MUSIC
Concert Works. Chamber Music. Soundscapes. Multimedia Forms.
Gentry Creative’s concert works include chamber music, solo and ensemble pieces, symphonic poems, soundscapes, and multimedia concert projects. The music moves through instrumental color, atmosphere, form, and dramatic imagination, ranging from intimate solo works to larger-scale pieces shaped by image, text, and sound.
A symphonic journey through rupture, pressure, memory, and renewal. Written during the worldwide pandemic of 2020, the work moves between force and fragility, darkness and radiance, searching for resolution through transformation.
Described as “an organic stream-of-consciousness form, kinetic, drenched in the energy of life,” the symphony reveals a strong sense of motivic unity across its movements and a connective harmonic language of its own.
symphony No. 1
Selected concert recordings and excerpts from John Gentry Tennyson’s instrumental and orchestral catalog, ranging from intimate solo writing to larger symphonic works for full forces. These works reveal an elemental musical language shaped by lyricism, atmosphere, dramatic structure, and orchestral color.
Featured Works
petrichor
Symphonic Poem for String Orchestra
Approx. 13 minutes
A meditative work for strings, Petrichor evokes the scent of rain on dry earth and the quiet renewal that follows. Organic and elemental in form, the piece unfolds in a single connected movement shaped by stillness, tension, release, and return. Its language is lyrical and atmospheric, with delicate textures and suspended harmonies.
(the smell of rain on Dry earth)
Adagio for Strings
(Solo Violin and String orchestra)
Solo Violin and String Orchestra
Approx. 7 minutes
A lyrical and elegiac work for solo violin and string orchestra, Adagio unfolds as a sustained emotional arc. Centered around a romantic solo violin line, the piece moves through tenderness, tension, and release, balancing chamber-like vulnerability with the breadth of a larger string ensemble.
Performed by violinist Joyce Hammann with the 60-piece Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra at
FAMES Project Studios in Skopje, Macedonia.
Gentry’s contemporary classical catalog includes orchestral, chamber, and concert works shaped by memory, transformation, dramatic form, and the emotional force of sound. Extending beyond stage and screen, these pieces enter the concert hall as works of atmosphere, architecture, and narrative.
Contemporary Classical Works
Symphony No. 1
Symphony for Orchestra
Approx. 26 minutes
A large-scale orchestral work written during the worldwide pandemic of 2020, Symphony No. 1 moves through rupture, pressure, memory, and renewal. Built from tightly connected motives and a distinctive harmonic language, the work unfolds as an elemental journey from darkness toward transformation.
Life Interrupted
Tone Poem for Solo Violin and Chamber Orchestra
Approx. 7.5 minutes
Life Interrupted is a seven-and-a-half-minute symphonic tone poem for solo violin and chamber orchestra. The work is shaped around fracture, memory, and the fragile continuity of human experience, moving through moments of disruption and suspended lyricism toward a quiet sense of return.
Altered States: Movement III
Five-Movement Contemporary Work for Solo Cello
Approx. 14 minutes
Altered States is a five-movement contemporary classical work for solo cello, performed by Chris Gross of New York’s Talea Ensemble. The piece explores transformation, perception, and psychological intensity through a concentrated solo language of shifting textures and gestures.
Gentry’s expanded concert works include chamber, soundscape, and multimedia projects shaped by rhythm, atmosphere, dramatic form, and the emotional force of sound. Moving beyond traditional concert categories, these pieces treat instrumental color, image, and concept as part of the musical architecture.
Chamber Works
Child’s Play is the first completed work from Paracosm, originally conceived as a minimalist chamber piece and now imagined for expansion. Built from driving ostinati, layered rhythmic cells, and bright percussive energy, the work creates a kinetic world of accumulating patterns.
A future version invites greater soloistic freedom, with alto saxophone, flutes, marimba, and other colors rising out of the repeating structures. What began as pulse and propulsion now becomes a more fluid chamber world.
Paracosm: Child’s Play
Soundscape & Multimedia Selections
Farragine: Tormento
Solo Piano | Multimedia Concert Work
Approx. 14 minutes
Farragine is a 14-minute multimedia concert work of eight short piano pieces based on poems by Italian poet Caterina Nagliatti. Created as part of a larger project by painter Carlo Arcesi, the work brings together painting, spoken word, and solo piano in a compact cycle of emotional miniatures.
Paracosm: I. Child’s Play
Flexible Chamber Ensemble
Approx. 10 minutes
Paracosm began as the conceptual foundation for a flexible chamber ensemble built around imagined inner worlds and private mythologies of the mind. Inspired by the idea of a paracosm, the project creates an open space for mutable instrumentation, hybrid styles, and psychologically vivid concert works.
Transformation
Soundscape / Electroacoustic Multimedia Work
Approx. 10 minutes
Transformation is a shortened variation of the third movement from Ten Realms of the Lotus, adapted for presentation at Electric LaTex. Built for an electroacoustic music festival setting, the work brings together electronic sound, multimedia atmosphere, improvisatory energy, and installation-like sonic space.
