Recordings & Video
The Canary Who Sang
By Dayton Kinney
Brought into coal mines caged, canaries were used to warn the people around them that danger was coming. The Canary’s songs and chirps would sound in these dark, man made echo chambers. But, their silent deaths bring a final warning to the coal miners that the suffocating danger was imminent, prompting the miners to run for their safety. Their sacrifice saved many miners from deadly catastrophes. The Canary Who Sang is an allegorical comment on today’s political climate of how a single voice can disrupt, challenge, and change opposing and unrelenting forces of power.
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Mariposa
By Dayton Kinney
Set to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s text, Mariposa explores the duality of love. The music paints highlights the beauty and tragedy of mortal love through innocent romance and its morbid futility by blending a fresh and familiar sound world.
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Long Distance
By Dayton Kinney
In a musty and damp basement, I came across an old shoebox. Inside, there were kept correspondences and keepsakes from my grandfather to my grandmother. They ranged from everyday notes to birthday cards to pages upon pages of handwritten letters during World War II. Hidden away in a simple unpretentious shoe box, these keepsakes of a dying art form were almost thrown away and forgotten. Moved and touched by the simple fragility, love, and hope that these letters represented, I composed my own. Commissioned by the Zodiac Trio in 2016, Long Distance represents the isolation and separation of lovers, friends, and family, who hope, wish, and wait for their next reunion.
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Lost Thoughts
By Dayton Kinney
Inspired by fleeting ideas that roll into the next, Lost Thoughts explores rigid, rhythmic motives in juxtaposition to more traditionally melodious lines. The initial idea spawns a stream of consciousness through the double bass’s opening gesture. Through this initial sound, the meditative instruments continue, modify, and change recurrent motivic and harmonic snippets of fleeting thoughts.
New Beginnings
By Dayton Kinney
New Beginnings is an imagined conversation between student and teacher. Based upon actual discussions during my more formative years, the violin represents a student questioning, learning, and developing her craft. The piano represents the teacher through the lower piano range and the more steadfast rhythms. The opening motif by the violin is a question that begins the student’s educational journey. It also serves as the primary foundation for the intervallic content of the entire piece. Though the question is never answered or resolved, the duo go on a journey that re-asks the question and leads to more questions through the piano’s guidance.
Rhythmic Thoughts
By Dayton Kinney
Rhythmic Thoughts is a piece about obsession, self-exploration, and introversion. Boxed-in by short durations, the double bass ruminates through exploring its stuck repetitive low E and pitch-space, trying to discover its limited motivic content and rhythmic transformations.