Sounding “An Unrhymed Chord”

Dear Friends,

This coming Sunday (October 11) at 3pm EST I will be joining performers from all around the world — in Berlin, Thessaloniki, New York City, Joshua Tree, LA, London, Budapest, to name a few — who will perform Michael Pisaro’s piece An Unrhymed Chord on Aejaa.com. Special thanks to Andreas Levisianos for curating this group of old friends and Christos Atzinas, the visual artist of the performance.

For now,

Jordan

Bill Gates’ “Welcome to Mosquito City!”

Dear friends,

I’m pleased to share a video, produced by Bill Gates for his GatesNotes blog, which features two licensed tracks I co-composed for the Magnolia Pictures film Hail Satan? (dir. Penny Lane, 2019). The video — which deals with fighting malaria in Tanzania — is called “Welcome to Mosquito City!” According to their reporting, Mosquito City is in “a region of Tanzania that’s hot, humid, and swampy. In other words—perfect conditions for its primary residents. Malaria has been so widespread in this part of the country—once infecting 80 percent of the population—that one meaning of the name of the local town, Ifakara, is, ‘the place people go to die.’”

Please enjoy,

Jordan

Reinier van Houdt performs “The Arrow of Time”

Dear friends,

In anticipation of the release of my new album The Arrow of Time through New World Records, I am again working with the fantastic Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt who will be live-streaming the title track as part of the Chicago-based Experimental Sound Studio’s series The Quarantine Concerts. The event will stream from Amsterdam on the ESS Twitch page starting at 8pm (Amsterdam) or 1pm (CST) — or 2pm (EST) for people on the East Coast like me.

The program (with one possible addition) is as follows:

Anne La Berge (US/NL): Just Before The Rain (for ensemble and electronics) 8 min

Jordan Dykstra (US): The Arrow of Time (for piano, siren and tape) 22 min

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman (RW/BE): Organo (for voice and two bass clarinets)  30 min

Performers:

Anne La Berge (US/NL), flute & electronics

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman (RW/BE), voice & electronics

Abel Fazekas (HU), bass clarinet

Riccardo Marogna (IT), bass clarinet

Reinier van Houdt (NL), piano & siren

For now,

Jordan

Click for link to the ESS webpage

ORTVI presents No Going Back Before Present

Dear friends,

I am pleased to announce that ORTVI is now streaming my 2016 film No Going Back Before Present free of cost for a limited time on their website (it will continue to be available afterward but for a small cost).

I created the film while living in Southern California and shot it using a 4K drone camera on location at Lake Piru in Castaic, the Del Valle Oil and Gas Field in Val Verde, and both the Petrochem Refinery and the Water Purification Plant in Ventura. Originally conceived as a full-album music video for my album Stressings (2016), the work explores the Anthropocene’s arrival into commonplace knowledge via an omniscient eye-in-the-sky looking down at humans’ effect on the earth (the Greek word for human “άνθρωπος” has a connotation with “looking up” [i.e. when man finally stood up on 2 legs and faced the sky]). It is also worth noting that I had help editing the film from the wonderful filmmaker James Benning, who reminded me that “we hear better in the dark and see more clearly in silence.” I am extremely pleased this film finally has a home and, in many ways, No Going Back Before Present is an ode to my 7 years in Los Angeles — a time of exponential growth which I am still unpacking today.

For now,

Jordan

The Arrow of Time

Good day,

I hope this finds you well.

I’m writing today to share the news that on September 11, 2020 New World Records will be releasing a composer portrait album of mine entitled The Arrow of Time on CD (via their website) and all streaming platforms on. I’ve uploaded some excerpts from the album to the Recordings page and recently made a short video for promotional purposes (see the video to the bottom right). The album — comprised of 5 pieces — was a long time in the coming with some compositions and recordings dating back five years. To put it simply, I am elated to share The Arrow of Time with the world in the coming weeks. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Fathom Peaks Unseen (2015/16) — 11:10

   performed by Sara Cubarsi, violin; Jonathan Tang, violin; Joy Yi, viola; David Mason, cello; Miller Wren, double bass; Jordan Dykstra, crotales

2. Ghosting No. 3 (2017) — 7:22

   performed by Nadya Potemkina, viola; Jordan Dykstra, viola; J.P.A. Falzone, vibraphone and pedal synthesizer; Dave Scanlon, reed organ

3. Orbits (2016/17) — 15:32

   performed by Jordan Dykstra, viola, sine tones; Eugene Moon, sheng

4. In the Snow (2018) — 15:51

   performed by Morgan Evans-Weiler, violin, Jordan Dykstra, viola; Laura Cetilia, cello

5. The Arrow of Time (2019) — 22:46

   performed by Reinier van Houdt, piano, hand-crank siren; Jordan Dykstra, fixed media playback; Adam Forkner, additional drum programming

Finally, the album cover features a beautiful collage by my wonderful friend and excellent Brussels-based artist and filmmaker Nina de Vroome and the physical copy (and perhaps the digital as well?) also includes a generous essay — New Adventures on the Plane of Harmonic Consistency — from my dear mentor, the composer Michael Pisaro-Liu.

For now,

Jordan

Welcome

For years I worked to balance my three major online offerings: my personal “composerly” site (which lived for free for many years on Blogspot), my project-based site I called Business of Composing for Strings (recordings, performance and special events, film music, etc.), and my personal discography on Bandcamp (of which I have many). Oh, and the whole other overlapping mess of running my little label Editions Verde — recently redesigned as well — added to the confusing style of organization, not knowing where to find what you’re looking for, and saying to yourself, “Why do I have to keep scrolling and leaving the domain?”

(I will admit that I enjoyed part of the mystery of teasing the visitor a bit with the key to the map, placing easter eggs here and there, and tweaking the design from time-to-time.)

But now, with the complete redesign, these three sites have been consolidated into a comprehensive experience that I hope leaves you feeling satiated, or, at the very least, knowing you can always come back for more.

For now,

Jordan

At Musikfestival Bern in Bern, Switzerland (photo by Annette Boutellier)