This work is an interactive installation that uses AI to transform the light levels of a room into music. Its purpose is to transform an everyday location into a calm space for reflection and meditation. The installation was created using the Pure Data programming language.

Written in February 2021, this is accidentally a piece about the hope of better times coming ahead. Initially thought as an experimental stylistic hodgepodge (hence its title), the expressive meandering of the music unwittingly took me back to what is inevitably human: the overcoming of our sorrows through song.

Reading by the Aizuri Quartet, March 2021. Recorded by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio. Video editing by Daniel Montes de Oca.

Sketches of Domestic Macrophotography is a set of miniatures based on pictures of furniture from my house. The reminiscence of familiar objects rendered a mystery mourns for the blunt ending of a time of beautiful memories, never to return.

Read by Karen Ouzounian in April 2021

This project is a collection of 50 new pieces for instruments of the recorder family, which have been compiled into a PDF edition. The pieces in the book cover a variety of musical characters and technical propositions, suited for a player of intermediate/advanced level.

Aside from the sheet music, the project also resulted in the recording of 9 pieces and the performance of 7 at the USC Thornton Composition Showcase on November 5th.

The book features original cover art by Fernanda Montes de Oca, and the
recording session was engineered by Caleb Durant. The project was funded with generous support from the Rafael & Luisa de Marchena-Huyke Foundation.

A companion piece to Three Slates (2020), aSh, reseTtle is the destruction of a perfectly coherent piece, resulting in a different yet related sound world…

Original audio samples by Theo Stritch, Grace Miedziak, Gabriel Griswold, Summer Yin and Nick Lok. Visualization by Daniel Montes de Oca.

Boat for Sailing Through and Aquifer is an electroacoustic study of noise-filtering techniques. The entire piece was constructed by sculpting samples of white noise through equalization, splicing, temporal stretching and spectral editing.

Visualization by Daniel Montes de Oca

I. ▲
II. ■
III. ⚫︎
IV. ◆

Performed by The Walden School Players
Festival Week Composers Forum III
July 31, 2019
Louise Shonk Kelly Recital Hall
Dublin, NH

Debajo de un almendro (Under an Almond Tree) is a woodwind quartet that celebrates the structural complexity of living beings. Inspired by the strange geometrical composition of vegetable species, the piece uses gradual transformation processes to generate interweaving strokes that coexist within intricate organic structures, akin to our botanical cousins. This work arises from an immense fascination for life, and it is my hope we do our best to preserve it.

Performed by The Walden School Players and Faculty

Alas, for those who crave
a single drop
of this sorcerous love
in a bottle.

Reading by Ashley Jackson

A choral composition performed by my friends at USC Thornton MacDonald Hall on March 2, 2024.

Carlos Ramirez, solo baritone
Ryann Anderson, piano

Phoebe Rosquist, Hannah McDonnel, Natalie Bradley, soprano
Olivia Knowles, Ella Kaale, Siqi Chen, Amelia Horney & Michelle Kardos, alto
Charlie Richardson, Daniel Leese, Josh Feldman, Yu Hang Tan, tenor
C. Maxfield Hohn, Jason Yang, Carlos Ramirez, Theo Trevisan, bass

Daniel Montes de Oca Téllez, conductor

A/V Recording by Richard An

1. Introduction
2. Hustlin’
3. Sweet and Mysterious
4. Dance
5. Wild Call
6. Lyrical
7. Con moto

Rotem Gilbert, Luis Lechuga-Espadas, Daniel Montes de Oca Téllez, alto recorder

A/V recording by Richard An

Performed at USC Thornton MacDonald Hall on March 2, 2024