Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Omar Thomas is current Assistant Professor of Composition/Jazz Studies at the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music at the young age of 23.
His piece "We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rights Piece in Four Movements", scored for big band, has been hailed by Grammy Award-wining drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington as being a "thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece." The piece released on its own album, and it was awarded two OUTMusic Awards, including "Album of the Year." It was also named the 2014 Lavender Rhino Award recipient by The History Project, acknowledging his work as an up-and-coming activist in the Boston LGBTQ community.
COMPOSER: Omar Thomas
BIG BAND: Omar Thomas Large Ensemble
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Hymn
3:52 - II. In Memoriam
6:24 - III. Meditation
20:06 - IV. May 9th, 2012
24:12 - Epilogue
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
Omar Thomas is current Assistant Professor of Composition/Jazz Studies at the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music at the young age of 23.
His piece "We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rights Piece in Four Movements", scored for big band, has been hailed by Grammy Award-wining drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington as being a "thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece." The piece released on its own album, and it was awarded two OUTMusic Awards, including "Album of the Year." It was also named the 2014 Lavender Rhino Award recipient by The History Project, acknowledging his work as an up-and-coming activist in the Boston LGBTQ community.
COMPOSER: Omar Thomas
BIG BAND: Omar Thomas Large Ensemble
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Hymn
3:52 - II. In Memoriam
6:24 - III. Meditation
20:06 - IV. May 9th, 2012
24:12 - Epilogue
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
![Nick Bentz — Glimpse (2019) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cGnjp68t0lk/mqdefault.jpg "Nick Bentz — Glimpse (2019) [w/ score]
Nick Bentz wrote about his chamber piece, Glimpse:
Glimpse is a piece that I wrote as I found myself fascinated at the way and speed at which our brains catalog information. The human brain is a complex machine that often works in ways that we’re unable to readily perceive – one of these subliminal processes being facial recognition. The brain constantly perceives and creates patterns among the faces that we encounter, even in passing, using information from all around us to infer how we might interact with one another. It’s through the repeating of similar stimuli that we’re able to quickly read emotions and situations in order to best ascertain how to act, or to unlock our own empathy towards each other. However, these same processes can yield implicit biases, shortchanging the very people we see. Glimpse is structured and derived from a five-pitch set which is constantly run through various processes. As these processes repeat, the material begins to ‘learn’ from bar-to-bar and gesture-to-gesture, playing with and sometimes against the very rules that it finds itself entrapped within.
COMPOSER: Nick Bentz
ENSEMBLE:
Melissa Lander, clarinet
Lauren Rausch, violin
Ismar Gomes, cello
Wan-Chi Su, piano
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
![Andrew Rindfleisch — In the Zone (2009) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cHgp_TPMzUk/mqdefault.jpg "Andrew Rindfleisch — In the Zone (2009) [w/ score]
Andrew Rindfleisch writes in the program notes for his wonderful brass quintet, In the Zone:
In the Zone is a reverent nod to the popular instrumental form of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, the canzone. Often associated with the early precursors of modern brass instruments, the instrumental canzone was a form often dominated by contrapuntal and imitative textures. In The Zone is a two-movement work exploring those aspects of counterpoint, imitation, and polyphony so often found in those late-Renaissance forms — here intensified, transformed, and woven into a virtuoso vehicle for brass quintet. In The Zone is dedicated to the Meridian Arts Ensemble.
COMPOSER: Andrew Rindfleisch
BRASS QUINTET: Meridian Arts Ensemble
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - Introduction
0:12 - I. Introitus
2:24 - II. Canons
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
![Caroline Shaw — Plan & Elevation (2015) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eIEI80LfaMk/mqdefault.jpg "Caroline Shaw — Plan & Elevation (2015) [w/ score]
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, violinist, and singer Caroline Shaws Plan & Elevation for string quartet. Shaw writes in the program notes:
I have always loved drawing the architecture around me when traveling, and some of my favorite lessons in musical composition have occurred by chance in my drawing practice over the years. While writing a string quartet to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Dumbarton Oaks, I returned to these essential ideas of space and proportion — to the challenges of trying to represent them on paper. The title, Plan & Elevation, refers to two standard ways of representing architecture — essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor — often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.
COMPOSER: Caroline Shaw
STRING QUARTET: Attacca Quartet
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - Introduction
0:08 - I. The Ellipse
4:09 - II. The Cutting Garden
7:07 - III. The Herbaceous Border
10:44 - IV. The Orangery
12:28 - V. The Beech Tree
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
![Paul Cantrell — The Broken Mirror of Memory (2011) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fEXLrRnaYbU/mqdefault.jpg "Paul Cantrell — The Broken Mirror of Memory (2011) [w/ score]
This is Paul Cantrell’s 4-movement work for bass clarinet and piano, “The Broken Mirror of Memory.” Cantrell writes:
“Entanglement, soliloquy, tango, flight: each movement poses a problem from which the next unfolds. Themes continually resurface, transformed, as the music reinvents its own past – the endless process Gabriel García Márquez described as ‘piecing together the broken mirror of memory from so many scattered shards.’ The coda gathers everything together, grappling, burning down – and then, from the embers, a simple benediction emerges, present all along, now laid bare. We discover in retrospect that the music’s destination has always been its source. ‘The Broken Mirror of Memory’ was chosen as the winner of the International Clarinet Association’s Composition Competition in 2012.”
COMPOSER: Paul Cantrell
BASS CLARINET: Pat OKeefe
PIANO: Paul Cantrell
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - Introduction
I. Entanglement
II. Soliloquy
III. Tango
IV. Flight
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.")
