Updated 20 August 2025

Intermedia Works

FLiGHT (2012-16) "Our Beginning Steps" 11:37
Trailer by Ross Karre

An expanded trailer documenting the first complete performances of the multimedia work, FLiGHT, at the Park Avenue Armory in 2016, and involving the commissioners, JACK Quartet, Visuals by Ross Karre, Audio by Paul Hembree, Direction by Robert Castro.

FLiGHT is an extended work that has two forms: as an evening long intermedia work for string quartet, projected imagery, recorded voices, and theatrical direction; and as an extended work for string quartet in four movemnets (as is the media version): IMAGINING, PERPARING, EXPERIENCEING, and PERSPECTIVE. The text, perpared by the composer, draws on sources stretching from Plato to the astronauts.

FLiGHT Development Process (2012) 5:16
Short film by Ross Karre

The collaborator responsible for the visual imagery and set design, Ross Karre, filmed the Rehearsals for Movement I and fashiioned a brief film about it.

george WASHINGTON (2012-2013) 4:16
Trailer by Ross Karre

As a dimension the development of a new library for our first persident on Mount Vernon, the Estate, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the University of California co-commissioned a work for orchestra, three narrators, computer processed and spatialized sound. Also inclued is a tryptic of visual projections portraying Mount Vernon from dawn to dusk at all seasons of the year. The text was assembled by the composer from Washington's letters and diary enteries, and was presented by the narrators (Washington in youth, maturity and age) during 5 movements: Origins, Martha, Engagement, Lafayette, and Reflections.

Here and There (2018) 3:15
Excerpt 1 by Kyle Johnson

This is a brief excerpt from a workshop performance by dedicatee Steven Schick, who proposed that Reynolds create a work for “speaking percussionist”. Based upon a text by Samuel Beckett fashioned from the ninth of his "Texts for Nothing", it involves demanding virtuosity not only in the realm of percussion but also of extreme vocal behaviors.

JUSTICE

This staged work, for an actress, a soprano, and a percussionist, also involves lighting, and spatialized choral sound. The text, assembled by the composser from Aeschylus's Agamemnon, portrays the conflict between Clytemnestra's domestically centered values, and Agamemnon's concern for the interests of the state. It was permiered in Shizuoka, Japan in 1999, and repeated in the Library of Congress's Great Hall in 2001.

The video can also be viewed on the Library of Congress Website.

Knowing / Not Knowing (2020-2022) 8:24
(trailer by Kyle Johnson)

The tempestuous nature of the Covid era brought deep and troubling subjects inescapably into mind. Of particular interest to Reynolds were the allied questions of knowledge and truth. How do we know what to believe? How can we act in our own and other's intersts if we are unsure what can be relied upon? Searching sources from early Indian and Persian philosophy up to the writings of James Baldwin, commentator David Brooks, and poet Amanda Gorman, Reynolds fashioned a text in nine sections. It streched from "INFANCY / INDIVIDUATION" to "COMMUNALITY / KNOWLEDGE." The staged Version 1 involved an a cappella chorus, an actor, two percussionists, and a trombonist, along with projected imagery and processed and spatialized computer sound. A Director managed the overall placement of elements, audience members and the performer's movements. The premiere occurred in March of 2024 at the Park & Market facility in downtown San Diego, and gave voice through a "kaleidoscopic chorus" to local residents near the performancevenue as well as to those where performing.

PASSAGE 7: Intermedia Performance by Roger Reynolds (2011) 58:39
Filmed by Narional Gallery Staff
This PASSAGE event was titled "John Cage – incidents, texts, conversations, and music"

While teaching, as a UC "University Professor" at UCDC in our nation's capital, Reynolds, with his partner Karen realized that 2012 was the Centenary of the birth of American maverick John Cage. Along with a local activist, Steve Antosca, they set out to design a week long series of presentations: "John Cage Centennial Festival, Washington, D.C." All of the significant Washington insititutions were involved, execpt for the Kennedy Center which seeemed - as one wag noted - not to have a "center."

The National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Freeer Gallery, American University, The Philpps Collection, the Corcoran Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Kreeger Museum, all hosted unique events.

The National Gallery of Art, hosted a multimedia presentation, PASSAGE 7, created by Reynolds for the occasion. It featured prepared text recordings of Reynolds and Cage, and performances by pianist Jenny Lin, as well as selected projections.

C.f., PASSAGE note under PASSAGE 9, below.

PASSAGE 9:(2012-2013) 1:20:35
"Alliances, Realization, Benediction, The Sublime, The Space of Silence, Sharing, The Inexplicable, Anotherworldly Intersection, What W as Needed, Context or Features, Cross-Modality,
Obligation: A Meander" Film by Kyle Johnson, Ross Karre, Josef Kucera

In 2010, as a result of the opening of the Conrad Prebys Music Center as UC San Diego, an Experimental Theater was made available. It allowed instantaneous changes in room acoustics, lighting control and so on. Reynolds conceived the idea of presenting related but not closely coordingate materials - texts, music, imagery - in such a non-linear way that audience memebers could and, indeed, would have to fashion their own messages and connectivities. Reynolds wrote a variety of texts and read them (both in live performance and in pre-recorded form). Both textual strands were spatialized, creating a perplexing but delicious intertwining of subject matter.

Each PASSAGE event had had a different "score" involving the ordering and timing of the various components. The 9^th was presented in the CPMC Concert Hall and I was assisted by computer musician Paul Hembree, a frequent collabotator.

For inquiries regarding PASSAGE presentations, contact Roger Reynolds

Passage 10: (2013-2014) 58:53 "Musings on 'Good Lives': Relationships, Sustenance, Aspirations – Truth, Secrets, Boundaries, Purpose, Flight"
Film by USCD TV

UC San Diego presents, from time to time, series of lectures on a particular theme. In 2013, it was "The Good Life," and Reynolds created a custom presentation addressing, if obliquely, that subject.

For inquiries regarding PASSAGE presentations, contact Roger Reynolds

Submerged Memories: (2013) 35:55
Film by Alex Matthews

An early graduate of the UC San Diego's Music Department, Paul Dresher, established himself in California's Bay Area, creating several ensembles and studio spaces with instrument-building capabilities. His Electro-Acoustic Band commissioned Reynolds to compose a work for an electrified instrumental quartet that accompanied a narrator who was asked to gradually enter into and depart from very extreme states of vocoliation (hysterical, somnambulistic, etc.). Reynolds fashioned a surreal text from the writings of W. G. Sebald. This material mentioned a painting by Rembrandt and several by Leonardo. These were fragemnted geometrically, so that a mosaic of varying completeness was consitantly emerging and altering during performance. The effect was powerful, and, at the close of a perfromance at Calit2 in San Diego, the audience maintatined a silence for ten minutes before breaking into applause.

*Preceded by Reynolds Introductory Talk.