Naya Jeevan, meaning rebirth in Hindi, is a two movement concerto for double bass and wind ensemble. Each movement uses recurring melodies, patterns, and cycles to build intensity and create an ebb and flow of energy. The first movement slowly and broodingly elaborates upon a single theme, opening with a lyrical statement, much like the call of a cantor. While this melody is continuously and almost ritualistically repeated throughout the work, the shifting colors and textures in the ensemble highlight and augment the soloist, creating an overall resonance that has a Gamelan-like quality. The movement draws from medieval influences, particularly isorhythmic motets, and the accompanimental and melodic lines each emphasize conflicting keys, resulting in a polytonal language that can be unsettlingly dissonant and haunting, which evokes the impression of long forgotten ceremony.

The second movement is an aggressive and energetic exploration of the same conceptual ideas as the first. This movement uses driving rhythms and large-scale metric cycles to create an unrelenting and constantly shifting rhythmic underpinning over which a single short tuneful melody is repeated. The melody's shape and pitch content are influenced by Carnatic Music. The ensemble and bass weave together many different variations of this melody to create an intricate texture. In addition to the melodic line, the bass also often floats over the ensemble punctuating the work's additive rhythmic patterns with virtuosic gestures that draw from the instrument's vast timbral possibilities. Overall this work combines my disparate musical interests and influences, creating two extremely different affects using similar concepts and materials.

Maya Beckons; I Shall Embrace Her is a reflective and deeply personal piece. The title is a quotation from an imaginative translation of the Hindi movie Utsav. To some, the world we see around us is nothing but Maya, meaning illusion in Sanskrit. Wise men tell us that in order to achieve enlightenment we must detach ourselves from this material world, which gives us many pleasures but can also cause us great misery. While I can see the truth in this, I feel that it is a de-emphasis upon life. Having recently gotten married, I cannot imagine giving up the many joys of companionship in order to avoid suffering, regardless of the depth of the misery. I recognize that suffering is a part of existence and willfully accept it. This piece is about deliberately choosing to embrace Maya and rejoicing in the beautiful illusion of life, come what may.

Attack was my musical reaction to the Iraq war.

The Mission to Comission 2 project is the second yearlong collaboration between the students of the C.S. Porter Middle School band, Sheboygan Falls Middle School Band, and a composer. The partnership engauged with student creativity, both as composers and performers, as well as discussions between Andrew and the students about the music. For this collaboration, students composed a melody, voted on the top melodies from their school, and submitted them to me. I used portions of 10 melodies, which together make up the primary musical material in the composition. Many of the melodies had a quality that reminded me of the music from 80's video games. The work starts by setting the stage with suspense, followed immediately with a sweet and tender section where we see the main character's motivation. This then moves into a heroic quest, followed by a climatic boss fight. The work ends with a triumphant finale where the hero's goals are achieved. It is my hope that the students at C.S. Porter and Sheboygan Falls enjoy performing the work as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Black.Bird.Blue.Bye for flute and clarinet is made of four relatively short character pieces, each of which examine various ways that the two instruments can interact, or not. The work is intended to be both playful and serious The title of each movement is an extremely brief description of what I was thinking about during the composition process.

Aro Dreamscape is inspired by recordings of birdsong made in Aro Valley. During the fall of 2013, I captured the songs of Bellbirds, Kaka, Tui, and Riroriro and transcribed each bird's call. While I borrowed the general ideas in the work from real bird song, I did so in an abstracted way, using a somewhat aleatoric system that makes the number and overlap of the various calls unpredictable at times. Formally, the work follows a progression similar to how I might listen to b ird calls while on a walk. I focus on each type of bird individually, with one grabbing my attention from another. Eventually I finally shift my attention, putting them together into the larger context of the entire soundscape. In this way I tried to navigate between abstract musical material and an abstracted approach to the sounds as they could exist in a natural soundscape.

All My Dreams Have Turned to Ash Commissioned by Levels for Viola, Tenor Sax, Guitar, Trombone, Percussion, and Live Multichannel Electronics. Supported with a grant from the Alyssa Paul Maria fund.

Satipatthana is the shortened buddhist word for establishing mindfulness through meditation. I chose this name because the work is a self-reflection on the rituals that I put myself through every day in part to become more mindful. Mindfulness is something that I struggle with because I am too attached to my momentary circumstances and desires. Musically, I've always felt that the tone of the work evokes an ancient ceremony that uses repetition to clear the mind much like a mantra is used in religious services. The work has a folk-like quality that focuses on a returning thematic idea and accompaniment patterns that never quite repeat themselves the same way twice when put together. These patterns and the work's construction are influenced by Carnatic (South Indian Classical) melodic and rhythmic ideas. In its essence, this work is a juxtaposition of a repeating, introspective 21-note melody that is often played heterophonically with 16-note and 5-note accompaniment ostinato figures that are somewhat flexible rhythmically. These ostinato figures ultimately serve as a drone both harmonically and rhythmically. Instead of a constant tone, this drone is continuously shifting while ultimately staying the same. Through its various repetitions, the work seeks to create both a sense of motion and stasis at the same time.

A Slow Unraveling was written for Quadrivium, a Kansas City based chamber quartet. The piece is for flute. Bb clarinet, cello, piano, and electronics. It focuses on the spinning out of a small portion of music. The piece starts with short, fast elements that increasingly slow down until the music completely unravels, finally coming to a rest. Musically, the electronic components seek to blend with and enhance the instrumental parts to help create otherworldly soundscapes and textures. This combination of synthetic, recorded, and instrumental sounds is intended as a reference our modern sonic experiences where we are barraged with human, mechanical, and natural noises. As a composer I often feel that it is important to stop and enjoy these sounds. I like to let the unravel while I focus on the beauty of their similarities and inherent musicality. Noted performances of A Slow Unraveling include the University of Nebraska At Kearney's 2011 New Music Festival X, New Muse Vaudeville in Madison WI, Electronic Music Midwest, the 2011 Midwest Graduate Music Symposium, and the Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint.

When I first came across "I Sing the Body Electric 7" in Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I felt compelled to set it. It is fittingly placed in the section titled "Children of Adam." The poem itself has an inherent irony that in many ways highlights the contradictions human condition. What I like most about the poem is the appeal not to a higher power or morality, but instead to the inherent humanity and potential we all share but sadly rarely recognize.

From the perspective of my composition output, I think of this work as my guitar piece. The chords and music reflect what I play when I relax and improvise on guitar. I initially wrote the work in 2007 for an AfterNow Collective concert in Baltimore, MD. However, I was never completely satisfied with the result, and when the opportunity presented itself, I revised the work and instrumentation in 2012. The title is a play on words. When I started writing the work I called it “near a pierrot ensemble,” which I shortened to “Nee-are-o.” Interestingly, the word means narrow or close in Anglo-Saxon. I find this somewhat entertaining because in a sense the title can be seen as a metaphor that describes my aesthetic particularly in regard to melodic and harmonic motion. While the chord changes often have a semblance of tonality, the motion is generally chromatic and parallel. One element of Nearo that I've only realized much later, is the work's debt to Brahms. I've always loved his chamber works, particularly his mixed compositions and have studied them in some detail. I have always been struck by his thick textures and smooth melodic lines and these clearly had a deep impact on this work. When you combine these elements with my strong background and love of Carnatic music, it is not hard to see where this work comes from.

In many ways this was an important work for me. I think of it as the first piece where I really embraced my background and cultural influences. Specifically, I see this work as influenced by rock music, and electronic music as well as minimalism, modernism, and the chaos of a short circuited toy.

Five is a very free, somewhat aletoric piece for Oboe, Also Saxophone, Viola, and Cello. It was premiered by Jamie Schnieder, Matt Taylor, Cameron Raecke, and Nathan Bontrager at the 2008 Artscape Festival. The piece was heavily influenced by the writings of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Steve Reich from the 60's and 70's, yet I feel that it still contains my thoughts and ideas. The piece is more interested in nuance, tuning, and subtle variation than tradtional pitch structure and harmony. As such I chose to only use 5 notes, played in a variety of octaves using a variety of playing techniques. This piece is very minimal but unlike our typical concepts of minimalism it avoids a steady pulse and instead focuses on tuning and texture.

Aphorisms on Futurism is for Soprano and electronics. It is a setting of about half of Mina Loy's 1914 text by the same name. The work is divided into 4 songs. I chose this text for a because I've always been fascinated by Futurism. It was the first artistic movement to explore noise, machines, speed, and a host of other issues that reflect modern life, and thus reflects many of the ideas of electronic music. I'm also struck by the tone of futurism and this text. While none of the philosophical ideas were particularly new, there is an aggressiveness and lack of respect for the past that resonates with me, provided I do not take it too seriously. I think futurism created wonderful art and horrible politics. Musically, I tried to reflect this.

Frozen Atmospheres for Alto Saxophone and Video was written in Wisconsin, a particularly cold and snowy part of the US. The work is comprised of three short movements each of which strives to convey a different affect. The electronic portion of the work uses many different samples, from saxophones, a large trash can, and water, to ice melting and a prayer bell. While writing Frozen Atmospheres I was thinking of my experiences living in both Maine and Wisconsin and the frozen otherworldly nature of the winters in each location.

Rushing Toward the Singularity was commissioned by Mauricio Salguero.The work is inspired by cyberpunk and the idea of life after the technical singularity, a point at which technological acceleration creates a paradigm shift in our existence, resulting in artificial intelligence, human augmentation, a virtual human existence, etc. The sound and images of this piece are gritty, distorted, and mechanical, much like the cyberpunk aesthetic. Movement I, The Luminous Flesh of Giants, explores the grandiose monuments of a technologically advanced society, creating on a scale never before imagined. In contrast, Movement II, Idoru, Love and the Turing Machine,focuses on the interplay of the humans and machines where the clarinet and electronics flow to and from one another. In Movement III, Rushing Toward the Singularity, the mechanical and fast-paced future becomes the dominant theme and the clarinet and electronics mirror and augment each other while preserving their separate roles. Finally, Movement IV, The Spiritual Machinesonce again explores the interchange of man and machine; this time the clarinet and electronics are much more unified. The titles are taken from the writings of Charles Stross, William Gibson, and Ray Kurzweil.

was written for Kari Johnson in 2015. The concept for the work was originally to contrast bird calls in Warrensburg, Missouri, where I am currently living, and Wellington, New Zealand where I lived while completing a Fulbright. As I delved into the work, I was struck by the comparative lack of bird song in the US. Almost daily we are barraged with news articles about our destruction of the environment, the death of species, and the impact that will have on us. I am an avid hiker, camper, and all around nature lover. When I listen for calls these days I hear solos where there was once a chorus. Thus this work is a reaction to my own sense of impending doom, sadness, and most of all frustration related to our extremely poor shepherding of this planet.

The piece is primarily concerned with non-tonal pitch hierarchies and how we perceive, or even do not perceive the register and hierarchal changes. The register changes and diverse instrumental sounds paired with the changing electronic accompaniment through out the piece defines its content and shape. In its essence, the piece is an exploration of the sounds, timbres, and density created by the Flute, the electronic accompaniment, and the dialogue that results from the interaction between the two.

Agni Sakshi, translating as "fire witness," is one of the central ritual acts in Hindu weddings. Agni, the god of fire, acts as a divine witness to the marriage and as such he receives sacrifice and, in turn, purifies and blesses the union. He is also the god of light, smoke, the fire of the sun, and even the flame of the human spirit. This life-giver and destroyer is the discerner of truth, the mundane and unique, and the cycles of life that occur every day, every generation, every eon. This piece is a dedication to Agni, this witness of life. While I'm not particularly religious, I've always found the idea of a witness watching our life and our personal evolution to be fascinating and somehow touching. Seeing the good and the bad, the beauty of life that we all share, Agni is an impartial witness, an unmoved mover.

Sound, Timbre, and Density seeks to explore the various timbral possibilities of the Double Bass. While melody is of little concern to the piece, the register changes and diverse instrumental sounds made available by extended techniques paired with the dense electronic accompaniment present through out the piece defines its content and shape. In its essence the piece is an exploration of the sounds, timbres, and density created by both the double bass and the electronic manipulation double bass samples. The piece was written using Csound, Metasynth, Digital Performer, Audacity, and Max/MSP.

Sanctuary to Sea is a fixed media work that alternates between hyper-real and surreal representations of soundscapes in Wellington, New Zealand. The work takes its name from a well-known hiking path. I incorporate recordings of my footsteps, cicadas, urban sounds that inevitably intrude upon natural areas, and rare birds that are unique to New Zealand like the Morepork, Kaka, and Tui. The work evokes my experience of hiking, specifically how my awareness shifts between the surrounding soundscape, my own walking sounds, and getting lost in my own thoughts. When I hear sounds that I find striking, I often imagine their timbral development, twisting them from recognizable to artificial, but eventually a new sound always calls my attention back to the real world as I follow the trail. Thus this work is an impressionistic tribute to the hiking tracks surrounding Wellington and the city's diverse sonic environments which have had a profound impact upon me.

Staring at the Sun was written during the winter of 2008. The piece makes use of Andrew's field recordings of the Laurel Park as well as a local noodle house and samples of flutes, saxophones, pianos, pingpong balls, and wineglasses.

The piece is Andrew's first multichannel fixed media piece. He approached the piece with a distinct realization of the techniques typically used in fixed media pieces and chose to embrace the implications involved. The piece is interested in layers of implication and the blurr of conceptual mediation which naturally flows from interweaving of those layers

Bubolz Walk is a sonic exploration of the everyday sounds of small town America, specifically, a summer day in Appleton WI. The general narrative of the work is a walk from my apartment to a nature preserve I enjoy visiting. As a composer of primarily electronic music I've always been aware of my sonic environment and imagined it twisting and turning to and from typical sounds and large non-organic textures. As such, when I focus on the environmental sounds, I intend them as hyper-real examples that slowly bend to and from the surreal.

Korunga Maadu was written during the fall of 2004, Andrew Cole's first semester at Peabody Conservatory. The inspiration for this piece arose when Mr. Cole was fulfilling his Graduate Assistant duties and changing a light bulb in one of the Computer Music studios. The very first sound in the piece is that of a hammer hitting the blown-out light bulb. The second is the bulb breaking, and the third is the broken glass giggling in a bucket. These three sounds exclusively make up the sound materials for the piece. Mr. Cole would like to thank his accompanist, Sam Burt, for holding the light bulb during the recording.

Absence and Presence is a 6-channel audio and 2-channel video interactive, intermedia collaboration between musician Andrew Seager Cole and Kansas City Art Institute faculty Tyler Galloway and David Steele Overholt. Using keepsake objects as a gate to relationships, “Absence and Presence” explores the existence or non-presence of a thing as a means for communication about the human condition. The absence and presence of an object initiates, interrupts, and alters video and audio in a performance environment that is augmented by audience interaction.

The collaboration involved first identifying and interviewing several subjects about objects that have personal significance to them. These objects were then photographed and their images were grafted onto control blocks for a reACTable instrument. We constructed the reACTable tables and installed USB cameras to detect the movement of the blocks. I then developed several software patches using Max to map the input of the control blocks and ultimately control the processing of the audio and video.

The performance was largely improvised and followed a simple form that involved a slow growth in the level of complexity. It started by playing back a single interview unaccompanied by music and evolved into cacophony with many overlaid videos and images as well as audio that was spatialized throughout the room. After the performance element ended, we invited the audience to experiment with the instruments we had created.