“Moment(s): Various/Concerted” (2016) is for 10 players and was written for the Omnibus Ensemble, especially for the “Omnibus Laboratorium: Peabody – Tashkent” and was premiered by Omnibus Ensemble in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on 12 March 2017.
www.omnibus-ensemble.asia/

https://soundcloud.com/scott-allen-miller-ii/moments-various-concerted-for-the-omnibus-ensemble

Program Note:

Moment(s): Various/Concerted (2016) for ten players:
[nay (alto and soprano) – oboe – percussion (suspended cymbal, crotales) – chang (or santur), –tanbur – two violins – viola – cello – contrabass]

     The starting place for this work was a collaboration with the incredible Omnibus Ensemble, who combine Western instruments and style with the traditional music and instruments of Uzbekistan. Members of the ensemble guided me through an exploration of Shashmaqam, particularly the incredibly beautiful and precise ornaments indicative of the genre. The specificity to which these microtonal embellishments are executed inspired me to connect this music with the newer microtonal tradition of spectralism. By deriving the musical lines from Uzbek ornaments and the harmony from the overtone series, the pitch content ties together these two otherwise disparate musics while also establishing a historical relationship to the Uzbek instruments and to timbre more generally.
     After a sonorous introduction to the sound-world, the main body of Moment(s): Various/Concerted presents short phrases constructed with contrasting sounds within the ensemble, often repeated two or more times to establish them as consolidated moments or ‘sound-objects.’ Throughout the piece, these musical ideas are developed with a focus on texture and timbre, always increasing in length and complexity.

Peruse the score here: issuu.com/edmundscottmiller/do…variousconcerted_-_s