Above are excerpts from Eclipse.  The full video of Eclipse is at the bottom of this page.
Note: The resolution from our concert was sadly unusable. I redid the projected visuals in studio, piping the concert audio into my visual program for real-time responses.

Joseph E. Morgan called Eclipse “mesmerizing.” His generous review in the Nashville Arts Magazine can be found here.

A generous Nashville Scene Critic’s Pick from John Pitcher came out the day of the concert
Chatterbird Performs New Music

A new article on Eclipse from our friends over at @91Classical ! Many thanks to Kara McLeland for the fun conversation and lovely article!
Robbie Hunsinger on Collaborating With chatterbird and Her Musical Take on the Nashville Eclipse 

@chatterbird also has an article up with interesting questions about my composition process and how I transitioned from a full-time professional orchestral oboist to my work now.

Eclipse is a multimedia commission for chatterbird, a contemporary classical chamber ensemble in Nashville, Tennessee. It was my first chance to write a trans-media composition for a larger chamber group and I am very excited to have worked with these wonderful musicians.

I have received permission to use excerpts from Annie Dillard’s wonderful essay “Total Eclipse” for my lyrics and we had a terrific soprano Rebekah Alexander taking that role. I performed as a VJ.

A description of my process in writing Eclipse:
I was one of the lucky few to experience the totality of Nashville’s 2017 Eclipse. As the sun became a sliver I was chilled by the increasing winds and the quieted insects and birds. The distant sunrise effects of totality were as incredibly beautiful as the apparent black hole blotting out our sun was menacing.

This is my jumping off point for Eclipse.

I am mixing traditional and graphic notations in this score for voice, piccolo and flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano, electronic and acoustic percussion and VJ. Visuals are  drawn from my own source video and photography of Nashville’s 2017 eclipse mixed with my custom coded animations and real-time sound activations.

The debut was December 7, 2017, 8pm at Ingram Hall in the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University.

We are discussing recording this project later in the summer -stay tuned!

Full Performance