.” [see also Spatial Works]
[scores available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Piano Concerto (Pagkukumahog // [Sa] Paglilok ng Batong Hindi Nakikita) *
Urgency // [In] Sculpting An Invisible Rock. 2016. for piano accompanied with oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, cello, contrabass.

* The concerto is an amalgamation of two separate works: Pagkukumahog for solo piano [2016], and Sa Paglilok ng Batong Hindi Nakikita for chamber ensemble [2016].

Sketch for sextet
2015. a miniature study. for alto flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion, piano, violin, cello. written for a reading session with Ensemble Transmission.

[untitled]
2015. composition sketch. for alto flute (doubling piccolo), alto recorder, oboe, alto saxophone, percussion, cello. composed for the Kansas City-Montreal Exchange project under the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab and the Black House Collective.

Sahurin ang Malalim na Karagatan
(draw out) The Depths of the Ocean. 2014-2015. for piccolo (doubling alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion, piano, unamplified guitar, viola, cello.

Gandingan sa Kagiliran
Gongs in the Horizon. 2014. for percussion duo. [see also Spatial Works}
[score available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Bagatelle
2013. for solo piano.
[score available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Sa Kanyang Munting Pagngawa
In His Baby Cries, other possible translations. 2013. for flute, viola and piano.

Sa Kanyang Munting Yapak
In Her Baby Steps. 2013. for sextet: piccolo (doubling alto flute), clarinet, piano, violin, cello, contrabass.

another perpetuum mobile…
2012. first version for bass trombone and piano (work-in-progress). second version for clarinet and piano.

perpetuum mobile (gone awry)
for sextet: oboe, french horn, bass trombone, marimba, piano, cello.

Sa Kanyang Paglayag
In His Voyage. 2010, rev. 2017. for viola, cello and contrabass.
[score available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Sa Kanyang Paglingon
In Her Glances. 2009. for sextet: flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin, cello. awarded 1st place in the Goethe Southeast Asian Young Composer Award, sponsored by the Goethe Institut Malaysia.

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ACOUSMATIC WORKS

Kina-i-ngátan
2023. audio essay in 6.1 surround sound. featuring the voice of Goombine (Richard Scott-Moore). commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. special acknowledgments to Matthew Fava, the Tranzac Club (Toronto), and Musicworks Magazine. [see also Spatial Works]

Kinalugarán
2022. audio essay in quadraphonic sound. featuring the voices of Ramon Alfonso “Chino” Soberano, Marie-Luise Calvero, and Riley Palanca. haiku poetry by the composer. commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. [see also Spatial Works]

Weekend Rain
2021. acousmatic stereo work. haiku poetry by the composer. featured in Cities and Memory’s “Shortwave Transmissions” project. released in “Tunog Lata” (2023) under Musikolektibo.

Hanggang sa Takipsilim
Until Dusk. 2018. acousmatic stereo work. featured in Cities and Memory’s “Sound Photography” project. released in “Mind & Machine, Vol. 4” (2022) under Ravello Records.

And my eye shines in face of the curse…
2017. stereo mix of three separate acousmatic tracks prepared for A Study on Exile, No. 2. recorded readings of text excerpted from a sestina written by Riley Palanca.

Hanggang sa Paglubog ng Araw
Until Sunset. 2017, rev. 2021. acousmatic stereo work. released in “Tunog Lata” (2023) under Musikolektibo. can be played simultaneously with Pagkukumahog, or with Sa Paglilok ng Batong Hindi Nakikita, or both.

L’automne (2014-2016)

• Je suis d’un pas rêveur le sentier solitaire…
  With a Dreamy Step, I Follow the Lonely Path… 2014. acousmatic miniature work. for an outdoor installation listening terminal under “Project Bakawan” (Philippines), February 2015.

• …J’aime à revoir encor, pour la dernière fois…
  …I would like to see again, for one last time… 2016. acousmatic miniature work.

• …Ce soleil pâlissant, dont la faible lumière…
  …The fading sun, whose feeble light… 2016. acousmatic miniature work.

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SPATIAL WORKS

Kinagisnán
2023. for spoken word and ensemble. commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and Willapa Bay AiR (Oysterville, WA, United States). [see also Chamber Works]

Kina-i-ngátan
2023. audio essay in 6.1 surround sound. featuring the voice of Goombine (Richard Scott-Moore). commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. special acknowledgments to Matthew Fava, the Tranzac Club (Toronto), and Musicworks Magazine. [see also Chamber Works]

Kinalugarán
2022. audio essay in quadraphonic sound. featuring the voices of Ramon Alfonso “Chino” Soberano, Marie-Luise Calvero, and Riley Palanca. haiku poetry by the composer. commissioned by New Music Concerts with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. [see also Chamber Works]

In Stars We Lose Our Way…
2018. for soprano, mezzo-soprano and mixed quartet. with spatial configuration. composed for the music drama “Coming Home,” produced by the Art Song Collaborative Project (Toronto). [see also Chamber Works]

Pangkur
2017. modular work in three versions: (1) a piano-percussion duo, (2) a mixed quartet with alto flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello; and (3) a sextet with spatial configuration. texts from Javanese macapat poetry for “Ladrang Pangkur.” [see also Chamber Works]
[scores available @ Babel Scores: click HERE]

Studies in Exile
No. 1: 2017. for oboe, viola, harp and percussion. with spatial configuration. text from a haiku written by Riley Palanca.

No. 2: 2017. theatre piece. for alto flute (doubling piccolo), guitar, animator/dancer/soprano. with spatial configuration. text from a sestina written by Riley Palanca.

No. 3: Home is not a place on a map. 2018-2022. theatre work: aerial dance, spatial musicians and fixed media. collaboration with Amy Hull (dancer, choreographer) and Rebecca Devi Leonard (aerial artist, choreographer). commissioned by the Thin Edge New Music Collective.

No. 4: Paagos. Drift. 2019. sound art/audio documentary for 6.1 surround. commissioned by Sarah Maria Samaniego for the dance work Paagos. haiku poetry by the composer. documentary features the voices of composer Sandeep Bhagwati, poet Bänoo Zan, and Juro Kim Feliz.

C’est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes…
It is such a secret place, the land of tears. 2016. for 2 oboes, tuba and piano. with spatial configuration.

Gandingan sa Kagiliran
Gongs in the Horizon. 2014. for percussion duo. with spatial configuration. texts from Pagniig ng Paghihiwalay ng Liwanag at Dilim by Anna Patricia Rodriguez. [see also Chamber Works]

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LARGE/STAGE WORKS

Wilujeng
2015. for large ensemble: alto flute (doubling piccolo), mezzo-soprano, guitar, viola /// oboe, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), bassoon (doubling contrabassoon), horn, trumpet, bass trombone, tuba, 3 percussionists, piano, 3 violins, viola, 2 cello, contrabass. texts from Kalagitnaan ng Kailanman by Anna Patricia Rodriguez, and traditional Javanese poetry used in “Ladrang Wilujeng.”

Visions of the Horizon
2009-2010. music drama for 4 singers, choir and chamber orchestra. libretto by Phoebe Bitoon.

Sa Kanyang Pangungulila
In His Yearning. 2008. for choir and orchestra. text by Philippine National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario.

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