Dylan Findley (In the Mind of Energy) (2017)

Biography
The Alba Music Festival has biographies for each composer and Dylan said he wrote his. I think you can see a lot about how he "sees" music and its ever intertwining relationship with our lives. He "composes music as a gateway to inspiration, energy, and the expression of intangible truths," which is what a lot of people connect with the concept of music being the universal language. We talked about languages during my interview. he talked a lot about how the Hebrew language uses verb tenses. In English we have past, present, future, and infinitive. Biblical Hebrew functions without tenses, and so there is a limit to communicating about past versus present and future. We talked about how when music is a language it can still be challenging to comprehend it based on the cultural language that the listener is used to. This made us talk about how different styles and preferences about music make it interesting to be a listener, composer and performer in the modern compositional era.

"Dylan’s main aspiration is to answer the questions music constantly provokes: How do sounds interact with emotion?  How does it speak to the spirit? How does music reveal truth?  In what way does a person vicariously experience emotion and truth as sound interacts with time?  In seeking for truth, his music is inspired by religion, nature, culture, and life experience....He studied under Lansing McLoskey, Christian Asplund, Neil Thornock, Michael Hicks, and Sam Richards, and also under University of Miami composers-in-residence Martin Bresnick, Stephen Hartke, and Augusta Read Thomas.  He is currently finishing his Master’s degree in Composition and Theory at the University of Miami."

World Premier at Alba Music Festival
In the Mind of Energy was premiered by Transient Canvas on May 31st in Alba, Italy.

Mr. Findley describes his piece as a sort of relationship with potential and ''kinetic energy. ''This is the science behind the concept of Newton's Laws for Physics and the energy is neither lost or gained in the course of forces being exerted on an object. The most simple description of that is that when a ball or slinky is at the top of teh stairs the most logical move is for it to go down those stairs, it contains the energy that would be needed to take it down teh stairs, and as it moves from its still position, the energy it contains as potential energy is the converted into kinetic energy, via the act of the ball or slinky moving down the stairs.

This concept was vividly captured by "In the Mind of Energy" and starts out with minimal notes but with forward motion and tension already within and between the tones, and moving towards more complexity and the overall feel propels you constantly forwards, moving towards the end.

The following video was taken during the first performance, and teh sound quality is minimal, but you can see that as the music's intensity and energy increases it requires an increased exertion of energy by the performer as well. Dylan talked about how he enjoys pushing the performer to have a relationship with the piece of music as well.

https://youtu.be/BAM8DAAoEh4

Awards and Notoriety
"Mr. Findley has been awarded commissions by the Barlow Endowment, New American Voices, the 2017 ALBA Music Festival, TransAmerican Duo, American Guild of Organists Student Commissioning Project, Barlow Student Composition Award, the 2016 Atlantic Music Festival, and the 2015 Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival."