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.

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

3.8.26

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

3.17.26

performance of “Fish Laying Egg in a Circle” by Brightwork Ensemble
Tuesdays at Monk Space
Los Angeles, CA

4.13.26

premiere of “The Requested Chords” for chamber orchestra
by Contemporaneous
Roulette, Brooklyn, NY

4.15.26

Jack Langdon (bibigwan) and Mabel Kwan (keys)
Tangible Books
Bridgeport, Chicago, IL

5.14.26

performance of new work for clarinet by Zach Good
Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University
Evanston, IL

BIOGRAPHY, CV, CONTACT

PHOTO BY HANNAH KRUSE

the eternal feeling
for pierrot ensemble and percussion

June 2021

26 min.
first performance:
Composers Conference Ensemble
Slosberg Concert Hall
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
1.21.23
score
recording

the eternal feeling was written as a fellow for the 2021 Composers Conference at Brandeis University. During the process of composing, I was studying with Linda Catlin Smith, and a particular conversation regarding intuition and planning a piece was of great importance to the direction the work eventually took. A quote from her essay Composing a Theory illuminates the spirit of the direction I took:

“I don’t plan my works. I don’t analyse a work before it is written – that would be like analysing a life before it’s been lived. I don’t prescribe the work. Some religions hold that all is foreseen, all is fore-ordained. But in my music, it is not. There really is a blank page.”

This work, like many for summer festivals, was written under quite a brief, strict timeline—two months in this case. For me, this situation forces a kind of need to allow the unconsious to produce and structure poetic and musical material. In the nascent stages of writing, I left a few lines of text to guide me:

“Behind the notes on the page: McCoy Tyner’s solo on My Favorite Things; the sound of a highway in the distance; my grandmother’s radio; the red carpet of my childhood church; driving north on I-91 in the dark; the streetlamp coming through the vines in front of my window; the endless sound of the pipe organ. All sites of my transfixing.”

This became the poetic backbone of the piece and the fragmentary, distant, yearning affect connected the disparate parts together.

Category
Composition