terraform
terraform is the first installment of PIVOT’s mission to promote perspective shifts in their audience. Featuring six newly commissioned works and one adaptation of a pre-existing piece, terraform explores humans’ role in climate change from a variety of lenses. PIVOT is committed to making contributions to each album’s focus and will donate all streaming profits to the Clean Energy Innovation Fund. If you would like to support this cause as well, please visit lets-fund.org/clean-energy/.
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OUR COLLABORATORS - TERRAFORM
Liquefact - Graeme Rosner
Alto Sax, Horn, Fixed Media - 7 minutes
Liquefact was written to capture the constant motion of ice and water. The piece represents the trickle of a stream all the way to the towering strength of a glacier. The piece includes a variety of genres that attempt to capture some of the multi-faceted nature of water. The backing track is made up of recorded brass instruments and drums, as well as a variety of electronic sounds.
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Graeme Rosner is an American composer, brass player, and audio engineer. Graeme is a founder and co-owner of GreenHaus Productions, and is active in Charlottesville, VA as a freelancer. Graeme is a graduate of the University of South Carolina, where he received a BM in Composition, a minor in Audio Recording, and a certificate in French Horn Performance. Graeme's recent compositions include works for solo wind instruments with electronic
None Too Small - Sabrina Raber
Alto Sax, Horn, Piano - 9 minutes
As our planet warms and the future seems bleak at times, I find myself struggling with how to perceive our current reality. In less than ten years, we could see irreparable harm done to our home – in part due to the ignorance of our fellow humans. That is a deep burden to carry, an overwhelming sense of guilt. I’ve discovered that the only way to remain positive, the only way to enact true change, is to make a small difference in any way I can.
Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is a leader in the fight against climate change. Her book, No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, is a compilation of her many speeches – filled with powerful words and meaningful ways to improve our planet. I found these words particularly inspiring when composing this work – No one. Is too small. To make a difference. From this came “None Too Small.”
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Sabrina Raber is a performer, composer, educator, and entrepreneur based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 2019, Sabrina was a fellow for the Global Leaders Program, where she earned an Executive Graduate Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship, Teaching Artistry, and Organizational Management. Sabrina was the first to receive the Masters in Music and Community Partnership at the University of South Carolina. She did her undergraduate work at the Ohio State University. Her teachers include Jennifer Parker-Harley and Katherine Borst-Jones.
Outdoor Warnings - Ben Morris
Alto Sax, Horn, Fixed Media - 7 minutes
Outdoor Warnings is based on a variety of different outdoor warnings from natural to artificial sources, including elk bugles, coyote calls, throat singing, Islamic calls to prayer, bicycle bells, protests, phone calls, and nuclear warning alarms. The horn and alto saxophone interface freely and expressively with these sampled sounds, creating a dark and foreboding sonic landscape. The piece is inspired by two outdoor sounds in particular—one is the outdoor warning system alarm in Boulder, Colorado, which woke me up one spring morning at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The second is the haunting call of an elk bull, which I had heard when recently travelling to Rocky Mountain National Park. The sounds reminded me of each other, although the function of each sound is drastically different. I thought that both sounds, when combined, perfectly encapsulated the collective fear everyone was experiencing at the outbreak.
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Ben Morris is a Colorado-based composer and jazz pianist whose music tells unconventional stories. He recently studied in Oslo, Norway on a Fulbright Grant, composing a work for big band and video inspired by his Norwegian heritage. His compositions have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, NOW Ensemble, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, trombonist Vincent Gardner, unassisted fold, Boulder Altitude Directive (BAD), Imani Winds, Living Earth Show, and the NDR Big Band, among others.
Ben completed his studies at Rice University, University of Miami, and the Norwegian Academy of Music and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Colorado Boulder as an ATLAS fellow.
Nature’s Hymn - Marcus Grant
Alto Sax, Horn, Piano, Vibraphone - 6 minutes
Mother Nature is perhaps the most beautiful and elegant force in the world. A force of care and of protection, nature provides us relief from depression and anxiety, enhances our immune system, produces the oxygen we need to survive, and filters the gases harmful to our bodies such as carbon dioxide. Nature's Hymn attempts to use music to help depict some of the many beauties of nature, as well as our interactions with it. Rather than the more-common authentic cadence (V-I), the piece is built around the use of the plagal cadence (IV-I) - also known as the "Amen cadence" - connecting the beauties of mother nature to a more spiritual feeling of peace. This peace, however, is juxtaposed with the struggle of keeping mother nature healthy in a modern world where taking care of nature may sometimes take a back seat to other priorities of our lives. Shifts to minor dissonance, irregular phrases, transitions in and out of minor keys, and even the background sounds of a thunderstorm can all be heard contributing to the tug-of-war between Nature's health and beauty and our struggle to preserve it. Perhaps the greatest contributions to the continued peace and harmony of our world will be determined by how well we care for nature and its environment around us.
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Marcus Grant is a professional trumpet player, award-winning composer, producer, and private lessons teacher with students of all ages and experience levels. Marcus is also a Founder and Co-Director of the Trumpeter’s Multi-track Competition and Seminar as well as a Signature Artist with MusicNotes.com.
Marcus holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Virginia Commonwealth University, as a student of Rex Richardson’s trumpet studio. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Trumpet Performance from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with Joey Tartell.
Terraform - Keaton Garrett
Alto Sax, Horn, Fixed Media - 9 minutes
Terraform is an elided, multimovement electroacoustic work for saxophone, horn, and fixed media dealing with how humans interact with their different natural environments. The piece seamlessly travels through 7 different sonic landscapes that are comprised of mostly natural, unaltered sounds found in nature. Some representative landscapes that the performers navigate include: tundra, mountain, rivers, oceans, rainforest, dry grassland, and desert. The acoustic players participate in a sonic pollution of sorts of the natural sounds, sometimes trying to mimic or directly contrast what is being heard in the fixed media. There is a small narrative arc to the piece where the performers start in an icy frigid place, working to follow the water around the landscapes as it would travel through its natural cycle, ultimately leaving an environment post human interaction & consumption: heat, drought, fire, smoke, and desolation.
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Keaton Garrett (b. 1995 Arlington, TX) is a collaborative composer and saxophonist based in Lansing, Michigan. His work is most often informed by his experiences performing in large and chamber ensembles as a classical saxophonist, while also being influenced by his eclectic listening pallet. His creative interests are changing daily, though are presently fixated on creating structures that explore the idea of making, acquiring, or giving space for individual performer’s identities within and outside of set musical parameters. His musical grammar varies piece to piece but at its core synthesizes concepts of collaboration, audible/tangible processes with an emphasis on timbre and texture, and deep listening.
Having recently completing graduate studies in composition and saxophone performance at Michigan State University with Dr. Alexis Bacon, Dr. Lyn Goeringer, Dr. David Biedenbender and Professor Joseph Lulloff, Keaton has also completed a degree from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX studying music education, composition and saxophone under Fred J. Allen, Dr. Stephen Lias and Dr. Nathan Nabb, respectively. Keaton is currently the saxophonist for the Hypotenuse Trio the Zenith Reed Quintet, and Cadre Trio. His saxophone and wind ensemble music is published by MurphyMusicPress.
Gone tomorrow - Jenni Watson
Alto Sax, Horn, Fixed Media - 12 minutes
Gone tomorrow is a response to discussion about climate change, specifically coastal erosion to parts of the east coast of the USA.
With increasingly dramatic and destructive weather – both in the immediate form of hurricanes, and through erosion from the rising ocean - homes are devastatingly lost to the sea, the shifting sands increasingly making the remaining properties unstable and extremely vulnerable. Yet on calmer days it can be easy to be drawn in by the beauty of the ocean & forget the bigger, darker picture.
The collective feeling that we are not doing enough in response, leads to accelerating anxiety and a desire to step up, each in our own way.
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Jenni Watson is a Saxophonist, Composer, Arranger and Multi-Instrumentalist (UK). Bringing her predominantly Classical music background together with a love of many styles, and having a dislike of “pigeon-holing”, she merges genre boundaries and is popular for composing in an aesthetic and accessible style.
With several albums to her name, as performer and/or composer, she continually explores new avenues, with a passion for bridging technicality with musicality, in a fresh, melodic style.
Escape Wisconsin - Caleb Burhans, arr. Matthew Castner
6 saxes, 5 horns - 4 minutes
Escape Wisconsin is a funny piece regarding the way it came into existence. I began writing the original material in 2000 for two vibraphones and six years later I finished it as a solo alto saxophone piece. In 2006 the Albany Symphony commissioned twenty-some composers to write 3 to 4 minute works for solo instruments of the orchestra to be inspired and go along with various pieces of art in the Capitol Heritage Series at the New York State Museum/Rockefeller collection in Albany, NY. I chose alto saxophone and a piece by Conrad Marca-Relli entitled "Black Rock". I considered naming my piece after the painting but ultimately found myself referring to it as it's original working title ‘Escape Wisconsin’. I grew up in Wisconsin where the tourism slogan is ‘Escape to Wisconsin’. This is my play on that slogan.
This version of Escape Wisconsin was adapted from Caleb’s recent reimagining of the piece with Alarm Will Sound.
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Caleb Burhans (b. 1980) is a multifaceted presence in the New York music scene who is active as both a performer (strings, voice) and composer. Hailed by the New York Times as, “animated and versatile,” and, “New York’s mohawked Mozart” by Time Out New York, Caleb has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress and the Kronos Quartet, to name a few.
Caleb’s works have been performed by ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, eighth blackbird, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. As one half of the duo itsnotyouitsme (along with Grey Mcmurray), he has also scored the documentary films A Woman Like That and The Pearl as well as releasing four studio albums.
Caleb attended the Eastman School of Music where he holds degrees in composition and viola performance. He resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, Martha Cluver, and their daughter.