Updated 24 February 2026

VIDEO

Autumn Island (1986) 7:28

A complete performance of Islands from Archipelago: II Autumn Island (1986), for solo marimba as performed, brilliantly, by percussionist Brian Archinal.

… b.a. … (2004) 4:35

A brief work for solo piccolo, a tribute for Robert Aitken on the occasion of his retirement from the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Related to
… brain ablaze, she howled aloud for 1, 2, or 3 piccolos by Reynolds.

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, 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 movements: IMAGINING. PREPARING, EXPERIENCING and PERSPECTIVE. The text, perpared by the composer, draws on sources stretching from Plato to the astronauts.

FLiGHT "Development Process" 5:16
short film by Ross Karre

Ross Karre, the collaborator responsible for the visual imagery and set design of FLiGHT, filmed one of the rehearsals for Movement I and fashioned a brief film about it.

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

This trailer compactly samples the five scenes from Washington’s life – Origins, Martha, Engagement, Lafayette, Reflections – that make up the complete work. Performed by a symphony orchestra, three narrators, computer processed sound, and a triptych of projected visual imagery filmed at Mount Vernon, the work aims to portray the ideas and experiences that characterized Washington's Mount Vernon days.

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

This is a brief excerpt from a workshop performance by dedicatee Steve Schick, who proposed that Reynolds create a work for "speaking percussionist". Based upon a text by Samuel Beckett, it involves virtuosity not only in the realm of percussion performance but also of extreme vocal behaviors.

imAge/flute (2014) 6:24
Videographer Unknown

In recent years, Reynolds composed relatively short, contrasting pairs of solos for particular instruments. imAge/flute is of an articulative and assertive nature. This performance by Rachel Beetz explores a set of forceful, periodically repeated behaviors characteristic of the flute.

JUSTICE (1999-2001) 49:25

Part of the larger “The Red Act Project”, this staged work features computer processed sound accompanying a soprano, an actress and a percussionist who meld as a 3-dimensional representation of Clytemnestra. The text describes her conflict with Agamemnon over the fate of their daughter, Iphigenia. This conflict is at the root of a series of works all stemming from a BBC Proms commission for THE RED ACT ARIAS. JUSTICE's partner work on the Agamemnon-Clytemnestra theme is ILLUSION.

MARKed MUSIC (2013) 17:34
Video by Ross Karr

Second in the SHARESPACE Series, this duo was developed collaboratively with contrabassist Mark Dresser and computer musician Jaime Oliver. It involves notated music, and also an improvisatory interplay between instrumentalist and the real time algorithmic transformation of instrumental sounds.

OPPOrTuniTy (2012) 6:12
Video by Kyle Johnson

A response to John Cage’s notorious 4’ 33”, this solo for vocalizing pianist presents the performer with a web of constantly compounding difficulty, and a virtually impossible density of simultaneous tasks, all to be managed – ideally – within the same, iconic, period of time.

PASSAGE Number 9 (2012-2013) 60:21
Performed by Roger Reynolds

PASSAGE entails performances by the composer that bring together computer-spatialized readings of original texts (live and pre-recorded), projected imagery, occasional guest instrumental performances, and other pre-recorded materials that form a dense fabric of information without narrative intention.

Piano Études, Book II (2016-17) 52:25

The second Book of Reynolds’s Piano Études uses more complex forms than the first. Categories are freely extended or more intricately elaborated. The Book includes Migration, Insistence, Rips, Concatenation, Calligraphy and Field. Each has a central “issue” (technical, musical) that requires a particular sort of attentiveness. Reynolds’s Études also entail revisiting, borrowing, recontextualizing, and commenting upon other musics. Each Étude engages with a particular predecessor by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, or Ligeti. Thus, while remaining idiosyncratic, each is touched by relevant aspects of its technical and musical terrain, understood in a larger historical context.

Each Book contains one study that can be fragmented and used connectively, binding together the other etudes in its set. In Book II, the linking Étude is Field. The composer’s hope is that the performer will take the opportunity offered to allow the materials of individual études to become distinctively interactive in new ways for each performance. On one of his visits to the UC San Diego Music Department, New York Philharmonic pianist Eric Huebner recorded the second Book and also agreed to a session in the Conrad Prebys Music Center’s Concert Hall so that filmmaker Kyle Johnson could record and edit this three-camera video documen

SEASONS: Cycle I (2010) 50:07
Film by Kyle Johnson

SEASONS entails two cycles of four movements, and explores the seasons of the year and of a human life. In each movement, a trio of instrumentalists is linked by a fourth element: in Cycle I, there is real-time spatialization of the instrumentalists' sounds, and, in Cycle II, the central performers are joined by an itinerant duo of soprano and oboe which meanders through the performance space, creating unexpected connections. Live performance at the National Gallery of Art, 7 March 2010.

Shifting / Drifting (2015) 9:01
trailer by Kyle Johnson

Reynolds's long and fruitful friendship with violinist Arditti resulted in the collaborative development of two contrasted "imAgE" works: "A" for assertive, and "E" for evocative. Shifting / Drifting arose from a re-purposing and elaborating upon the materials contained in the two previously written, shorter solos. The soloist has specifically notated interactions with computer-processed materials that are managed, as in a duo, by a computer musician who is a performing partner. There are, however, improvisatory components as well. This trailer involves some conversational interaction between Reynolds and Arditti. Shifting / Drifting is the fourth in the SHARESPACE category/Series.

Submerged Memories (2013) 35:55
Filmed by Alex Matthews, Calit2

Reynolds Introduction with full performance 20 April 2013. This work was commissioned by the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and involves a quartet of musicians (violin, bass clarinet, electric percussion, and electric guitar). They accompany a vocalist who extravagantly realizes a text montaged by the composer from the writings of W.G. Sebald.

"Thoughts, Places, Dreams..." (2013) 28:16

Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, this chamber concerto features a virtuoso central line. The soloist's "Thoughts" are constantly recontextualized by the chamber ensemble's "Dreams" and "Places". The intricate solo part, written for the cellist Alexis Descharmes, draws on previous works that Reynolds had written for him. An ensemble dimension was added in order to contextualize in differing ways why the solo line evolves in the ways that it does. The work was premiered at the Venice Biennale and repeated in Paris as memorialized by this video.

Transfigured Wind I (1984) 10:45

Transfigured Wind I consists of four contrasting movements that successively elongate in duration. These materials became, in turn, the source upon which three derived works were built. A performer adds to a performance nuances, attitude, and temporal at least inflection that no score, however detailed, can reasonably specify. This led Reynolds to use "performed music" as seeds for his computer manipulation. TW II includes a symphonic orchestra, quadraphonic computer sound, and the flute soloist. TW III replicates the content of TW II with a chamber orchestra. TW IV involves the materials of TW I, with some added passages, and quadraphonic computer processed sound.

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.

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

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