“Baltimore’s Mind on Fire offers a mind-bending alternative to traditional classical music performances.” - Elizabeth Nonemaker for the Baltimore Sun

Clips from May 31, 2024 at the Pratt central library in Baltimore

Mind on Fire filled the Enoch Pratt Free Library with over 30 musicians, visual artists, poets, dancers, and theater artists. It was a very good time.

featuring.
The Arm - Carly Bales - Taylor Boykins Gracie Carney - Allison Clendaniel - Ami Dang David Diongue - Liz Downing & Friends - Laure Drogoul Ruby Fulton - Orlando Johnson - Konjur Collective Troy Long - LaTeisha Melvin & The Ensemble Dance Jamal Moore - Heather Morrison - Bao Nguyen Ty Page - Stephanie Ray - Peter Redgrave Robin Rhodes - Khristian Weeks - Kelly Xio - Will Yager

James Young ... executive director
Jason Charney ... tech director
Emre Yagci ... videography/editing
Adan Rodriguez ... videography

Allie Smith ... adult programs specialist
Barnard Smit ... manager Best & Next

Thank you to the many many folks on staff

“The question of, “what happens” is on display in this company’s many pieces of music and performance, and while the answer might not be clear at first, it is clear that we are in the presence of important theater making done on a level that is unsurpassed in this arena.” - Timoth David Copney for BmoreArt

"And We, Each" has been the largest production Mind on Fire has put on to date. Since the project began in 2017, I've dreamed of putting on large-scale, internationally recognizaed productions with this performing arts org, and in 2024 the opportunity appeared to us with Michael Hersch's "And We Each," a new opera based off of the work of poet Shane McCrae

I put everything into this production, from fundraising tens of thousands of dollars to driving the opera set from stage to stage. Our opening weekend in Baltimore sold out even after our theater lost power and we had to move the production ten blocks north on two hours notice.

While we produced Michael Hersch's And We Each, we began prodution on a second opera, Tim Holt's "Nobody is Ever Missing," based on Catherine Lacey's novel of the same name.

"Such “immersive” theater experiences are hard to do well, but the restraint and clarity the production elicited about these private emotions made this performance effective." - Alex Baker for The Washington Classical Review

composed by Bashi Rose (drums/poetry)
premiered by Mind on Fire, September 2023 at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church

Stephanie Ray and Dannielle Sturgeon, flutes
James Young, conductor/bassoon
Nicholas Cohen, contrabassoon
Anastasia Kuptas, soprano sax
Sarah Manley and Tim Dugan, trombones
Gracie Carney and Ruby Fulton, violins
Joelle Arnhold and Karin Kilper, violas
Erin Snedecor and Bud Stracker, cellos

Jason Charney, tech director/audio recoding
Dezimond Fisher, videography

from Mind on Fire's performance of the music of Infinity Knives

October 2021 at the Voxel

Tariq Ravelomanana ... composer
Brian Ennals ... singer/MC

Ty Page ... conductor
James Young ... arranger/editor
Jason Charney ... tech director/audio
David Crandall ... lighting designer

Tomi Faison ... videography
Neve Jahn ... audio recording
Matthew Sullivan ... mixing/mastering

Stephanie Ray ... flute
|Victoria Ritter ... oboe
Jenny Tscheulin ... clarinet
James Young ... bassoon
Anastasia Kuptas ... sax
Rafaela Dreisin ... trumpet
Dan Pendley ... trombone
Scott Miller ... tuba
Shelly Purdy ... percussion
Jeremy Lyons ... guitar
Allison Clendaniel ... piano
Anthony Shields ... violin
Joelle Arnhold ... viola
Bud Stracker ... cello
Robin Rhodes ... double bass

in memory of David Crandall

Composed by Brittany J. Green
Commissioned and premiered by Mind on Fire - July 8, 2021

Danced by Ayan Felix
Shot by Ivy Williams
Edited by Jason Charney

"r_upTure (2021) draws its musical material and text from a Python program by the same name. The Python program was designed to build a musical system that filters out non-common pitches between chords in a given progression. As the program runs, however, the system begins to rupture, adding in non-common pitches and chord extensions. Several resultant iterations of the program were used as source material and appear as layered strands throughout the piece. The text narrated throughout the piece is a recitation of the program's code.The rupturing of both the program and the piece draws from modes of resistence and rupture theorized in the works of Black Feminist theorist bell hooks, creating a sonic space that imagines how structures can be ruptured and redefined." - Brittany J. Green

Performed by -
Stephanie Ray, flute

point/totality is slow music of deep resonance composed by Cat Lamb in 2014. Here it is performed by Owen Gardner and Jeremy Lyons in 2019 accompanied by Kevin Blackistone's projections. Please listen with headphones and increase the brightness of your screen to its maximum.

@ the George Peabody Library, Baltimore, in association with 'In the Stacks' and us, 'Mind on Fire.

composed by the Nudie Suits
arranged by James Young

performed May, 2017 at EMP Collective

“jagged phrases igniting portals of a known yet unknown zephyr of sound scattering fragrances of old earth speaking in tongues of gaseous debris praying for the likeness of water and land - from the dawn of time something screamed - was dismantled and reborn in the vibrating body of a cello - humming in syncopation - with glances of the 21 century" - Bashi Rose

from the CELLO SUITE composed by James Young in 2014 

premiered by Peter Kibbe in 2025 

Full album at jamesdavidyoung.bandcamp.com 

recorded/mixed by Craig Bowen at Tempo House in Baltimore 

mastered by Murat Çolak at Geryon Sound in New York City 

video recorded/edited by James Young at the Pikesville Armory Foundation 

composition published by Ten Largest 

album released on Shiny Boy Press

composed by James Young in 2015
performed by the TCNJ wind ensemble
conducted by David Vickerman

Shouting Gates is an experiment in mass indeterminacy combined with the propulsive frameworks of contemporary band music. Over the movement's restless 14 minutes, sonic structures lock into high-speed comets, hurtle into walls, break apart, and reform with new forward momentum. It is an angry, joyous yell of a piece. 

CALIBURN (2019 rev. 2021) is taken from poetry by Mike J. Maguire

Allison Clendaniel sang it. Jenny Hughson, James Young, Ty Page, Sarah Manley, and Robin Rhodes played instruments on it in 2024.

Recorded and mixed by Craig Bowen at Tempo House (in Baltimore)

full album at jamesdavidyoung.bandcamp.com

Embrace of fire.
Grace captured in wire.

The cut will desire and need. 
The end will bleed,
Will end the need.

And desire
Will cut the wire.

In captured grace,
Fire of embrace.

- "Grace Gives Grace" from "Drawn Inward" by Mike J. Maguire

A suite from a video opera featuring bugs, ghosts, planes, water, bees, moons, suburbs, sounds, falls, woods, bricks, spies, ash, dogs...

It is a surreal covid quarantine opera...

Videos and compositions by James Young
Sung by James Young and Allison Clendaniel

Commissioned by the High Zero Foundation as part of Red Room in Your Room in 2020

James Young, composer
Kelly Xio, poet
Ah Young Hong, soprano

This is a small, intimate song, and I appreciate you listening to it. The first part explores the sounds of the words and creates a library of gestures. The second contextualizes them. Throughout, the musical score slowly degrades, the staves lose their lines, until by the end, the soprano is only looking at words in contour.

text - -

When I go home Maman asks me to help her with little chores around the house that have not changed after all these years. You go through hell and there’s always worse but trash night is Wednesday and recycling’s on Friday. In 2013 I shattered a mirror and cut my fngers on the glass trying to catch it. I felt the wind kicked out of me as I sobbed “no more bad luck, please” and kowtowed to the Universe, my bloody hand gripping the fbers of beige rug. I found grace showing up on a doorstep and being asked to come in and make my bed.

Remember the frst time Maman showed me with great

Sunsetters is a collage composition from the album "We had to vanish for awhile."

"We had to vanish for awhile" is a selection of songs originally compiled for a play about Charlotte Salomon. It is a work of collage - - alternative syntactics of classical music spanning about 150 years from 1820. 

The play, titled "Life or Theater?," by Carly Bales ran for a month in 2018.

The composers are generally Austrian, German, and French - taken in part by how much Salomon wrote about them and in part by how they were sequestered (in full or part) from the rising violent hegemony of the 1930s. They are - most likely - Franz Schubert, Gustaf Mahler, Paul Hindemith, Ernst Krenek, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg, and Georges Bizet.

At least - this is what I think I remember.

Two climactic movements from an hour-long tenor sax solo James Young composed for Ty Page.
29. Them.son
30. Prot.arp

True Fluorescent Skeleton is an hour long exploration of memory, machinery, rust, ghosts, cybernetics, and neon while pushing into the utter sonic horizon of the tenor saxophone. James Young (composer) and Tyrone Page, Jr. (sax), got to know each other through musical projects in and around the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD. A couple of degrees later and they began this nearly four year adventure working on the Fluorescent Skeleton. The idea for TFS was sparked through an encounter with Jasper Johns’s Regrets (2012), a room-sized art work of false starts and dead ends: paintings, drawings, and prints intermingle with the tools that made them and sketches that preceded them - all pointing to the same subject. This skeleton is similarly arranged. Each track orbits the same single, musical theme, converging narratively and harmonically onto a single melody

HAMMER SO MUCH IT CRACKS (2016) sets a Ballade by François Villon

Lisa Perry sang it. Ken Thomson conducted it. Gina Izzo, Theodosia Roussos, Hila Zamir, Garrett Brown, Tyler Taylor, Allison Wright, Cole Bartels, Tom Sanderman, Ledah Finck, Maria Fiore, Nick Pauly, James Burch, Laura Nygren, Thomas Kotcheff, Eric Shuster, and Dylan Greene played instruments on it in 2016

Recorded at MASS MOCA as part of Banglewood

Tant grate chive que mal gist
Tant va le pot a l’eau qu’il brise
Tant chauffe on le fer qu’il rougist
Tant le maille on qu’il se debrise
Tant vault l’homme comme on le prise 
Tant s’elongne il qu’il n’en souvient 
Tant mauvais est qu’on le desprise 
Tant crie l’on Noel qu’il vient.

Tant parle on qu’on se contredist
Tant vault bon bruyt que grace acquise 
Tant promet on qu’on s’en desdist
Tant prie on que chose est acquise 
Tant plus est chiere et plus est quise 
Tant la quiert on qu’on y parvient
Tant plus commune et moins requise 
Tant crie l’on Noel qu

“Imaginary. I imagined I chewed Bmore soil and spit out ancestral bones,” Mowder Oyal’s drummer and co-founder Bashi Rose calmly intones in a spoken word piece that begins the band’s sophomore album. Adam Holofcener’s guitar greets us as does James Young’s bassoon, joining Rose’s work setting the scene for a journey of organized calamity... - Eze Jackson for The Baltimore Beat

with Waco Mammoth
James Young, bassoon

A track from Mowder Oyal's first self-titled album. 

Video by Brandon Soderberg. Footage from Brute Force by Jules Dassin. Recorded by Tristan Heelys.

with Waco Mammoth
James Young, bassoon
Robin Rhodes, double bass