Student Composers Forum #1

Echo Chamber (2026) – Christian Glascock
Echo Chamber explores the terrifying intimacy of losing control during a psychedelic experience. What begins as heightened awareness can quickly become fixation: a thought repeats, a sensation becomes amplified, and something as ordinary as breathing suddenly feels foreign and impossible to escape.

The work is centered around this obsessive awareness of breath—the moment when an automatic bodily function becomes something that must be consciously monitored. Each breath becomes louder, stranger, and more significant. As perception begins to distort, the boundary between what is happening internally and what is happening externally becomes increasingly unstable.

Echo Chamber inhabits the space between fascination and panic: the feeling of being trapped inside your own perception while simultaneously trying to convince yourself that everything is okay. The title refers not only to the repetition of sound, but to the psychological loop of thought and sensation that can emerge during a frightening psychedelic experience. What begins as a single breath becomes an echo, and the echo becomes the world.

Farkas. The Art of French Horn Playing, Volume 2 (2026) – Brayden Adamisin
Farkas's famous fundamental findings updated for the modern age! In this new and improved set of fundamentals we see exercises built for the modern collegiate horn player and techniques set to prepare them for life as a musician in the post 2020 era!

Sailor’s Old Tale (2025) – Jocelyn Huber
Imagine you just met a pirate who recently retired from their career of sea seeking and treasure hunting. While long retired, this pirate still recalls the fun times that were made along this journey of the sea, and shares with you those memories of enjoyment. Cheers to nostalgia!

Obstination: Metamorphosis of Breath (2026) – Alexandra Camargo
Obstination: Metamorphosis of Breath explores the journey of sound through two opposing emotional and musical states, utilizing the expressive capabilities of the brass quintet to narrate a profound transformation.

The first section, "Obstination," is built upon a persistent and obsessive rhythmic motif. Through the use of ostinato, the instruments weave a web of repetitions and counterpoints with a rigid, almost mechanical pulse. It is music of great energy and character, where the breath of the brass turns percussive, tenacious, and rigorous.

However, at the climax of tension, the metamorphosis occurs: the rhythmic rigidity dissolves to give way to the second section, a solemn and deeply emotional chorale. Here, the angular lines soften. The instruments no longer attack the notes with tenacity, but rather sustain the sound, allowing the air to transform into an atmosphere of reverence, light, and mysticism.

The work is, ultimately, a metaphor for the spirit itself: a necessary passage from fixation and struggle toward liberation.

Resonance of Resolve (2024) – Gabe Manisco
Resonance of Resolve is a reflection on the reverberation of a quiet, often tumultuous journey of self-actualization. This piece captures the inner dialogue of an individual faced with moments of uncertainty and challenge, with emotions rising and falling as one navigates ambition, reflection, humility, and the inevitable tension between fear and determination. The music oscillates fluidly between moments of introspective calm and surges of emotional intensity, mirroring the way we process complex emotions. The dynamic contrasts echo the way resolve can emerge gradually, building in intensity before retreating into moments of self-doubt, only to rise again. This piece invites listeners to consider the beauty in vulnerability and the strength to embrace discomfort, evoking the idea that true resolve is not immediate, but is shaped and reshaped through the experiences that challenge us. The lingering melodies serve as a reminder of how the determination we cultivate continues to influence us long after the initial moment of decision.

A Glimpse (2026) – Colton Ogg
A Glimpse, poetry of Walt Whitman, reflects the subdued nature of 19th-century queer romance.

Let’s All Move to Mobile (2026) – Mitchell Daniel
Let's All move to Mobile was composed for the 2026 Fredrick L. Hemke Snow Pond Saxophone Institute and was premiered by the Vief Quartet. The piece explores the constant desire to travel and be in new places, and the conflict of those feelings with homesickness and longing for the past

Ontics [sosDemo002] (2026) – Ezra Simmons
This work is made with MaxMSP and Renoise. If you enjoyed these tracks, consider listening to my existing music under "son of sisyphus" on Bandcamp + all platforms. I'm also on Instagram / YouTube under the same handle.

Apathy (2026) – Sarah Hertenstein
Apathy is a reflection on the rise of political stress in America.

Warm Smiles from Good Food (2026) – E.M. Gaspar
The piece is about remembering warm feelings and time spent with family over dinner.

black.box (2026) – Sebastian Perry
black.box is a reflection on the conflict between a desire for analog things and a forced push towards electronics that is out of our control. There's such a beauty in using the analog version of something: writing on paper with a nice pen, listening to music on a record player, or reading a physical book. However, as nice as these things are, they don't allow us to escape all the harmful aspects of modern technology. A nice pen can't erase mass surveillance, a record can't erase polluted air, and a book can't erase modern warfare. Additionally, complex technology has become so integrated into our lives that we're helpless to fix so many things that are critical to the way we live our lives when they inevitably break. Much of our lives has been outsourced to black boxes, things we cannot know, keeping us dependent instead of giving us autonomy in our own lives.

Jabberwocky (2025) – Nicholas T. Trevino.
Jabberwocky – Lewis Carroll (1871)
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Holographic Chocolate Cake (2026) – Jason Cain
Holographic Chocolate Cake is a piece for flute and fixed media that uses sounds from mini-bit to recreate video game effects and generally occupy a video game music aesthetic. The bookends of the piece are a minimal groove that eases into a bluesy flute melody, with the middle sections being more intense and gritty in texture, with a brief section in 9/8 with some percussive sounds, and a massive buildup with an onslaught of dissonant chords, culminating in a moment of pause, with the first section slipping back in gradually. This piece was inspired by my enjoyment of video game music and chiptune sounds.

~Program Notes provided by the composers.