Dear Friends,

I hope all is well! I’m excited to share that my new album, Beaufort Scales, is available everywhere today from Cold Blue Music. Stream it on your favorite platform or buy a CD or download from Bandcamp. Beaufort Scales was commissioned and performed by the incredible Lorelei Ensemble and conducted by Beth Willer. It was recorded and mixed by my frequent collaborator, Mike Tierney. You can watch a video of the first single, “Steps 7, 8, and 9,” here:

I first became aware of the Beaufort scale because of Scott Huler’s Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry. The book describes the author’s obsession with the elegance and beauty of this 13-step, 200-word scale, still in use, which measures wind from its gentlest (‘Calm / smoke rises vertically’) to its roughest (‘The air is filled with foam and spray’).

I came to share Scott’s obsession and began composing a work for eight female voices and electronics, transforming the steps of the scale into 13 corresponding movements of escalating musical intensity. As the work proceeds and the weather becomes more chaotic, each voice is increasingly distorted. This mirrors our technology-saturated world, where uncanny and tumultuous weather has a growing presence.

The second single, Steps 10 and 11, contrasts Herman Melville’s description of the calm of a storm (The Candles) against the most violent weather described in the scale:

Finally, you can view more in everyone’s favorite music format, the score-follow video: 

And, finally, for the Cerrone completists out there, please do also check out my recently premiered Darkening, Then Brightening for soprano and wind ensemble, premiered by my good friend Lindsay Kesselman and the Illinois Wind Symphony under the direction of Kevin Geraldi, adapting the amazing poetry of Kim Addonizio. 


Thank you, as always, for reading, and I hope you are having a great beginning of your summer!
Chris