Little Mercies (2023) for spatial String Quartet commissioned by Jon P. Cherry in response to his exhibit of photos by the same title. The piece was performed at 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, Ky. as part of the Louisville Photo Biennial. (This recording was taken in the space so you may hear ambient noises from the museum). Performers: Violin 1 - Heather Thomas, Violin 2 - Colleen Mahoney, Viola - Laura Vicic, Cello - Alan Ohkubo About the collection "Little Mercies": "The confluence of nationwide racial justice protests, economic hardship, and environmental destruction, all within the framework of a deathly and unrelenting global pandemic, reached and maintained profoundly palpable levels of reckoning in Kentucky. The Little Mercies is a state-as-subject portrait of our complicatedly beautiful, deeply resilient contemporary Old Kentucky Home, capturing the lived experience of Kentuckians. Whether documenting a disaster, or an individual’s success, Jon Cherry’s storytelling is one of shared humanity." About the quartet "Little Mercies": "Little Mercies is a response to an exhibit of photographs by the same name. The photos were taken by photojournalist Jon P. Cherry who commissioned the work to be performed in the exhibit. Jon and I agreed that the quartet should be composed in a way where people could be in the exhibit, walk around, and experience the photos and music simultaneously. The music responds to the exhibit as a whole focussing on ideas of pain, deep sadness, gritty anger, fleeting moments of hope, and cautious optimism. I am struck by the communities of people in the photos who repeatedly face adversity and devastation but are somehow still able to pick up the pieces and persist. The ending of the piece, tired and exhausted, is underpinned by a looming sense of uncertainty – nothing suggests that this pattern of devastation is ending anytime soon." As a native Kentuckian I am honored to take part in sharing the story of our beautiful but complex state.

Olivier Blakney - Natural Horn, James Coghlin - Piano Commissioned by Olivier Blakney and partially funded by the Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Program of the International Horn Society “Urban Pastoral” is a piece that addresses the idea of natural beauty in an urban environment. It focuses especially on the impression of an urban nightscape – the amber glow of street lamps filtered through trees; clouds dimly lit by light pollution from one side and by the moon from the other; fireflies glowing in a park; and drops of dew shimmering on glass. The horn has long been associated with the hunt - “alla caccia”- and the pastoral. The natural horn’s ability to showcase its easy and ready access to the upper partials of the overtones series deepens this association with nature – the overtones themselves seem to evoke a fundamental connection with the natural world as the series’ patterns resonate everywhere around us. The piece relies on this weighty association and sets it against the fixed, equal temperament of the piano. On its own, the natural horn is bound to a set of specific pitches from the overtone series. The movement of the performer’s right hand effects the timbre and pitch of the horn allowing them to play pitches outside of the series. However, the piano is able to access any pitch at anytime with the compromise that its intonation doesn’t match perfectly with the natural horn’s overtones series. The rub between these two temperaments serves as an analogy for the contradictory coexistence of the urban pastoral.

"Distill" was the result of the Indiana New Music Ensemble Commission competition. It was written almost entirely while I was in residence at the Bowdoin International Music Festival as the Composition Fellow in the summer of 2021. Note from the Score: Distill is a piece whose materials are greatly inspired by past experiences and events that have shaped my artistic impulses in very broad but powerful ways. The piece takes these most common impulses and concentrates them into a single movement. However, the title does not suggest that the musical materials are being distilled over the course of the piece. The most notable impulses dealt with are those that lead me to writing sustained and melancholic music with very long and expressive lines; separating the ensemble into smaller ones to be manipulated in ways that might not be obvious otherwise; and finding ways to deal with dramatic decisions at pivotal moments. The ensemble is split into two symmetrical groups – one which is lead by the saxophone and the other lead by the horn. The juxtaposition of the two ensembles softens as the piece continues allowing them to explore their commonalities. In a very loose sense, the piece could be viewed as a kind of “theme and variations” as lines move through new parings of instruments, pushing and pulling the music into different ways of being according to their own unique qualities and characteristics.

Commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra September 2021. This recording is of the University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra from February 2022. Joshua Lowery – Conductor. Premiered 10/2/21 as part of the Louisville Orchestra's "A Concert for Unity". This reduction was made by the composer. The top two staves contain the primary lines while subsequents ones show composite harmony and textures. Visit TylerTaylorComposer.com for more details! See end of video for a full program note.

Since about 2016, I have wanted to write a piece which is entirely slow and mostly quiet – one that captures a dim, mysterious, melancholic glow that seems pale, effervescent, and capable of evaporating at any given moment. This craving has been only partially fulfilled in some of the slow movements of my other works. However, in the pursuit of contrast, many of these movements stray from their quiet sound worlds and erupt into more passionate and bombastic textures. The title Just dreams not only sets the mood for the nebulous, floating quality of the music but also suggests this mood will be maintained throughout. The piece contains three “lines”. The presentation of a new line denotes the start of a new section – these are marked No. I, No. II, and No. III. As the piece progresses, memories and echoes of past lines permeate the sections of the new lines. Their relationships are demonstrated below: No. I = Line 1 + premonitions of Line 2 No. II = Line 2 + Line 1 No. III = Line 3 + fragments of Lines 1 & 2 In lieu of a more contrast-based sense of dramatic trajectory, the form is driven by the counterpoint of these lines, the progress of the somewhat saccharine harmonies, and the subtle transformation of timbre as the lines are filtered though the various instrumental pairings/groupings. Recording made available my the National Orchestral Institute at The Clarice.

The second of three movements from Modus operandi for Mixed Octet. (Recommended 1080p). "Dust" aims to capture both the idea of something mundane - muted and melancholic in mood - and also the idea of a much lighter remnant or residue left over from something else. Jamey Guzman - Flute, Charles Craig - Clarinet, Drew Gascon - Bassoon, Tyler Taylor - Horn, Gracie Carney - Violin, Emily Azzarito - Cello, Stephen Karukas - Vibes., Matt Schultheis - Piano, Andrew Downs - Conductor

Cole Bartels - Trombone, Vincent Fuh - Piano Performance notes: @0:09 Program notes: @0:14 Score: @0:19 “Canned” is a piece that was inspired by my time at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art during the 2016 Bang on a Can Summer Festival. The clock tower at the complex seemed to toll at random times and with repetitions that did not correspond to the hours they were supposed to represent. Additionally, the bell tolling seemed to be a distorted recording of a bell or perhaps an electronic imitation of one. The days at MASS MoCA where long and intense – the bizarre-sounding, random bell tolls became disorientating points of reference that perforated the days with comically false information. Initially, the piano takes on the role of an actual bell while the trombone takes on the characteristics of the imitation bell. These roles are switched through the course of the piece as the trombone’s tone becomes less abstracted and more pure while the piano’s tone becomes less pure and more abstracted. Short “interludes” perforate this process representing the disorienting effect of the tolling bells.

The third and final movement of "some notes" for horn quartet. Notes: "some notes" is a horn quartet in three movements inspired by Charles Bukowski's poems "some notes on Bach and Haydn", "Mahler", "Bruckner", and "Beethoven conducted his last symphony while totally deaf". The movements of my piece do not neatly correspond to one single poem but take inspiration from several at once. The piece as a whole explores themes and images I found common among the set, most notably a sense of melancholy and contradiction. "... I missed ..." is from a line in the poem "Bruckner". This movement, perhaps the most melancholic in mood and character, tries to convey the idea of "missing" by setting up cadential patterns that never quite align. If you thought you were going to hear Bruckner, sorry to disappoint! Performers: Tyler Taylor, Victoria Knudtson, Michael Stiles, Sara Petokas