New - Alternative Facts, for percussion quartet; Violin Concerto, ancient signs & infamous rhythms; Extinction, for clarinet and fixed media; The Wings That Bear The Night Away, for violin and fixed media; Vista dal Giardino di Bogliasco, fixed media; Third Piano Trio, rock hill variations; Fierce and Airy Occupations, for solo flute; Four Ghost Songs, for mezzo, clarinet, piano; Ghosts of Our Former Selves (suspicious motives records)

email directly for scores (some available for download here)

Recent and Upcoming

Alternative Facts for percussion quartet, Boston Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, APRIL 8, 2024

Muriel’s Songs for mezzo-soprano and eleven instruments, Sound Icon, sponsored by the Women’s Study Research Center at Brandeis University. Slosberg Music Center, Waltham, MA. MARCH 16, 2024

Due (Cinta)mani for piano and fixed media, Chen-Hui Jen, New Music Miami ISCM Festival, Miami Beach. FEB 21, 2024

Extinction for clarinet and fixed media, Ben Fingland with counter)induction, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. JAN 13, 2024

The Wings That Bear The Night Away for violin and fixed media, Julia Glenn, OCT 2023, Brandeis University; NOV 2023, Splice Festival, Boston, MA

The Wings That Bear The Night Away for violin and fixed media, OCT 2023, ICMC Shenzhen, China

Quasi Troppo Veloce for violin solo, to Davy Rakowski for his 65th birthday, premiere Collage New Music, Brandeis University, OCT 1, 2023

Rounding The Keys for piano duo, in honor of the 200th anniversary of Key West. premiere Quattro Mani, UMass Anherst, SEPT. 21, 2023; Brandeis University, SEPT 22, 2023

Alternative Facts for percussion quartet, premiere, Talujon, The Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens NY, MAY 1, 2023

Extinction for clarinet and fixed media, Ben Fingland, University of Georgia, APRIL 22, 2023

Extinction for clarinet and fixed media, premiere, Ben Fingland, SEAMUS Conference, Dimenna Center NYC, APRIL 8, 2023

To The Edge and Back for violin and piano, premiere of violin version, Julia Glenn and Steve Beck, Brandeis University, MARCH 3, 2023

Second Quartet, premiere, The Lydian String Quartet, Brandeis University, DEC 10, 2022

Koussevitzky Foundation Commission 2022, to write for Sound Icon - Spring 2024 premiere.

Avant Gardner at Sulphur Studios, Savannah, GA  SEPT. 1 - OCT. 22, 2022 (art by Lisa D. Watson with sound art (premiere of What Shade of Green is Our Horizon), by Eric Chasalow;

As a Kind of Knowing for fixed media, Convergence Festival, Leicester, England, SEPT. 22, 2022;

The Wings That Bear The Night Away for violin and fixed media, (premiere) Mari Kimura OCT 25, 2022 with Brightwork Newmusic, MONK Space, Los Angeles, CA

Ghost Songs (premiere), Winsor Music, OCT 28, 2022; 7:00 Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge, MA

Avant Gardner at Costal Discovery Museum, Hilton Head, SC  NOV. 1, 2022 - FEB. 5, 2023

Second Quartet (premiere), Lydian String Quartet at Brandeis University, DEC 10, 2022

Extinction, for clarinet and fixed media (premiere) Ben Fingland with counter)induction, Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, JAN 27, 2023 (CANCELED)

Avant Gardner at Averitt Center For The Arts & Georgia Southern University’s  IAB GALLERY, Statesboro, GA  MAR. 9 - MAY 5, 2023

The premiere of Muriel’s Songs (Koussevitzky commission) with Sound Icon, MARCH 16, 2024

Fair_J_Henry

Eric has written a new violin concerto for Miranda Cuckson

email for a copy of the piano reduction or for information about joining the premiere consortium.

Tim Page, Professor of Music and Journalism, University of Southern California, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, 1997

“The critic and professor Edward Mendelson explored the concept of the "encyclopedic novel" -- a work of fiction that combines a full range of the knowledge and beliefs of a given culture into a narrative that goes far beyond storytelling.    He named "The Divine Comedy," "Don Quixote," "Moby Dick," "Ulysses" and "Gravity's Rainbow" among several other encyclopedic novels -- books at once highly complicated and richly entertaining, melding fact, legend, parody, philosophy and everything else that fits into a creation that not only reflect their times and places but come close to epitomizing them.    

I would nominate Eric Chasalow's "Ghosts of our Former Selves" as "encyclopedic music."     I've been listening for several weeks now and compiling a list of aural "images."    At the beginning, I am reminded of Stephin Merritt singing a particularly unusual, newly unearthed score from one Renaissance or another in an ancient cathedral.     We go on to a fantastical riff on an old violin record sped up and scattered electronically.   Suddenly a solo recorder plays "The Loveliest Night of the Year" (a melody from the 1880s that became a hit for Mario Lanza, later became  "The George Washington Bridge Song" and. being out of copyright, was used extensively in films and commercials).    Somehow it is all brand new although you've heard it a thousand times..    Eric studied with Mario Davidovsky and one can discern some of the lyricism, both eerie and expansive, that informed his teacher's electronic work.   But then there is modern jazz, and something that sounds like a bleak lost track from the records David Bowie and Brian Eno made in Berlin, and then a vamp on old English folk songs.      

And yet "Ghosts of our Former Selves" is all Eric.   He is not touching all these bases to prove how smart he is or to bewilder us with sensory overdose, a la cinema verite.   Rather, they are part of the world that made him and that he has now made into something all his own.    And despite the fact that it was finished in the annus horribilis 2020, "Ghosts of our Former Selves" is often shimmeringly beautiful.  For all of its digressions, it is a markedly linear piece, replete with beginnings, middles and ends -- and even some great tunes.   This is music to sustain and challenge us during a time when we most need it. “  

Read some early responses to this music

Discography

click to listen on Spotify

 

Are You Radioactive, Pal?

Nine pieces, with performances by Philipp Stäudlin (alto saxophone) and Daniel Stepner (violin)

SEEK - Maurizio Grandinetti

Includes ‘Scuse Me (e. gtr and tape)

feather, breath, mirror

Over The Edge

Left to His Own Devices

Harmonic Constellations - Mari Kimura

Includes Scuffle and Snap

Interactions 2016

Includes Are You Radioactive, Pal?