JACK LANGDON

is an experimental composer, filmmaker, and writer who was born in 1994 and is a citizen of the sault ste. marie tribe of chippewa indians.

nindaa gichi-neyaashiing

[archive and documentation of past performances can be found here]

UPCOMING EVENTS

12.14.25

Jack Langdon (organ), Ben MacDonald (guitar), Tyler Wagner (bass), Scott Dean Taylor (drums)
Nighthawk
Chicago, IL

2.1.26
Jack Langdon (bibigwan), Kory Reeder (cello), Jeff Kimmel (clarinet), Graham Stephenson (trumpet)
International Museum of Surgical Science
Chicago, IL

2.16.26

Jack Langdon (bibigwan)
Striped Light
Brooklyn, NY

2.21.26

Webb Crawford (tromba marina), Sean Ali (tromba marina), Adam O’Farrill (brass), Jack Langdon (serpent)
Webb Crawford Residency

Issue Project Room
Brooklyn, NY

3.8.26

Jack Langdon (bibigwan), Luke Martin (tone generator), Jeff Kimmel (clarinet), Graham Stephenson (trumpet)
Frequency Series at Constellation
Chicago, IL

TBD

premiere of “Cheap Dream” for harpsichord by Justin Wallace
Britton Recital Hall, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

premiere of “Gravissima” for solo tuba by Jenny Bement
Phoenix, AZ

premiere of “Mystery Spot” by Fonema Consort

BIOGRAPHY, CV, CONTACT

PHOTO BY HANNAH KRUSE

Fish Laying Egg in a Circle
for flute, harp, and viola

June 2025
score
video

Fish Laying Egg in a Circle is a painting by Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau from the mid-eighties. It depicts a fish
with an active internal life, with many processes being depicted in and around the central body of the fish. A circular chain of fish eggs surround the fish, with their orange hue matching the color of a single fin, leading the viewer to see the insides and outsides of the fish as being related. Cycles and circles are common in Anishinaabe sacred depictions and often appear in our cosmology and myths.

Cycles, circles, and repetition are features of nearly every musical form and expression. Within my training and study
as a composer, the unresolved and the imperfect cycle or repetition are staples of work I have written and work of others I have admired and studied.

In this work, I hesitate to employ a literal transposition of the circle concept onto a temporal medium from Morrisseau's painting, but to rather imagine this work as traversing the outside of a great circle, with a horizon always slowly arriving, presenting gently unexpected musical phenomena as the playing unfolds, but with the feeling that, if the work were to continue beyond the limits of the page, that perhaps we would arrive back to the same place we started in. Echoes of familiar musical rhetoric move the listener through musical space, but with a larger form which does not attempt to synthesize these smaller rhetorical gestures into a legible total form.

Category
Composition