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Trio
2022
Alto Saxophone
Double Bass
Live Electronics
Vibraphone
- Program Notes
- I love the constraints and tools that allow creative systems to become "composable". Symbols, techniques, trained people, musical instruments, boxes, transducers, number machines, piezos, whatever... I composed this little piece, written expressly for the occasion of il Suono 2022, to include some of the many ways I have worked with varied technologies across 30 years of evolving practice. I was an adult before the internet became a thing, part of the generation that was enamored of the potentials for newer tech, science in the arts, and all that. Today, we are all overwhelmed and justifiably fearful of tech, yet ever since the Chimpanzee stuck a stick in a termite mound we have been with instruments, objects, and tools, right? The three instruments selected (a stretched string, a struck tuned metal bar, a single reed) are chosen as distinct types of instrumental technologies each offering different lanes of human engagement. The vibraphone excites me precisely because of its severe limitations. Re-exploring the known, I slowly become the vibraphone again. Then the alto saxophone whose hi-tech mechanical design depends mostly on the ancient single-reed system found on the walls of the Pharaonic Pyramids -- protruding from the mouth and source of life, the breath. I will never become the saxophone, so I collaborate and remain humble. Finally, the venerable long stretched string and the great resonant body of the double bass, a failure for the design of the orchestra really, but a gift to all of us who appreciate sound in its complexity. It is mostly the bassist who fully enjoys the depth of this amazing but shy instrument. I once sat for three full days with Stefano Scodanibbio as he generously led me through his labyrinthian caverns that blew my ears open to the possibilities and complexity of the bass. I will never solve it! Music composition can only be a collaborative act and every piece I compose is the on-going dance of all these things together -- emergence. Everything I have written stands to be rewritten by the people who are playing it. It is always the relationship that matters, and it is always time, or the lack thereof, that keeps us from finding what we want. Music. The score, the objects, the composer, the performers, the listeners, are only parts of the larger search -- clues that sometimes lead to new music. Let's hear it. It is why I went back and started composing for ancient Korean instruments that have remained unchanged for 5000 years! Composing with complexity of all types requires emerging technologies, be they graphic, computational, or physical. My life's work concerns a "cyborgian turn". I was fully trained and formed as a composer before the internet was a thing, and I absorbed the training that had to do with reverent valuation of compositional practices that have been handed down for at least the last three centuries. When I turned 30, I made a life project decision to give myself over to the idea of integrating with all the technologies that anyone paying attention through the 80's could see was coming. This aesthetic was not about replacing or abandoning values but was more about extending reaches and altering constraints for the purpose of seeking new music.
- Recording Notes
- Premiere Performace for the 2022 Il Suono Contemporary Music Week where I was one of the faculty composer mentors.
- Performer Credits
- Ensemble Suono Giallo
- Publisher
- self