Drift (2024)

Since the inception of this collaboration with my dear friend, Joshua Felser—whom this piece, Drift, is both written for and dedicated to—I have been drawn to explore the concept of drift on multiple fronts. At first glance, I came to believe that drift evokes a kind of natural, organic movement. I began to reflect on how we navigate and connect our lives over experience, music, genre, language, storytelling, and so much more—to discover something more honest, more resonant, and more true to who we are.

At a deeper level, I believe drift also speaks to the times we’re living in. I’ve been reflecting on my growing awareness of how our society (including both the people I am deeply connected with and the vast many I will probably never have the privilege to meet) has gradually drifted toward a painful numbness—to violence, systemic racism and sexism, and political turmoil.

In the end, Drift is intended to be a meditation on change—one that transcends sound, thought, and experience. This work also serves as a tribute to the friendship I share with Josh, and to the idea that even in times of uncertainty, meaningful connections can keep us grounded.

– Dylan Tyree

The Mountain is Out Today (2025)

On select sunny days, driving across Lake Washington on I-90, one can see Mount Rainier to the southeast: 14,410 feet tall, one of the most dangerous dormant volcanoes in the world, which so dominates the horizon of the Seattle metropolitan area that locals simply call it, “the mountain.” But on other days, the mountain is completely covered with clouds—it fades so effectively into the sky that it’s impossible to remember where exactly it was the day before. When the mountain appears, residents will say (in casual conversations and on the local news), “the mountain is out today.” The mountain even has its own Twitter account, which reports daily on whether or not it’s visible. For many locals, the mountain is a place of uncanny mystery, where Bigfoot has been sighted over five hundred times in the past eighty years and hikers have reported encountering a “phantom hiker” following them on empty trails. But to me, if the mountain is out, I feel certain of some sort of good luck that day. It’s a minor miracle, but one I never take for granted.

My clarinet trio, The Mountain is Out Today, imagines Mount Rainier obscured by a mist of overlapping timbres, trills and swirling chromatic figurations, which gradually recede to reveal its full grandeur before enveloping it once more. Throughout the piece, in addition to false harmonics and harmonic pizzicati on the cello, I utilize piano harmonics, in which the fundamental of the note is suddenly dampened by the pedal, leaving only a specific overtone to ring, as if the silhouette of the mountain is momentarily visible behind the clouds.

– Olivia Marckx

Camera Oscura (2020)

Camera Oscura (‘darkroom’) for nine players was composed in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Summer Music Camp for Can’t-Get-Enough-Chamber-Music Aficionados, aka the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East. Over the course of four movements (Fanfares, Songs, Scherzo and Lament), this nonet explores musical kernels imbedded in the names of some of my favorite composers in the rich history of chamber music. (And of course I’m not alone in loving the music of these composers.) I imagine Ansel Adams in his darkroom developing photographic iconography from Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, seeing the images emerge from the acidic bath. These musical evocations are not, however, about style, so for example in the third movement scherzo the names Mozart, Schubert and Brahms generate the material, not their musical styles. The first movement fanfares are made from Martinu, Barber, Stravinsky and Schoenberg; the string accompaniment in the second movement songs comes from the name Britten. Benjamin Britten himself likely wouldn’t have chosen these jazzy chords, but carving the subject out of his name did. Though perhaps sounding just a tad arcane, this is a time-honored means of communication by composers across centuries (for example, Schumann’s Abegg Variations, Josquin’s Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, B-A-C-H and D-S-C-H among myriad others). In addition to the noisy fanfares introduced by the traditional nonet (woodwind quintet + a quartet of strings – violin, viola, cello and bass), there are smaller combinations based on iconic pieces in the rep, for example, oboe quartet, clarinet quintet, Schubert octet, woodwind quintet, string trio, etc.

– Donald Crockett

Alhambra Fantasy (2000)

Alhambra Fantasy is scored for the sixteen players of the London Sinfonietta, who commissioned the work for this concert. It is a celebration of the art and architecture of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. I am concerned both with the splendour of the Palace itself, as well as its place in the landscape and its relevance to the complex history of this ‘Moorish’ region of Spain. The two large parts of the work, sharply contrasted, relate to two different facets of the Alhambra: the building of the Palace itself in the rough and energetic first part, which is dominated by sounds of hammering and banging on all manner of percussion; and the more lyrical second part, which connects song evoking the landscape of the Vega. This is not programme music, however, and I would rather leave listeners to form their own images from the turbulent contrasts evident it the music. Alhambra Fantasy is dedicated to the memory of French composer Gérard Grisey.

– Julian Anderson

Dylan Tyree

Dylan Tyree is a Los Angeles-based cellist, composer, and arts administrator who thrives in a wide range of musical genres, including chamber music, studio recording, recital repertoire, rock/pop shows, symphonic music, and jazz combos. Passionate about bringing new music to life, he has worked with composers including Eric Whitacre, Caroline Shaw, Roger Holland, and Ola Gjeilo. He is featured as a soloist on the world premiere recording of Christopher Tin’s Song Offerings and Transfigurations, set to debut on the Decca Gold record label in November 2025, streaming on all major platforms. As a competition-winning composer, Dylan has been commissioned by leading soloists, ensembles, and festivals, including the Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, Sunset Chamber Festival, Soaring Arts Music Collective, and the University of Denver; and soloists including Matthew Zalkind, Martin Kuuskmann, Joshua Felser, Zoe Weiss, and Danny McDonnall. His music lives at the crossroads of tradition and rebellion, weaving classical craft with the raw edge of rock, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of live audience engagement. In 2023, Dylan co-founded the Soaring Artists Music Collective (SAMC), a nonprofit organization focused on reshaping the relationship between the artist and the spectator by presenting immersive, genre-bending concerts in Denver, CO. He is currently pursuing a double M.Mus. in Composition and Cello Performance at the University of Southern California.

Olivia Marckx

Los Angeles and Seattle-based composer and cellist Olivia Marckx writes music that is colorful, inventive, and athletic.“Gorgeous…swirling but measured beauty” (Bandcamp).

Olivia received honors at the 2024 NACUSA-LA National Composition Competition. Her works have been commissioned/and or performed by Tony Arnold, Simone Porter, Blake Pouliot, Aubree Oliverson, the Lyris String Quartet, and the Pacific, South Coast and San Fernando Valley Symphonies, and featured at the Aspen Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, and on the Violin Channel.

As a cellist, Olivia received silver at the Coeur d’Alene International Competition and advanced to semi-finals of the 2025 Washington International Competition. She has soloed with the Seattle Symphony and Colburn Orchestra, among others, performed with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and the Seattle Chamber Music and Colburn Chamber Music Societies, and collaborated with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Jon Kimura Parker and Time for Three. Summer festivals include the Aspen Music Festival, Yellow Barn, New Music on the Point, Perlman Music Program and the Heifetz Chamber Music Seminar.

Olivia received a BM and MM at the Colburn Conservatory working with Clive Greensmith and Robert Lipsett, and is currently an Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld scholarship student at USC studying cello (DMA) with Ralph Kirshbaum and composition (MM) with Donald Crockett.

Donald Crockett

Donald Crockett is professor and chair of the composition department and director of Thornton Edge at the USC Thornton School of Music, and senior composer-in-residence with the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Composer-in-Residence (1991-97), Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hilliard Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and the California EAR Unit, among many others.

Recent projects include commissions from the Harvard Musical Association for violist Kate Vincent and Firebird Ensemble, the San Francisco-based chamber choir, Volti, for its 30th anniversary season, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Claremont Trio, and a chamber opera, The Face, based on a novella in verse by poet David St. John.

The recipient in 2013 of an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for outstanding artistic achievement, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, Donald Crockett has also received grants and prizes from the Barlow Endowment, Bogliasco Foundation, Copland Fund, Copland House, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA and many others.

His music is published by Keiser Classical and Doberman/Yppan and recorded on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, innova, Laurel, New World, Orion and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels. Two all-Crockett recordings were released in 2011, on New World Records with Firebird Ensemble and on Albany Records with Xtet. Active as a conductor of new music, Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with the Los Angeles-based new music ensemble Xtet, the USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, and as a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Hilliard Ensemble, California EAR Unit, Firebird Ensemble and Ensemble X.

As conductor of the USC Thornton Symphony’s annual New Music for Orchestra concert, Donald Crockett has premiered well over a hundred orchestral works by outstanding Thornton student composers. He has also been very active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. His recordings as a conductor can be found on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM and New World labels.