Roger Bourland
writes about music and life

PERSONAE (1981)
1. Jackson Pollock:The War Goddess mp3Jules Eskin, cello,Edwin Barker, bass[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
PERSONAE (1981)
2. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: St Peter in Prison mp3Jules Eskin, cello,Edwin Barker, bass[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
PERSONAE (1981)
3. Rene Magritte: The Reckless Sleeper mp3Jules Eskin, cello,Edwin Barker, bass[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
PERSONAE (1981)
4. [...]

ARIAS for cello and piano (1989)
1. Cl’airea mp3Ronald Leonard, cello, Antoinette Perry, piano. This movement written for the wedding of Paul Reale and Claire Rydell.[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
ARIAS for cello and piano
2. Mount Shasta mp3Dedicated to the memory of Charlie Swigart.[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
ARIAS for cello and piano
3. In [...]

I seem to have been obsessed with lumping sets of four movements or songs in most of the music from this period. Like Four Painters, this piece paints musical portraits of four poets. The process of trying to figure out how to express the musical persona of a particular poet is a mysterious one but [...]

I’ve had a life-long habit of composing music inspired by paintings. In this piece, I’ve decided to compose musical portraits of four painters. I loved this commission, my most recent from Pacific Serenades, and would do another in a heartbeat. The musical language is related to American Baroque in my mind.
[Audio clip: view full post [...]

Cantilena was commissioned for the first season of the award-winning Los Angeles chamber music ensemble, Pacific Serenades. The premiere was in the home of Leland Burns. This work was originally written for flutist, composer, and director of PacSer, Mark Carlson. Alden Ashforth had advised me to compose long lines for Mark as “…he plays as [...]

Death of Narcissus was composed for one of the Composers in Red Sneakers concerts. In that we were all students, we had composition assignments for our classes and had to keep producing for the Sneakers series, we had to compose all the time to keep up. This one was composed very quickly. It was one [...]

AMERICAN BAROQUE was commissioned by Mark Carlson and Pacific Serenades for their 1991-92 season. Like many of the music I was writing at that time, the form of the word is roughly palindrdomic, for instance ABCDEDC’B’A’. The sewing machine quality of the melody is something you will hear in this piece that vaguely evokes Baroque [...]

I’m doing the music to a short film by Mel Shapiro called INFRARED. Mel, as you may remember, wrote the book and lyrics to HOMER IN CYBERSPACE — a musical we premiered last years. I’m playing all the parts myself using Logic 9 (just arrived yesterday). It’s the smokiest, jazziest music I’ve composed to date, [...]

Rosarium: A Drama for Chorus and Orchestra
Act 1: Flower and Song
1. Prologue
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
2. The Arrival
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
3. Tenochtitlan
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
4. Tepeyac
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
5. (Link)
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
6. Santa Maria
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Music: [...]

The Crocodile’s Christmas Ball and other odd tales (2002)
Music: Roger Bourland
Lyrics: William MacDuff
UCLA Chorale, Donald Neuen, Director
UCLA Wind Ensemble, D. Thomas Lee, Director
Roger Bourland, conducting
1. Tropical Christmas
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
2. A Proper Cat Reflects upon the Holidays
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
3. After Halloween
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
4. Santa [...]