recordings
Music
Videos
...Your music is a joy to work on.
-Veteran Sound Engineer, Greg Lukens
albums
This album is a collection of five orchestral concert works written between 2020 and 2023.
The first, Shenandoah, reflects upon the irreversible changes in the Shenandoah Valley from a font of folk and native traditions to the fast-food chains and highways that now blanket the land.
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The second, third and fourth pieces comprise a suite of three nocturnes, basically about sleeplessness and the brooding that accompanies it, the demons from midnight to six am.
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Waiting for Dawn is a ride through semi-consciousness. One might think of it as an extended dance with the following time-cues:
0:00.....Fireflies
0:50.....Fading
01:38....Slow Dance of Random Thoughts
03:19....Grandfather Telling Stories
04:26...Elders Gathering
05:27....Elders Dancing
08:03...Drifting Off
08:38...Grandfather and His Parakeet
09:27....A Gathering in the Alleys
10:13.....Alleycats and Alleyrats
12:26....Krupa Kats
13:19....Still Not Asleep
14:25...Sunrise
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Cat's Eyes, the universe, immediate and mysterious, jazzy and majestic, all there just beyond our reach.
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Sleepless, between waking and the unconscious, is
where the demons play. Maybe you are asleep, or maybe
not. With all that racket between your ears how do you know? The score for Sleepless is available for free
download,
The last piece, The Evocation of Winter, for strings, portrays that calming Winter's silent cold, fog, and snow that so welcomingly blankets a noisy world.
(Scroll for complete track list)
singles
music videos
Sleepless
Somewhere between midnight and six am, you drift from thought to memory to some weird idea you just can't shed, or maybe you don't even want to. SLEEPLESS is a concert work for small orchestra and is Illustrated in this video with paintings by the Breugels, Hieronimus Bosch and their contemporaries. From the album, Waiting For Dawn.
The Aulos And The Kithara
For recorders and harp guitar and named after those instruments' ancient Greek ancestors this piece requires the recorder soloist to play two simultaneously just as Aulos players did centuries ago. It also showcases Emily O'Brien's extraordinary talents and virtuosity. Set to Renaissance depictions of card games featuring Caravaggio's landmark work, "The Cardsharps.
History and Old Men
I hope that despite it's obvious shortcomings many folks will enjoy this exploration of the formative, forceful, American Fairy-tale: cowboys, farmers, horses, a '54 ford, guitars and fiddles, the American myth, the Rockies, my grandfather who lost the family farm during the Great Depression, and my dad who lost his friends, wives, jobs, and sometimes me for his temper. And, yes, that's me as a little boy, a teenager on the back of my best friend in 1968, and as a young man at the piano in Vienna, Austria. Here I'm playing all the parts, two guitar, piano, fiddle, bass, and vocals. The Audio for this is a demo for an upcoming album with some of the best musicians I know.
A consort of Renaissance recorders in 8 parts performs this haunting winter piece illustrated with works by eastern European painters.
Cat's Eyes
CAT'S EYES is an intimate reflection on Fatherhood for small orchestra with upright jazz bass and video, illustrated with images of lions, nebulas and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci.. The music is from the album, Waiting For Dawn.
The Persistent Night Sky
THE PERSISTENT NIGHT SKY is an alternate video interpretation of Cat's Eyes partly exploring America's dark underbelly of racism.
The Perimeter of Conscience
Monday May 4th, 1970: The "Other" 4th. The Vietnam War was spinning out of control, President Nixon had just ordered troops into Cambodia, anti-war protests were ubiquitous, 50,000 soldiers had been killed in the war and on that day four American students were shot by American National Guardsmen on an American University on American soil. The Perimeter of Conscience is about our failure of conscience at that time. Electric Guitar, Piano, Strings, Winds, Percussion, vintage news clips, and electronic effects.
Canzona
A piano solo illustrated here with a few original drawings. From a 1976 recital, Michael Kent O'Brien, piano.
OUR TIRED. OUR POOR. OUR HUDDLED
Turlough O'Carolan's haunting melody, Bridget Cruise, illustrated with vintage photos of immigrants, indigenous Americans, laborers and farmers. Michael Kent O'Brien, harp guitar.
SING ME THE WIND
A popular anthem about immigration, social justice, racism.
"Let us walk upon the common ground. And gather round the village well. And freely breathe the air that we share. There's a breeze blowin' round. And it's blowin' everywhere. Sing me the wind!"
SHENANDOAH
The first movement of my first Symphony. A kind of crossover work dealing with rural culture confronting urbanization.
A MAN OF HOT SULPHUR SPRINGS
"A Man of Constant Sorrow," (arr. Norman Blake) illustrated with vintage photos of Hot Sulphur Springs on the headwaters of the Colorado River, and by a wooden bridge where in 1959 I caught many a breakfast.
Like Rain on WInter's Leaves
Like lingering leaves in Winter clinging to memories, what will be emerges from what has been, wistfully, regretfully or just because.
In memoriam:
Michael DiQuinzio
Paintings by Andrew Wyeth. Piano, electric piano, guitar and photos by Michael Kent O'Brien
This Star Spangled Banner
An organ improvisation in C-minor on the National Anthem. A musical "commentary" illustrated with scenes from the January 6 insurrection and justices of the Supreme Court following the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Has your mind ever wandered, seemingly randomly, as if in a daydream? That's what this recorder solo is all about. Audio is from Emily O'Brien's album, Fantasies for a Modern Recorder, for which I wrote this lyrical, little piece.