Music
Recordings of notated compositions, experimental folk performances & collaborative improvisations.
Stone Residency premier performance
Glass Box, The New School, NYC
February 12, 2019
1:2:1 New Music Intensive
webcast premieres concert
January 18, 2021
Robert Scott-Celedón, piano
Classical Revolution RVA Incarnations
The Hof, Richmond, VA
September 19, 2021
Matilda Ertz, piano
concert performance at Sisters of Loretto chapel
Nerinx, Kentucky
March 4, 2018
Appalshop theater, Whitesburg, KY
December 2016
Sediment Gallery, Richmond, VA
February 2018
Ben Jaffe, tenor sax
Dave Desmeaux, bass
Robert Scott-Celedón, guitar, viola
Bed Stuy, Brooklyn
September 2015
live at the Highpoint, Richmond, VA, 2019
2. Whisper Wish, January 2017
home demo recording, November 2020
3. Winters Eve, from old Welsh verse
home demo recording, June 2021
4. Fair & Tender, traditional lyric/tune
reharmonized, remetered & reworded
home demo recording, April 2021
Robert Scott-Celedón, harpsichord
premier, presented by RVA Baroque & Raphael Seligmann
for international project connecting-the-dots.at
September 17, 2023
Carrie Frey, viola
Chicago, IL
August 5, 2019
(1a & 1b not included)
Classical Revolution RVA Incarnations
The Hof, Richmond, VA
February 20, 2022
Robert Scott-Celedón: composition, arrangement, guitar
Cameron Welke: theorbo
Zsuzsanna Emodi: viola
Gary White: recorder
Raphael Seligmann: production, arrangement, viola
for RVA Baroque
live at The Branch Museum, Richmond, VA
July 16, 2022
June 2019
Round House Concert Series, Richmond, VA
October 2018
Elegy-Meditation, 2015/rev. 2018
Myrick Crampton, tenor sax
Amos Goldie, viola
Robert Scott-Celedón, piano
Caleb Paxton, viola
Daniel Stipe, piano
live at Bellevue School, Richmond, VA
June 6, 2022
Caleb Flood, percussion, voice, flute [1]
Dave Desmeaux, bass guitar [2]
Pinson Chanselle, drumset [3]
Robert Scott-Celedón, guitar [1,3], synth [2]
Brooklyn, NY, November 2015
Richmond, VA, December 2015
Pine Mountain, Kentucky
November 2016
Letcher County, Kentucky, 2017
Hanover County, Virginia, 2018
Writing
A selection of short poems.
a dusty street corner
I reach
a junk shop—
the sort whose racks & shelves of
old tools & metal signs
are dragged daily outside—
& eventually
realize
I’m perusing Lou Harrison’s bookshelf.
The owner
walks up
& explains he
once’d been hired
to clear out Lou’s home
In the middle of one side
of the shelf
there’s a staircase
which I follow
up & into
a modest
concert hall mezzanine
inside the house
I find myself casually
in the presence
of Lou’s friends
who seem not to know he has died
—Perhaps, an earlier time, before
he’d gone
September 14, 2021
prison
in a sunny little rush
I savor this warmth
on my back
&
what is written.
But more
the play of light
&
chain-link shadow—
ripplings
upon the page
January 22, 2024
I fell asleep wondering
if any future
or past tenant
of this house we rent
would ever keep their bed
in the room
we use as the living room
How bout a bed
in what serves as our dining room?
I don’t hate these possibilities
but find them kind of appealing, refreshing.
I loved nights spent
in the common space
with friends, from out of town.
As a kid, sleepovers
were a birthday or weekend treat
Or with my siblings
on the living room floor,
sleeping bags
by the fireplace my dad mostly tended,
cartoons on tv in the morning.
My parents sometimes
would use the foldout sofabed,
five of us ending up
in some combination of these placements
*
Our couch pops
so easily out
It’s a signifier
of our lack
of fealty to the coming morning
We have no roommates
to contend with, or to irritate
—just kids
who we could share this with, but haven’t yet
They still are learning
to get to sleep.
I’ve always loved slumber parties
& insist
the inability of grown people
to make a habit
of socializing
without time constraint
makes much the loneliness
of adulthood
*
Would any person keep their bed in our house’s kitchen?
For medical reasons?
Out of obsession
maybe… with baking?
It’d be tight in there… but a cot
or a ‘single’ would fit.
I may
have misheard some principle
from thermodynamics, or cosmology
that given infinite time for wandering,
the elements in a space
will configure in every possible arrangement,
So, a thousand times…
Ten thousand…
A hundred thousand times…?
If we re & re-booted the tenancy
of this house,
how many tries
until
some person puts a bed in the kitchen
May 1, 2024
(even with some
magic windfall)
to live
in luxurious isolation
I am too homey
(of a person)
to guard
any fortune
I am too lonely a person
for a mansion
October 4, 2021
& soft joy when I was certain
A few flashes
assure more to come.
As a voice near-forgotten,
or morning’s dove cooing from Maryland
—recollection.
Night
patters on gutters
& trees & roof,
& through the ceiling
onto two attic steps,
Makes me silent.
to give all the space
to low rumblings
March 18, 2021
battin—
your paws outstretched,
Like a cat
boxin n
wearin backward
the unbuttoned
summershirt’chu gave me
It keep yer tummy warm
this evenin’,
beige-to-blue ombré
I would not
’ve likely chosen.
Goldenhour sun
’s glowin up
yer tan arms n cheek skin,
Shinin Vy’s braids
you done today
like a girl of Swiss summer, out
for pickin alps-
meadow wildflowers, but
in a dress—coral-pink
with highlighter-luminous tufting,
& tough black
gloves, fingerless
*
Up schoolyard hill
old gnarled
maples tower
& watch us,
vaguely menacing
We sneak
past ’em, post-picnic,
on our way back home
cross the street
*
You two in
a pre-bedtime bath routine
—sweet,
Till Violet’s
expression
twists deep, disturbed
Misheard us
discussing
whether or not
it is “time
to take out her brains”
Shakily, she ask now
if we’re gonna need
ta remove “Robert’s brains, too?”
*
We all crack up
at the frightful
mistake made
’cause it’s just—
her hair’s
a little tangled
July 16, 2024
no spirit
& no magic
are alive
in a house
without cracks
in the floors or folds
in old
upholstery
(for it)
to hide in - side
No wonder
March 17, 2021
Small fly on my hand
white butterfly, wasp
bees on the mountain mint
& milkweed.
Tall, white-flowered cosmos
bend in the breeze
All the way
All of this sways
All these wave in the sunheat
end-a-summer midday.
—
End-a-summer, midday
kalanchoe, sedum.
& coffee grounds, deer shit
What a break, a gift
to be free to see this,
to sleep past eleven,
to sit & watch
this all
—What a freedom
The bee weighing down
the speedwell branch
—Wow…
& then
the rebalance, rebound
So many on the mint
White butterfly weaves
through our backyard junk
Birds are quiet;
the crickets not.
—
For the first in a long time
we last night drank a lot
Then had a mix
of good & bad dreams,
lying beside you
They remind me
you were so tough
to trust
Hard to ask
for honest response.
But earlier
last night
I put all that aside,
behind us,
to treat the night like a date.
(& we’ll enjoy that same treat today)
We were initiated
into a strange room
at our familiar
spot below the street (—“if ya know you know”)
& wandered over to a late show, late.
I’ve had a lifelong thing
’gainst trying too hard
Complete acceptance, it seems
Couldn’t depend on games,
calculations,
behavior
Guess what I’m askin & offerin
’s somethin unusual:
to live outside
social valuation
—
Of all people
knew
you could be different, dude!
& our small olive tree looks good
Pokeweed’s almost contained;
squash vine not.
Wildly, lively it
has overtaken
the old clothesline post
& bird feeders hangin there.
Our wood windchimes
would soon’ve been soundless,
engulfed
We had ta move ’em
to that evergreen branch.
Now they click/clunk lovely
It’s my cue
to be quiet
—
There’re the birds
There’re the birds
words & music
September 15, 2024
solitary yester-
day of observation
this one
is filled with communion
Mostly unexpected, but
none more so
than when on the metro
as I star the corner
of a page of poetry
the guy
sitting next to me
says: wait,
you like that one
July 9, 2021
on near-black
backdrop,
twisted
around a barren branch
& another strand
outstretched & swaying,
just an inch
(or two) away
from a second
leafless limb
Watering the mimosa tree,
recovering in the evening
June 8, 2021
near the bottom hem in
the old secondhand t-shirt I’m wearing.
He asks
why there’s a hole there
& I show him the dozen-ish little ones
beginning to form up on the chest
He says, “oh,
why is your shirt breaking?”
I tell him I wish it wasn’t, but also
it is old.
“You wish it would stay like it is forever”
I do wish that
“But everything breaks,” he says
We agree
houses, & people, & plants
& even the rocks
all break, eventually
Nothing lasts forever & everything breaks eventually
he reconfirms for me
“No one told me, I just knew that.”
August 26, 2023
the far wall of the ravine, full bright
& the falls
were deafening
Mountain laurel
heaven, lush you
knew it happened somehow
& now
I wish badly
we could have let that child be
& better than me
I would cede my place
with you, in this world
that she could grow
more rightly than we grew
September 9, 2023
our eyes, you & I have
a different sight
a special practice—
Of Seeing
what is radiant
&& troubled (in the world);
what is both bleak
&& vital
We, together
don't be down-weighed,
not dull & sullen
These days, I’ve treasured
a feeling in my gut
—like hunger, psilocybin
don’t bury—cultivate
our Difference
It’s not what is (or how it’s) served up—
It is the bravery;
It’s the not recoiling.
Look—there is something stirring!,
shimmering
in All of it! We know
how to look
March 20, 2023
About
I’m Robert Scott-Celedón. I make poems and music that grow out of daily life—conversations, parenting, teaching, moments half-felt, half-thought. A glance in the park. A tension in the room. A familiar scent or sound. I follow undercurrents to see where they lead, what value they might hold.
Since 2022, I’ve taught music to incarcerated youth in a maximum-security facility, encouraging reflection, reframing, and conversation as ways to build agency and resilience. Whether studying the vibrations of a guitar string or sitting with the weight of a single word, I believe intentional creative practice can help us stay in the room with our own life.
I’ve taught traditional music in Eastern Kentucky public schools, was a Gilman Scholar at Tbilisi State Conservatoire, a community FM radio host, an electronics designer at Death By Audio, and a composer fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. I’ve also worked as an editor, including for Tonality: An Owner’s Manual by Dmitri Tymoczko.
Community is central to my work. Collaborations with RVA Baroque, Classical Revolution RVA, the RAIC improvisation collective, kroncong group Rumput, composer Peni Candra Rini, clarinetist Anna Koch, percussionist Kevin Zetina, pianist Vicky Chow, and violist Carrie Frey reflect an ongoing commitment to shared meaning-making across forms, genres, and traditions.
I live in Richmond, Virginia near Maymont Park, with one unfriendly cat, a friendly cat, my partner, and two human children.
free improvisation recording & performance collective
• latechimes.blogspot.com
writings & excerpts from articles & books
• youtube channel
arrangements, compositions (& some curated playlists)
• Rumput
Richmond-based Indonesian Kroncong music ensemble
• Rediscovering the 20th Century
incomplete archives of WRIR radio program (2012–2014)
• hickory house
experimental improvisation trio
• latechimes.bandcamp.com
personal composition bandcamp
• instagram.com/robertscottceledon
nomadic improviser & sound artist
• Norma Jean Haynes
folklorist, singer, banjoist
• Carrie Frey
NYC-based violist
• Vicky Chow
NYC-based pianist
• Kelly MacDonald
KY/OH-based guitarist & improviser
• Sara Louise Callaway (Soltau)
Louisville-based violinist
• RVA Baroque
committed to bringing pre-classical music to Richmond
• Classical Revolution RVA
committed to bringing composed music to Richmond
• Peni Candra Rini
Indonesian composer & vocalist
• Larry Polansky
CA-based composer
• Benjamin Broening
Richmond, VA-based composer
• Pill
collaborator Ben Jaffe’s no wave band
• Death By Audio
radical music electronics
• Studio Two Three
Richmond’s community print studio
• WRIR 97.3 FM
Richmond community radio
• WMMT FM
mountain community radio
• Cowan Creek Mountain Music School
traditional summer music program in eastern KY
• Bang on a Can
contemporary music organization
• Appalachian Luthiery
instrument workshop in eastern KY
approximately 2500 international traditional tunes
• hopp-zwei-drei.de/noten.html
approximately 200 international traditional tunes
• spillefolk.dk/nodesamling/
focus on Northern European & Scandinavian tunes
• goldov.com/butterw/emdb/scores.html
focus on Bulgarian tunes
• stammtischmusik.at/noten/noten.shtml
German & Austrian tunes
• digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13782
Middle Eastern Music Archive (MEMA) at William & Mary
• bouzoukispot.com/tabs.php
int’l Bouzouki tunes
• celticscores.com
many tunes from Ireland & Brittany
• crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/music.html
focus on English dance tunes
• tunearch.org/wiki/Category:Tune
Traditional Tune Archive (TTA)
• larkinthemorning.com/blogs/articles/lark-in-the-morning-free-music-library
several international & many English tune collections
• bluegrassmessengers.com/ballads--child-ballads-other-english-american.aspx
lyrics & tunes to child ballads & other traditional music
recordings of modern & contemporary poets
• Tom Johnson’s Music by my Friends
audio programs introducing a range of experimental composers
• Matt Marble’s Secret Sound podcast
diverse esoteric influences on American music