Work samples

  • excerpt from Douglas Osmun's IMPEND
  • excerpt from "Bleed Date" (Wombat)
  • The Red Room In Your Room January 2022 (excerpt)
  • LIGAMENT's dontal (movement II)

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About Will

Baltimore City  
Will Yager is a double bassist committed to experimental music, improvisation, and collaborating with other artists in the creation of new solo and chamber repertoire for the double bass. He is a founding member of both LIGAMENT, a duo with soprano Anika Kildegaard, and the trio Wombat with Justin Comer and Carlos Cotallo Solares. Performance highlights include appearances at the High Zero Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, University of Iowa Center for New Music, Experimental Sound Studios… more
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Solo Work/Commissioning

My work as a soloist is defined largely by my interest in and dedication to the world of new/contemporary classical music. My relationship to the interpretation of notated/composed music is borne of my classical training and my interest in creating new repertoire for the double bass, collaborating with other artists, and addressing issues of gender and racial representation in the field of classical music.

  • Daijana Wallace: DENSITY

    Commissioned by Bass Players for Black Composers and selected by Score Follower for their Fall 2023 Call for Scores

  • Elliott Lupp: A warp along the length of a face

    Live from SPLICE Fest 2023 at Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA)

  • Douglas Osmun: IMPEND
    A live performance of Douglas Osmun's IMPEND from the University of Iowa's Center for New Music in April 2022. Douglas' program note reads: IMPEND is the faltering machine, the system decay in which the system does not know the tools to repair itself. Its only designated logic is to continue churning regardless of any impeding entropy. What becomes of an unsustainable system, its limits now clearly articulated but which only knows its linear continuity? Or of a cultural order designed to produce frictionless modes of extraction, consumption, and communication, also now facing accelerating entropic forces emerging from within its own design? This work is part of a large-scale commissioning effort that comprised the bulk of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Iowa.
  • Sivan Cohen Elias: RESET
    This recording was the premiere of Sivan Cohen Elias' RESET, a piece for double bass and live electronics (performed here by the composer). Sivan's program note reads: RESET is structured as a continuous loop of beginning and ending of the same material, which keeps morphing into new reflections of itself as a dented mirror would do to its reflection. In the center of Reset the main material is by itself a cut-up shifts between sonic memories of nature, classical music, and noise, repeatedly coming to an end and starting over. The materials get stuck, get lost, get cut, get frozen, get melted and yet keep come back. We dive in-between timelines reshaping as an oily past, present and future, while the center remains unclear. During the collaboration process with Will Yager, who commissioned this piece, I discovered a unique sonic phenomenon while inserting a second bridge-like Styrofoam piece.
  • Elliott Lupp - a warp along the length of the face
    Elliott's program note reads: This piece was written for and in collaboration with double bassist and friend Will Yager over a two year period. The work uses a series of cue like notational ‘guides’ (provided in real time via laptop) to instruct the performer through a series of physical, semi-improvisatory performative instructions. These moments rely heavily on the performer’s ability to listen, watch, and move between each moment with well-timed procession and musicality, while also allowing the performer a good amount of agency to explore their own sonic/performative possibilities from cell to cell. The electronics, both live and fixed, are all synthesized from sounds of wood (a majority of which came from Will’s own double bass). The title comes from the idea that if a plank of wood is said to be 'bowed’, it is said to have a warp along the length of its face (which I thought was cheeky).
  • Davide Ianni: Beneath the Music From a Further Room
    Davide Ianni: Beneath the Music From a Further Room (2016-17) for double bass and two singing bass drums Will Yager, double bass Davide Ianni, composition & live electronics University of Iowa Center for New Music April 25, 2021
  • Jean-François Charles: Petrified
    Will Yager, double bass Jean-François Charles, live electronics This work is part of a large-scale commissioning effort that comprised the bulk of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Iowa.
  • Benjamin Patterson - Variations for Double Bass
    This performance was recorded as part of the 2020 Nief-Norf Virtual Marathon Concert.
  • Rebecca Saunders: Fury II
    Will Yager, solo double bass University of Iowa Center for New Music: Mauricio Silva, bass clarinet Simone Baron, accordion Nicha Pimthong, piano Peter Naughton, percussion Travis Newman, percussion Hui-Hsuan Su, cello David Gompper, conductor April 14, 2019 Saunders' program note reads: Fury means rage. An explosion of rage. Endeavouring to release an extreme energy. In a single breath. Fury II depicts a single state or condition, which was inspired by the five-string double bass: fascinated with the low pulsing sounds and the extensive percussive possibilities of the instrument; with the pronounced physicality and passionate gesture of the doublebass soloist. Also the pronounced fragility of this instrument in the delicate and expressive upper-range - providing an antithesis, a shadow-world. The intention was to expand the original Solo Fury, which was written for Antonio Aguiar of the emix Ensemble in 2005, and to place it within a new framework.
  • James May: glances full of muted colors
    live from Omaha Under the Radar 2022
    •

    • Improvised Music

    Improvising is a vital part of my music-making, and has been one of the few constants in my ever-evolving relationship to sound. In addition to the solo work, improvisation serves as a portal for collaboration with others. These recordings document my solo practice (and its development) in the last few years, alongside musical meetings with various friends and colleagues.
    • The Red Room in Your Room 2022: Will Yager
      this solo was recorded for the January 2022 iteration of High Zero's The Red Room in Your Room
    • High Zero Festival 2022: James Fei & Will Yager (excerpt)
    • Live in Knoxville, TN 6/11/22
    • deep tones for peace
      This solo was recorded for the 1/21/21 Deep Tones for Peace event, curated by Mark Dresser & William Parker.
    • 2020 Mother Brain International Online Music Festival
      This solo was played/streamed live for the 2020 2020 Mother Brain International Online Music Festival. My performance was run through a Max/MSP patch made by Chris Vik.
    •

    • LIGAMENT

    Described as “perverse and nihilistic”, Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (double bass) perform as LIGAMENT, an ensemble dedicated to commissioning new music and creating work for their unique instrumentation. LIGAMENT’s performances are a fusion of standard and non-standard elements; sometimes there are high heels and sometimes there are electric toothbrushes (and sometimes both). The duo is equally at home with extended techniques as with extra-musical elements. LIGAMENT means business: they’ve been ensemble fellows at New Music on the Point and Cortona Sessions for New Music; have performed in concert series iHearIC, Feed Me Weird Things, and the University of Iowa Center for New Music; have been tapped as the collaborating ensemble for dance performances not I but that which works within me (Alyssa Gersony) and Struggle for Pleasure (Armando Duarte). They’ve been featured on the Kansas City Contemporary Music Festival and Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Re:Sound, and were the 2022 ensemble-in-residence for Washington DC’s District New Music Coalition. Early 2023 will see LIGAMENT on tour with the acclaimed saxophone duo Ogni Suono, in residence at the Universities of Idaho and Iowa, and collaborations with composition students at the Peabody Conservatory. They have premiered many new works, and have an upcoming album of pieces written expressly for the duo. LIGAMENT is currently based in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

    • Ruby Fulton: and if not, why not
    • Nick Bentz: please continue
    • Jean-Patrick Besingrand: Yūrei
    • dontal
    • Lila Meretzky — All mute things speak today [w/ score]
    • Paul Novak: not of longing
    • Ramin Roshandel: r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
    • Pascal Dusapin: Anacoluthe (1987)
      LIGAMENT + Jean-François Charles
    •

    • Wombat

    Wombat is an improvising trio that combines deep sonic exploration through experimental playing techniques, live signal processing, and instrumental preparations with a real-time compositional approach, creating engaging structural shapes and contrasting sections. The relationships between the three of us are in constant flux: merging into a single sonic entity, building contrapuntal textures, or letting one performer lead the trio as a soloist. Improvisers Justin K. Comer (saxophones), Carlos Cotallo Solares (guitar/electronics), and Will Yager (double bass) formed Wombat in October 2017. Together they explore new sonic textures and instrumental techniques in concert halls, coffee shops, and backyards. Though the performances are never planned beforehand, the trio's music is influenced by their collective experience with contemporary art music, noise, jazz, metal, and drone. Performance highlights include the Maximum Ames festival (Ames, IA), Composers' Workshops and Center for New Music at the University of Iowa, the Feed Me Weird Things concert series, Oh My Ears Festival (Phoenix, AZ), Imaginary Network Topologies, and tours across the Midwest. The have multiple recordings available on Bandcamp.
    • Bleed Date
      A track from our album Befriend the Giant. Video by Will Yager.
    • Temporize
      A track from our album Befriend the Giant. Video by Justin Comer.
    • Croquetas
      from our album Tapas de Wombat
    • Wombat at iHearIC, May 2019
      live performance from Iowa City in May 2019
    •