NEW MORSE CODE
My dynamic duo with cellist Hannah Collins
Albums
Simplicity Itself
New Morse Code's debut album Simplicity Itself is out on New Focus Recordings. Featuring music by Robert Honstein, Tonia Ko, Caroline Shaw, and Paul Kerekes with special guests Katie Hyun and Timo Andres.
““an ebullient passage through pieces that each showcase the duo’s clarity of artistic vision and their near-perfect synchronicity””
““a flag of genuineness raised””
Featured on:
icareifyoulisten.com: Video Premiere | Review
Album Videos
Robert Honstein: Patter
Tonia Ko: Hush
Caroline Shaw: Boris Kerner
Robert Honstein: Unwind
Video by Hannah Wasileski
Other Albums
Vanitas
Matthew’s Vanitas is the result of a long-term collaboration with NMC. Over 4 years, Matthew wrote numerous movements inspired by Marin Marais, György Kurtág, and Bach’s, experimenting in a new harmonic style and challenging us with new approaches to rhythm, meter, form, and time. The title is taken from the still-life paintings common in the Netherlands during the 17th century containing symbols of time and change.
And All the Days were Purple
Meditative and devotional in scope, and all the days were purple sets Yiddish and English poems to music in a song cycle that seeks out the divine while reflecting on the longing, beauty and tumult of life. The album includes texts by Anna Margolin, Edward Hirsch, Rachel Korn, and Abraham Sutzkever, and performances by Eliza Bagg (voice), Lee Dionne (piano), Maya Bennardo (violin), Hannah Levinson (viola), and New Morse Code (Hannah Collins and Mike Compitello). The recording also includes Three Epitaphs, composed in 2016 and featuring excerpts from texts on love and life’s transience by Williams Carlos Williams, Seikilos and Emily Dickinson.
The Emigrants
The United States is often called “a nation of immigrants” and rightly so; our history has been defined by people from other places who have risked much to build a new life here. Recent discussion of immigration highlights the experiences of foreign nationals who have decided to stay: how they can stay, if their stay is legal, and what the ramifications of their stay are. Less common, however, is the discussion of immigrants’ departure from the home they left behind; few, in other words, speak of immigrants as emigrants.
The Emigrants is a documentary chamber music work for cello, percussion and digital playback. The project began by collecting oral history interviews with the emigrant musician community of New York City’s borough of Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse urban areas in the world. The new work includes these individuals’ voices as part of the score itself, combining spoken word with instrumental music. The goal is to create a work that, through a documentary process, invites a dialogue between the audience, the musicians (both live and recorded), and the stories.
Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York, and a Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts. Additional support was provided by generous donors to the “New Morse Connections” Kickstarter project.
Other NMC Media
Thomas Kotcheff: then and then and then this
Robert Honstein: Down Down Baby
Caroline Shaw: Limestone and Felt
Martin Bresnick: Songs of the Mouse People
Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion
with Thomas Kotcheff, piano
David Lang:Stuttered Chant
Osvaldo Golijov: Mariel
Christopher Stark: The Language of Landscapes
video by Andrew Lucia
Read more about tLoL here
Marc Mellits: Tight Sweater
Nick Didkovsky: Caught by the Sky with Wire
performed live at Washington College, April 2015