Daniel Temkin has been writing music since age thirteen. One of his earliest
compositions, "The Realm of Solitude," was premiered in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall
as part of the Cecilian Music Society's Young Artist Competition, and he has been a finalist
on numerous occasions in the ASCAP Young Composers Competition. He is a recipient of
the Theodore Presser Undergraduate Scholar Award, a 2010 Earshot Fellowship, and an ASCAPLUS Award. Daniel was also selected as a winner in the NEC Honors Ensemble Composition
Competition, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Young Composer Competition.
In 2008 his chamber work "Floating Amidst..." was premiered under the baton of
the New York Youth Symphony's Ryan McAdams, and his marimba solo "Expansive
Horizons" was arranged for the acclaimed MusicCity Mystique percussion group. In 2009, his
work "Wistfully Reminiscing" was premiered by pianist Qing Jiang to a capacity audience in
Los Angeles's Bing Theatre; the performance was subsequently broadcast on both the
internet and LA radio.
In 2010 Daniel's song cycle of E.E. Cummings poetry, your little voice..., will be co-
premiered by four sopranos in New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Chicago. In addition,
his Five Bagatelles will be performed by Trio-ING in Boston's Jordan Hall, and he will have
premiers of commissioned works by the UNLV Brass Ensemble (March and Sing) and the
Rutgers University Choir (Two Forest Songs). Daniel will also have performances with the
Nashville Symphony and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra (Regenerations), as well as with the
Buffalo Philharmonic (Rolling River).
Originally a percussionist, Daniel is an experienced performer. He has performed in
Carnegie Hall on numerous occasions with the New York Youth Symphony, and he has
been hired for performances with both the Orchestra of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and
the Mostly Mozart Festival's Riverside Choral Society. Daniel has performed in masterclass
for many leading percussionists and he has worked under conductors David Zinman, James
Conlon, Leonard Slatkin, Grant Llewellyn, Rossen Milanov, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and
Hugh Wolff. He is featured on the world premier recording of Irwin Bazelon's "Bazz Ma'
Tazz" (Albany Records) and he has worked with American composers John Corigliano,
Gunther Schuller, and Christopher Rouse, to prepare performances of their music. Daniel
has also performed chamber music with soloists Orli Shaham and Sarah Chang.
A theory instructor and composition fellow of the Brevard Music Center, he is also
an alumnus of the Eastern and Aspen Music Festivals. Daniel studied percussion with Chris
Deviney of the Philadelphia Orchestra and marimba virtuoso She-e Wu. He has studied
composition with Charles Fussell, Kevin Puts, Robert Aldridge, and Sydney Hodkinson, and
he is currently a graduate composition fellow at the New England Conservatory studying
with Michael Gandolfi.
Two Forest Songs (2010) was commissioned by the Rutgers University Choir in honor of Maestro Mark A. Boyle who served as the choir director from 2006-2010. It was premiered on May 3rd, 2010 in Kirkpatrick Chapel, New Brunswick, NJ. The piece was written in collaboration with writer Brett Yates and visual artist Alan Arp who created a sculpture that was unveiled at the premier.
The musical work is divided into two contrasting movements. The first movement, "The Road Back," is the longer of the two, and it is also more challenging for the performers, since the main choir (normally comprised of four sections) is frequently split into smaller sub-sections. Throughout this movement the music is often calm and somewhat meditative; in addition, there are frequent, subtle, harmonic changes in the music which represent foliage that is constantly changing colors during the Fall season. The second movement, "The Forest Realm," is a brief musical journey through a dark, mysterious, forest. As the music beings, the singers describe this forest amidst a rapid pulsing accompaniment; in the middle of the movement there is a more reflective chorale-texture representing a transcendental experience often thought to occur in nature; at the end of the movement the faster music returns as the choir leaves this enchanted realm.
Overall Yates's poems draw parallels between nature, sound, and sight, and they ask us to consider how our individual and collective experiences as humans can be understood in relation to these complex phenomena. The music tries to augment the rich imagery and metaphor inherent within the text, while combining the natural beauty of the human voice with the reedy, wooden, sound of the English Horn: an aural synthesis of human and natural elements. - D.T.
12'00" duration
Study Score (Hard Copy Only): $14.95 Paper;
Score and Parts rental only - please contact: DTMusic Publications
Catalogue No. 07012
Originally scored for brass quintet, March and Sing was arranged in 2009 for Tad Suzuki and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Brass Ensemble. The title of the piece is derived from the two main compositional forces at work in the music: passacaglias and chorales. In the passacaglia sections a recurring theme is played in hocket amongst three instruments (first the trombones, then later the trumpets). During each successive statement of the passacaglia theme, additional counterpoint is woven into the musical texture by other instruments which imitate the motivic ideas of the passacaglia figure. Building steadily, these rigid portions of the piece eventually spill over into flowing chorales where larger homophonic scoring replaces the busy counterpoint. In the middle of the movement the entire ensemble comes together during a jubilant chorale. This passage grows until a haunting bugle call cascades downwards from the upper registers of Trumpets 1 and 2. At this point the music begins to subside and various musical ideas from earlier in the piece are recapitulated. As the work closes, a final reference to the passacaglia theme is played by muted Horn and Trombone, suggesting that the bold marching which opened the work is now fading away in the distance. - D.T.
Rolling River (2009) is a work for symphonic orchestra which mixes ideas of orchestral overtures and tone poems. Unlike conventional tone poems this work is not strictly programmatic. In fact, it began without a title and only after completing the opening string chorale did the idea of a flowing river come to mind. Still, this work is more emotional and narrative like a tone poem than exciting and thematic like an overture, and in completed form (loosely A-B-A-Coda) does suggest specific extra-musical imagery which coincides with the title. For example, as the opening string chorale builds it is easy to imagine a gentle stream that is gradually moving towards a larger river it will intersect; as other instruments enter, the listener has the impression that the small stream is gaining momentum. After that, the stream intersects a larger river and the water crashes through violent rapids, depicted musically through the percussion cadenza. Coming out of the rapids the river continues to move quickly, carving a winding path through various landscapes and terrains. Eventually the river begins to flow very fast, as signaled by the continuous metric acceleration of the orchestra, and after a brief calm in the current depicted by the harp, piano, and trumpet, the river rushes on until cascading over rocky cliffs as a vast waterfall. After this climax, the music subsides with a recapitulation of the opening string chorale, and in the work's final moments the distant sounds of the piano and harp calmly fade into silence, suggesting the metaphor of a gentle river which flows on inevitably and interminably. - D.T.
your little voice...(2009) is a short song cycle based on three contrasting E.E. Cummings poems.
The outer movements, "your little voice..." and "love is more thicker than forget," were originally
scored for soprano and woodwinds in one of my earliest pieces, two e.e. cummings poems (2006).
They are here revised and arranged for piano at the request of Susanna Su, who premiered the
original settings. In addition to these movements, the middle of the cycle contains a setting of "a
wind has blown the rain away." Having been written almost five years after the other movements,
this setting is perhaps somewhat stylistically different from the rest; still the cycle still stands as a
unified set because of the inherent thematic similarities of the chosen texts.
In "your little voice/ Over the wires came leaping," Cummings is describing the hysteria of falling in
love. The musical setting of this text aims to reflect the poem?s many contrasting moods and
emotional trajectories which range from euphoric to chaotic to anxious to love-struck to reflective.
In "a wind has blown the rain away," Cummings describes the changing of the seasons and he
addresses the topics of love, death, and the passage of time. The music in the second movement is
written in different sections to respond to these themes, while a gusting wind in the piano constantly
resurfaces as a musical thread that ties the movement together. "Love is more thicker than forget,"
is comprised of four strophic stanzas that each describe love as perplexing and paradoxical. The
musical form reflects this construction: the soprano starts alone, and as each subsequent stanza
begins, the piano plays the same musical material which accompanied the prior stanza. Setting to
music Cummings's final image of the sky, the work ends reflectively on a gentle major chord. - D.T.
13'00" duration
Two performance scores: $24.95 Paper; $16.95 Digital
Catalogue No. 07009
Regenerations (2007-2008; Rev. 2009) is a colorful work for full symphonic orchestra in which a simple five note motive becomes the basis for nine contrasting variations. Throughout the piece, the musical elements stated in the first variation are continually intertwined and developed to create an evolving sonic tapestry. In the midst of this regenerating musical material listeners will be exposed to many different textures. At the opening long brass lines are placed upon gentle string chords, while in other sections wind chorales and canonic lines slowly build to form rich polyphonic textures. In the most energized moments long singing lines in the woodwinds and brass are placed on top of rapid pulsations in the strings, while the harp, piano, and a large percussion section are continually utilized to augment the orchestra's colors.
Overall the work slowly evolves, winding in and out of various musical regions and exploring different areas of harmonic stability and musical tension. Only at the very end of the piece do the musical ideas finally come into full counterpoint with one another, at which point the evolution of the regenerating motives stops and the piece builds to a final, triumphant, tutti ending. - D.T.
Written in 2008, Floating Amidst... is a chamber work based on a set of paintings by visual artist Leticia Luevanos. In these watercolor paintings, Leticia uses deep, vivid, colors and flowing, curving, lines to abstractly represent jellyfish floating in the ocean. The music aims to convey the deep colors and imagery of her work, and each movement represents a different painting. Throughout the first movement the dipping glissandos of the clarinets mimic the first painting's gentle curves, while the dark cello lines portray the ominous black found at the bottom of the painting. Meanwhile, a gently ebbing iso-rhythm in the cello represents cascading waves which come in and out of focus throughout the movement. As the movement ends, ethereal crotales float away somewhere in the distance. In the second movement, sounds of the wind and the waves slowly come into focus until a gentle trumpet melody enters. The lyrical section which follows represents the soft blue colors seen in the jellyfish of the second painting. As these colors melt into the background of the ocean's landscape, only a foreboding, profound, crimson remains, and the final chorale explores the depth of this crimson which bleeds slowly through the water.
Movement I: A pink glow
Movement II: Soft grey, gentle blue, dark crimson
10'00" duration
$39.95 Paper score and parts, $27.95 Digital
Catalogue No. 07006
Written in 2007, 'Five Bagatelles' is a set of miniatures paying homage to five different 20th-Century composers.
Mvt. I - Fugue (Homage to Benjamin Britten)
A gentle piano cadenza opens the work as themes from each movement are heard. As the piano fades, the homage to Britten begins with the entrance of a lilting fugue subject in the violin. The ensemble develops this subject in imitation before coming to rest during a short, reflective, chorale.
Mvt. II - Ostinato Pizzicato (Homage to Bela Bartok)
In this movement the piano plays repetitive ostinato figures, while the two string instruments are pitted against one another: the violin plays double-stopped chords, while the cello plays pizzicato.
Mvt. III - Romanze (Homage to Aaron Copland)
The central pillar in this piece, this wistful Romanze references the intimacy and lyricism inherent in many of Copland's works. Initially the violin and cello each play alone with the piano, but by the end all three instruments come together to sing the reflective melody of a slow folk-tune.
Mvt. IV - Rondo: Cadenza (Homage to Henri Dutilleux)
This movement's flourishing gestures and dark chorales make reference to Dutilleux's colorful, post-impressionistic, style. Standing opposite the second movement, here the cello plays lyrical lines and chords, while the violin plays pizzicato.
Mvt. V - Chorale (Homage to György Ligeti)
This movement aims to explore unconventional textural realms. Using layered scales and extended techniques to obfuscate the natural timbral independence of the instruments, a six-note motive in the
piano gradually evolves until the final chorale, when all three players join together before ebbing away slowly into silence.
- D.T.
13'00" duration
$29.95 Paper score and parts, $19.95 Digital
Catalogue No. 07003
