Compositions

This is my newest work – “Up to No Good” a concerto for bass clarinet and Wind Band.

This is a recording of the March 12th 2016 premiere performance by the U.S. Coast Guard Band with bass clarinet soloist Andrew Grenci.  My sincere thanks to the band and to Andrew Grenci for a stellar performance.

The piece was was commissioned by:

Dr. Gordon R. Brock, University of North Florida Flagship Music Program
Dr. John C. Carmichael, University of South Florida
Dr. Patrick K. Carney, Limestone College
Andrew Grenci, Bass Clarinetist
Alan Mitchell, Andrews University
Nicholas Morrison, Utah State University
Dr. Danh T. Pham, Washington State University
Dr. Frederick Speck, University of Louisville
Dr. Reed Thomas, Middle Tennessee State University
Dr. David Vickerman, The College of New Jersey
Chris David Westover, Bethel College
Dr. Norman Wika, Northeastern State University

The material is presented in three movements, and in each instance the bass clarinet soloist manages to “corrupt” the other players by influencing the musical material and goading the wind ensemble into a reaction. The overall formal structure supports this approach by featuring the first movement as a kind of prelude (or dare) that is eventually accepted and addressed in the third movement. This is referenced in the subtitle for the third movement by a phrase often used by my brother when issuing a personal challenge – “I hope you brought your woodscrews . . .”

  1. Fingers Crossed (Prelude and Double Dare)
  2. Little White Lies (what we don’t know can’t hurt us . . .)
  3. The Devil’s in the Details (I hope you brought your woodscrews)

With One Eye Open: Eight Preludes for the Waking World

This piece was commissioned by my friend and colleague Jessica Koebbe.  It was recorded and released by Jessica on the Midwest Chamber Ensemble’s “Voices from the Middle” – New Music from Kansas City album in 2015. Jessica and I worked together at MNU and I greatly value her friendship and musicianship.

This is my first bass clarinet concerto – Adrift in Endless Realities, performed here by myself and the UMKC student orchestra.

This piece was originally written for created wind instrument, found percussion and bass clarinet.  The two recordings here represent my premiere performance with a vacuum cleaner clarinet and percussion set made out of sawed off wine bottles and kitchen implements, and thingNY’s recent take on the work.

Here is thingNY’s performance of the work.  This is a very different realization, and I have to admit that I love that this piece is flexible enough to be presented so differently.

This video is from a collaborative concert that my new music group – The Digital Honkbox Revival  – performed on.

Improvisational music has always been very central to what I do.  This piece was one of my first forays into modern improvisation and really acted as a catalyst to my later work.  The performers here are myself, Scott Moore (violin), Jeremy Podgursky and Christian Gentry (pianos).

This was written for the U of L trumpet ensemble and is dedicated to my brother – the one and only Matt Baumgardner. I like to think that is represents him fairly well – short and to the point, with plenty of bravado and some fairly rough edges.

This clarinet duet was written during my masters program.  It always makes me smile.

This is a “piece” that Scott Blasco and I created together. We thought that it might be cool to use fruit as an instrument and Scott came up with an ingenious way to insert microphones into pears. The percussion is all pear sounds, and the comb filter on the bass clarinet is controlled by the level of violence that Scott and I choose to inflict on the pears.

Since the whole piece is improvised it is different every time, and it bears mentioning that Scott and I have not yet had a performance that didn’t require some kind of impromptu wizardry on the part of the performers (usually just me and Scott) to overcome an unpredictable technical difficulty. I think this particular performance calls into question the traditional concept of minimalism.

People also seem to get a kick out of the title, which refers to pears that both Scott and I were offered. The pears in question grew in a yard near Troost street and were picked and offered to both me and Scott by a fellow student at UMKC during our time as doctoral students. Scott graciously accepted and ate the pears, while I gave mine away on the Plaza. The title generated from a conversation that Scott and I had in which I exclaimed, “I ain’t eatin’ no Yard Pears!”.

This is a wind quintet in 5 short movements based on the cargo cults of the pacific islands. This performance features the members of the Liberace Winds.  This recording is live and unedited, so the movements are presented back to back with brief pauses.

Introduction and Kludge was written for Sam Wells and Jon Carbin.