Music

COMPOSITIONS

I primarily write vocal and chamber music and am beginning to set my own poetry. Below is an academic/technical sample of my work, a short fugue after the style of Bach. My personal style is demonstrated in the two following choral settings of poetry. I am particularly interested in using rhythmic structure and unconventional voice leading to create novel soundscapes.

Sample: Fugue in c minor

Catalogue

  1. “Remember” (2019) – AATTBarB (Duration: 05:00)
  2. “The Rose In My Side: A Poem for Four Voices” (2019) – TTBB (Duration: 05:00)
  3. “Plainchant Variations” (2021) – Violin (Duration: 03:35)
  4. “Variations on the Montrose Mass” (2021) – Violin
  5. “The Path That Light Takes” (2023) – String Quartet (Duration: 10:00)

Scores & Sheet Music

To request perusal scores, please email me directly at jgibson@juliagibson.com.

Commissioning

To discuss commissioning requests, please email me directly at jgibson@juliagibson.com. I presently have availability of one commission/3-6 months, depending on scope and complexity.

SAMPLES

A setting of Christina Rossetti’s sonnet, “Remember” (MIDI audio, no lyric pronunciation)

A setting of “The Rose In My Side”, a poem par moi (MIDI audio, no lyric pronunciation)

(Every English-language poet seems to write a rose poem sometime in their career!)

RECORDINGS

These are some recordings that I made as a first-year violin performance student at Manhattan School of Music, way back in 2010. I’d like to be able to say that I’m better now than I was at that time, but you can’t be everything you can be all at once. I’m happy for the other ways in which I’ve developed since.

My favorite moment listening to these is at 5:30 in the Paganini. It’s an almost stupidly-difficult piece in certain passages, and I decided to play it at a tempo slow enough for the audience to actually be able to hear everything that’s going on. Most recordings are so fast in places that the music sounds like an impressive smear. They are often great performances, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to make something that was hopefully refreshingly candid. The passage with the 10th-interval double stops is a little TOO candid, but I’m not trying to make money as a violinist anymore, so now the whole world can cringe at my poor intonation with me!

At 5:30 I’m almost at the end, and in a part that had never really gone off the rails before but did in this take, I stop playing for a split-second and sigh! It’s a telling benchmark of artistic (im)maturity, and I smile back at my 18-year-old self. Laugh-out-loud moment for all.

Walton Violin Concerto, Movement I

Walton Violin Concerto, Movement II

Bach Sonata No. 2 in a minor, Grave (Movement I)

Paganini Caprice No. 24