BRIAN DANIEL ROSS: Hazardous (2021)
I wrote Hazardous in the first semester of my master’s program. I really wanted to write a horn solo; being a horn player myself, I love working with the sound and tone of horn and piano. It’s a simple yet powerful combination. I usually reflect on my own emotions or current life situations when I write my own music. It was my first time living in Boston, a completely new area where I knew no one or where anything was; it was kind of intimidating, and that’s reflected in the horn theme. The piece brings this theme back and forth often.
BRIAN DANIEL ROSS: Feeling Lost (2022)
Feeling Lost was written while I was doing the Song Project at Boston Conservatory. I had only written one vocal piece before, and it was an interesting experience, so I wanted to do it again. I added a horn to the group, as I have always wanted to write for this combination of instruments. Soprano and horn textures go so well together, and I am a fan of pieces like Franz Schubert’s Auf Dem Strom, which uses this combination extremely well. The text comes from a poem that was one of many that served as the inspiration for new musical works commissioned by Shelter Music Boston for the Voices of Hope Artistic Project. The poets are members of the Black Seed Writers Group, a Boston-based meet-up of writers who are homeless, in transition, or recently housed, led by James Parker of The Atlantic. The text stood out to me because, at this point in my life, I was conflicted with my life choices and feeling a little lost myself. I reflected this in the music by having the vocalist start alone; and the horn part has moments with repeated notes that are open, then stopped, to mimic the voice echoing in an empty room. However, I also wanted to give the piece a sense of hope along with the text, saying “Tomorrow is another day.” Keep pushing on, even when you’re feeling lost; there’s always tomorrow.
BRIAN DANIEL ROSS: Questions with No Answers (2022)
I wrote Questions with No Answers because I wanted to write for a non-standard mixed ensemble and combine tones that normally don’t play together in a chamber ensemble setting. I think bass trombone and cello especially have a really nice sound together. I wanted this piece to give a sense of incompleteness to the listener and make them question the composition choices I made. Leaving things very open to interpretation can generate very interesting discussions among listeners.
BRIAN DANIEL ROSS: Video Game Scoring Demo—Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (2023)
I have wanted to do video game scoring since I was in high school, because video games are especially close to my heart, now and during my childhood. This is a mock-up I did from one of my favorite games, to demonstrate my technique. All the instruments are from a sound library I put into Reaper, and the horn parts were recorded by me. Here’s a quick little synopsis of the scene for context:
“Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Otto Octavius (Doc-Ock) have a mentor-mentee relationship throughout the game, and they bond over time, while Peter works for him as his lab assistant. After many years of trying to perfect his prosthetic science, Otto finally makes something that successfully works; and with Peter’s help, they create external arms that Otto tests on himself. Peter discovers that the arms may have affected parts of Otto’s brain, such as mood, inhibition, and decision making. This takes over his mind and gives him evil thoughts, so he decides to take revenge on Norman Osborn, the CEO of Oscorp, a company he used to work for and was ruined by Norman. Otto releases Devil’s Breath, an experimental Oscorp drug that makes people very sick, and half of Manhattan ends up getting infected. Peter confronts Otto, to get the antiserum from him, and they have a fight that builds up to this moment at the end of the game.”
BRIAN DANIEL ROSS: Transdimensional (2022)
Transdimensional is my thesis piece for my master’s degree. It is by far one of the largest and longest pieces I’ve ever written. I spent a good five to six months writing it and organizing all the ideas I had for this piece. It was a daring task, but I’m very proud of the way it turned out. I’m very interested in science, and I really like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics that states there are many worlds (dimensions) that exist in parallel in the same space and time as our own, we just can’t see them. I had always wondered what it would be like to visit these alternate realities and wanted to imagine that in this piece. There are many different themes in this piece that have a similar style and feel to each other, but they also sound different.