A couple of weeks ago, my piece Embers was performed on a concert of new works at Southeastern Louisiana University by Philip Schuessler, piano and Richard Schwartz, alto saxophone. The concert was a huge success. It was great to see so many students and faculty members participate in this concert, both as composers and as performers. There was quite a variety of pieces and styles represented and all were well-performed. The only hitch was of course due to technology (thankfully my piece was completely acoustic this time). One of the channels of our borrowed power amp turned out to be busted. However, the electronic works were still able to be performed, the composers just had to use the regular P.A. system of the recital hall (not great, it’s mostly for lecturing).
Phil and Rich did a great job on my piece. Here they are getting ready to perform:
I was able to get a decent recording this time. I’m still hoping we can do a studio recording once we are all finished with our finals and grading! Here’s the recording from the concert I recorded on my Sony PCM-D50. I also made a video, but I still need to edit that and this computer with its bum lower memory slot is of no help whatsoever.
Just two days until the Composers Concert at Southeastern Louisiana University! Philip Schuessler and Richard Schwartz will be performing my piece Embers for piano and saxophone. It should be a great show, as there seems to be a growing interest in new music and composition at SLU. The concert also features works by faculty composers Philip Schuessler, Stephen Suber, and Brian Hanson, and new pieces by student composers Daniele Lesniowski, Carter McFarland, and John Holley. Oh, and we have a special guest coming to present his music at the composers forum and on the concert Tuesday, Greg Robin.
After traveling for most of December (to Africa and Wisconsin), I have done my best to settle in and work on some new music. The new semester started in January, so my composition time has been sporadic at best. On top of that, I’ve been stuck in some kind of perpetual pre-compositional limbo for several new pieces that I want to write and have been stuck in post-compositional limbo on another piece.
As usual, I’ve got some grandiose compositional plans for 2012. Several pieces are planned and laying around in various pre-compositional stages. However, the time has come for me to focus on one or two things that I can work on regularly and complete within the next couple of months. I have decided to focus my energy for the near future on writing a new four-channel electroacoustic piece and on bringing my errant quintet Icons to a true state of completion.
A few years ago, I attended the last summer session at CCMIX (Center for the Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis). I spent a lot of my studio time there messing around with the UPIC system and I recorded a great deal of material. For those who don’t know, UPIC is a sort of synthesizer in which the parameters change over time based on an inputted score. However, the score is a drawing or sketch (Xenakis workshopped this with Kindergartners, who I’m sure got a big kick out if). Here’s some information about the original system, I worked on a computerized version developed in the 80s.
In my rudimentary experiments with the UPIC, I was surprised at how much sound you can get out of drawing just a few dots or lines. Then, by changing the parameters, you can create infinite variations out of a simple picture. I found that each picture is almost a miniature meta-piece. By applying different waveforms, frequency parameters, and processing options, you can get infinite variations on the simplest little scribbles, or structural variations by running the whole page. Unfortunately, my little UPIC drawings were left behind somewhere, so I can’t actually show them. They were pretty rudimentary however, nothing as fascinating as Xenakis’ drawings for Mycenae Alpha.
I’ve always been fascinated with the quirky, glitchy sounds that I created at CCMIX, so they are the basic sounds that I will be using in this new electroacoustic piece. The set of sounds is quite rich, ranging to analog mechanical types of sounds, Metastasis-like gestures, to granular types of sounds. I will be using some other programs to manipulate these sounds. I’ll probably be using some of my recent Max/Msp patches and Digital Performer. On the metalevel, I’ve got a superimposed textural plan & a Ulysses subtext in two panels.
Almost an intact miniature… I think there are gremlins in the speakers.
Alarm Will Sound has posted the world premiere recording of Rails on their soundcloud page.
Rails premiered in July 2011 at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival.
Here are the program notes for the piece:
Rails (2011) was inspired by the soundscape of Hammond, Louisiana. More specifically, it engages the sounds that I have heard on a daily basis since moving from Champaign, Illinois, to Hammond, Louisiana in August 2010. My apartment is two blocks away from two intersecting railroad tracks. One is the Illinois Central line, which runs from Chicago to New Orleans, the other is a freight track. Intermittently all day (and all night) I hear trains approaching and passing from different directions. These trains are too loud to simply ignore, and often it feels like there is a low-level earthquake shaking the apartment. The conductors of these trains tend to lay on the horn as they are passing through town, creating a long and varied sound as the train whistles are warped by their own mechanism, the atmosphere, and by speed and distance. Additionally, each of these trains has its own unique rhythmic profile, its own pattern of creaks, clicks and knocks, and its own speed. Each time a train passes; a unique sonic experience is created. Therefore, the sounds of these trains are very much a part of my piece, the spectra of their whistles, the rush of sound when they pass by, and their creaky mechanical rhythms. My apartment also looks out over a park, so my piece is also populated by pastoral sounds such as birds and wind chimes.
My courses at Southeastern Louisiana University have kept me pretty busy this Fall. Right before the semester began, I was asked to teach Form and Analysis and Modal Counterpoint. These two new courses have been a joy to teach, but have kept me on my toes all semester. Our last day of class is only two weeks away, December 1st. I am hoping winter break will provide me with some solid composition time and some new inspiration…
I’m going to Africa. No joke. I’m going on a safari with my family to South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I have been looking forward to this since the second I was invited to go along, and now it’s just two weeks away. I am going to take my audio recorder and video camera and collect lots of material. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but with my recent interest in site-specific sounds and soundscape, I am positive I will compose something. It’s hard to speculate, I’m just very excited about the trip at this point.
This semester, I have been trying to eek out time to work on my piece Icons, for T.V. Buddha Ensemble in Champaign, Illinois. It’s getting there… I should have a double bar line very soon.
Today I finally finished editing the score and instructions for Embers, my piece for saxophone and piano.
Sunday, I returned home to Louisiana after traveling to England for the annual International Computer Music Conference. This year’s conference was very well organized by the conference committee and I felt very welcome as soon as I arrived. All events took place on the University of Huddersfield campus, and many of us even stayed in one of the student dormitories. This made for a very close-knit community of electroacoustic composers, researchers, and performers and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of new friends and colleagues. Special thanks to Michael Clarke, conference chair; Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, music chair and technical director, Monty Adkins, paper chair, and Alex Harker, the board operator and my mix assistant at St. Paul’s Hall.
I was privileged to have my piece Dissolution for trombone and Max/Msp performed at the conference by Andrew Digby, a fabulous trombonist and new music expert who lives in Germany. Andrew frequently performs new music all around Europe and is a member of Ensemble Ascolta and the Composers Slide Quartet.
View of St. Paul's Hall (where Dissolution was performed) from the Creative Arts Building (photo by Steve Benner)
The Creative Arts Building at University of Huddersfield
It was an extremely intense week of concerts (I saw 12/13 concerts plus some UnConference concerts) and paper sessions. There was so much to do that of course there was no way to go to everything, but I did hear a lot of new electroacoustic/computer music and learn about some of the research people are doing in the field. Wednesday, there was a special field trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the ICMC banquet. I did not attend the banquet, but I did have some time to look around the park and at a fantastic Jaume Plensa exhibit. There was also a special “walk” organized by Michael Clarke on Saturday at the Mardsen Moor which I was able to attend part of before departing for Manchester.
Well, unfortunatly, my summer adventures are over. Classes at Southeastern Louisiana University start back up on August 17th. My next big adventure (to Africa) is about four months away.
Wow. The Mizzou New Music Summer Festival was an intense experience. The performance of Rails by Alarm Will Sound on Saturday night was truly the best performance I have ever had. Hopefully, I will be able to post some audio in a few weeks.
I have been blogging about the festival at NewMusicBox.org, where I have written a series of four posts about the festival.
Follow the link below and scroll down a bit for the interview questions which give some insight into how we all thought about our works and prepared for the festival.
For the past couple of months I have had my head completely underground composing a work for the MIZZOU New Music Summer Festival coming up July 10-17. This piece was written for Alarm Will Sound, one of the top American new music ensembles directed by Alan Pierson. This year, the festival will feature the music of guest composers Roger Reynolds and Anna Clyne. There is an interesting lineup of daily masterclasses, presentations and concerts. Although resident composers were not able to include electronics in their works, I am psyched to see that many of the other concerts will include electroacoustic works and pieces for instruments and electronics. I am really looking forward to this festival!
The piece that I wrote for Alarm Will Sound is titled Rails, which was inspired by the soundscape of Hammond, Louisiana (my current home). Here is the program note:
Rails (2011) was inspired by the soundscape of Hammond, Louisiana. More specifically, it engages the sounds that I have heard on a daily basis since moving from Champaign, Illinois, to Hammond, Louisiana in August 2010. My apartment is two blocks away from two intersecting railroad tracks. One is the Illinois Central line, which runs from Chicago to New Orleans, the other is a freight track. Intermittently all day (and all night) I hear trains approaching and passing from different directions. These trains are too loud to simply ignore, and often it feels like there is a low-level earthquake shaking the apartment. The conductors of these trains tend to lay on the horn as they are passing through town, creating a long and varied sound as the train whistles are warped by their own mechanism, the atmosphere, and by speed and distance. Additionally, each of these trains has its own unique rhythmic profile, its own pattern of creaks, clicks and knocks, and its own speed. Each time a train passes; a unique sonic experience is created. Therefore, the sounds of these trains are very much a part of my piece, the spectra of their whistles, the rush of sound when they pass by, and their creaky mechanical rhythms. My apartment also looks out over a park, so my piece is also populated by pastoral sounds such as birds and wind chimes.
Jasmine assisting with the composition of "Rails" (and no, I didn't stab her in the throat with the pencil)
With my piece finished, it’s time to satiate some of my wanderlust. Phil and I will be taking off in a couple of days for a 2-week camping adventure in Colorado or Appalachia. In July, after the MIZZOU New Music Summer Festival, I am also looking forward to ICMC in Huddersfield, England.
Embers, my latest work for saxophone and piano premiered March 19th at the North American Saxophone Alliance region 6 conference at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. This piece was written for Southeastern Louisiana University saxophone professor, Dr. Richard Schwartz. He was accompanied by Dr. Philip Schuessler (my astonishingly talented husband) on piano. The premiere performance was not recorded, but Phil and Rich are rehearsing the piece for a recording session next week. Here is an excerpt from their rehearsal today!
