JACK LANGDON

is a musician, filmmaker, and writer with concentrations in experimental music, minimalist documentary, cultural criticism, and political economy.

born in 1994, enrolled in sault ste. marie tribe of chippewa indians

nindaa gichi-neyaashiing

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

8.7.25

Jeff Kimmel (clarinets), Jack Langdon (bibigwan),
Stephan Haluska (harp), & Adam Shead (percussion)
Comfort Station
Chicago, IL

8.8.25

Jack Langdon (bibigwan)
Marmalade
Chicago, IL

8.21.25

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

10.12.25

Jack Langdon (bibigwan)
The Whistler
Chicago, IL

BIOGRAPHY, CV, CONTACT

what form will the spirit take
for trio

September 2023

10 min.
first performance by:
Prague Quiet Music Collective
Troja Château, Prague, CZ
9.20.23
score
recording

what form will the spirit take was written for the Prague Quiet Music Collective’s exhibition “Five Uncertain Situations” at Troja Chateau in Prague, which featured a variety of new works commissioned in response to a series of artworks by Czech artists. This work for bass clarinet, baritone electric guitar, and violin was created in response to glass artist Václav Cigler’s sculpture “Kompozice - chrám.” My program note reads as follows:

For those who can see, light entering a space allows one to apprehend the forms that give a building, a public area, or a room its own identity. For those who can hear, even in the absence of light, a sudden clap or vocalization sounding into a room can provide the listener with information about the space they find themselves in. These elusive forces of light and sound intensify the forms they collide with, giving otherwise dead matter a liveliness and vibrancy which it does not possess in silent darkness.

When I first encountered Václav Cigler’s work
“Kompozice - chrám,” I was immediately drawn to the ways in which these forms of glass instrumentalized light as well as the way in which the spiritual dimension of light was made a subject of this sculpture. In my work, “what form will the spirit take,” I draw inspiration from the formal design Václav Cigler made in the creation of Kompozice - chrám. Cigler created three translucent forms, arranged in a triangular fashion, providing unidirectional light to allow gradations of brightness and darkness to fall upon their forms.

In my piece for the Prague Quiet Music Collective, I’ve created three pages of notation for the ensemble. Each of these pages are repeated three times, with natural variations arising from the shifting circumstances of musical commands being performed across time—with musical ‘shadows’ and ‘highlights’ emerging at different moments within these repetitions.

Category
Composition