RYAN BROWN
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Mortal Lessons

Anything that moves must come to a rest.
vocal quartet (S, Ct, T, Ba), percussion quartet, two keyboards, electronics | text by Richard Selzer (used with permission)
duration: 15', 30', or 60' | commissioned by the SFCM Hoefer Prize
"One thing art does for us is transform what we ignore and find mundane into aesthetic experiences.
​Brown’s work does exactly that; humanizing what listeners rightly expect to be a coldly clinical topic."
--San Francisco Classical Voice
"By expressing Selzer’s thoughts musically...Brown has been able to reflect on the prose, encompass it and enlarge it.
​The music takes you further, deeper and higher at the same time, more than the words themselves did."
--San Francisco Chronicle

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PROGRAM note

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I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a kid. Not that I was sick—hardly ever, in fact, and just the usual kid nastiness at that. But my parents always worked in hospitals, so I passed countless hours entertaining myself there on school holidays. I have many memories of long hallways, racks of patient files, and cold, dimly lit radiology rooms where I listened to the hissing and beeping machinery.

These memories rushed back to me when I first encountered Richard Selzer's "Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery." Selzer, a former Yale surgeon, combines his intimate knowledge of the human body with a love for baroque language and flights of fancy that are by turns grotesque and sublime. My piece toes a similar line between the sacred and profane, the grotesque and sublime—life, death, love and all the rest.

​
The book is structured as a series of short essays meditating on a single subject (“Bone,” “Corpse,” “Knife,” etc.), that frequently veer into wild flights of fancy. My piece is similarly structured, in several movements that flow seamlessly into one another, connected by recurring musical and textual themes. Distinct characters and mini-narratives arise occasionally, with singers performing multiple dramatic roles throughout the work. 

Performance history

60' Version
February 25, 2018, 8pm
Hot Air Music Festival
​SFCM
Tonia D'Amelio, Justin Montigne, Samuel Faustine, and Sidney Chen, singers
Eric Dudley, conductor
30' Version
June 10, 2017, 4:30pm
Switchboard Music Festival
Z Space, San Francisco
Tonia D'Amelio, Justin Montigne, Samuel Faustine, and Sidney Chen, singers
Eric Dudley, conductor
15' Version, as The Exact Location of the Soul*
March 16, 2014, 8pm
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
New Music Ensemble
Justin Montigne, Eric Tuan, and Sidney Chen, singers
Nicole Paiement, conductor
*In its initial, 15' version, this work was titled The Exact Location of the Soul. There is also an earlier work titled Mortal Lessons for a cappella octet using text from this source. These works have been arranged and combined into the larger work, also titled Mortal Lessons. 

PRESS

San Francisco Classical Voice: "Ryan Brown's Mortal Lessons Makes Death Beautiful" (Tysen Dauer, 2/26/18)
​San Francisco Chronicle (Leah Garchik, 3/1/18)
  • Bio
  • Works List
    • Selected List
    • Small Ensemble (2-6)
    • Large Ensemble (6+)
    • Vocal
    • Solo
  • Purchase
  • Performances
    • Recent & Upcoming
      • 2018
      • 2017
      • 2016
      • 2015
      • 2014
  • Projects
    • Mortal Lessons
      • Mortal Lessons Video
      • Mortal Lessons Question
  • Contact