Studio welcomes George L Smyth with a lovely ambient/classical collection. The artist describes the project as follows:

1 Fulfillment
This piece was written in collaboration with Daniel Diaz (www.dedeland.com), who had created a piece titled Emptiness. His piece had been written with the idea of the music that one would want to hear late at night when they are unable get back to sleep. I added orchestration to "smooth out the edges".
Fulfillment was written for Violin, Viola, Cello, and electronics (Emptiness, by Daniel Diaz).

2 Bridge Game Near Araby
The idea here was to compose a piece of music to incorporate elements of my favorite story as well as my favorite card game.

I do not enjoy playing cards, but if I did then I would choose Bridge. My second most favorite story (my favorite is The Giving Tree, but I get too emotionally involved) is Araby by James Joyce in his collection, Dubliners. Bridge Game Near Araby is about both elements, the notes, time signature and structure work with the former, the overall feeling reflects the latter.
Bridge Game Near Araby was written for Flute, Clarinet, Horn, Trombone, Vibraphone, Violin, Viola and Cello.

3 Evening Cloudburst
This piece was written in response to the following haiku.
An evening cloudburst
sparrows cling desperately
to trembling bushes
This is a haiku by Yosa Buson, Japanese painter and one of the greatest poets of the Edo Period.

Evening Cloudburst was written for Trombone, Bass Trombone, Timpani, Bass Drum, Cymbals, Gong, Tom-toms, Vibraphone, Violins, Viola, Cello, String Bass.

4 Music For Insomniacs
Another piece of music dealing with the inability to sleep. I wanted to put something together that fulfilled the idea of a drone, but needed variablility – enough interest so that if one could not get back to sleep while listening, then at least listening might be interesting. Well in the background is a string orchestra accompanied by trombone and clarinet, but one is unlikely to recognize too much of that. In for foreground are the electronics, seeded by the single call of an owl I recorded after waking up in the middle of one night.

Music For Insomniacs was written for Clarinet, Trombone, Violin, Viola, Cello, String Bass and electronics.

5 Saturnalia
Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival to honor the god Saturn, held on December 17th. Changes to the Roman calendar moved Saturnalia to December 25th, and it is reasonable to argue that the date was appropriated by Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn and a public banquet, followed by gift-giving, partying, and an atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms. Gambling was allowed and masters served their slaves. The poet Catullus called it, “the best of days”.

In Saturnalia I wanted to examine the religious aspect of the holiday, the first part depicting the thoughts of the viewers at the ceremony during the sacrifice, and the second part examining the food at the banquet.
Saturnalia was written for chorus and string orchestra.

6 The Sky Begins To Overcast
This piece was written in response to the following haiku.
Flowers of morning glory.
The sky above this street
Begins to overcast.
This is a haiku by Hisajo Sugita, an innovative exponent of the women’s haiku movement, and one of the first poets to combine distant views and foregrounds in the same poem. Her role in modernizing haiku was recognized only after her death, when contemporary writers began to use a similar style of juxtaposition.

We change on a daily basis, and certainly the piece I would have written to this haiku two weeks ago would have been completely different. Two weeks ago I would have focused in on the first line, but as Hurricane Florence approaches I looked more toward the last line. Although landfall will happen tomorrow, we are starting to feel the effects of it a few hundred miles north, and I hope the best for my southern neighbors.

The Sky Begins To Overcast was written for Flute, Clarinet, Horn, Trombone, Bass Drum, Glockenspiel, Violin, Viola, Cello and String Bass.

7 Fragment Of A Dream
This piece was written in response to the following haiku.
Ghostly melody
follows me into my day
fragment of a dream
This is a haiku by Jason Richardson, musician and poet.
My idea was to establish a simple melody, build an accompaniment, and then loop the various part of the accompaniment out of sync so that the measures never repeat as they originally had, like a dream that fades away like water through the fingers.

Fragment Of A Dream is written for three Flutes, Clarinet, Vibraphone, two Violins, and two Cellos.

About me:
Following a forty year hiatus of composing music, George L Smyth now spends an inordinate amount of effort trying to make up for lost time. He uses traditional orchestral instruments to create soundscapes that encompass ideas and stories in the hopes that they will fit the spaces of the time available to us.
A regular firehose of his new music can be found at racketinmyhead.wordpress.com