Kari Besharse

Category Archives: Acoustic Music


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Forest Songs

I have just finished editing the score for Forest Songs Book I: HD Songs. This book includes the songs Huntress and Pursuit and is part of an ongoing project. Over the next few years I plan to add more songs to the collection. Ultimately, the songs in this work will be able to be performed as a long cycle, or mixed and matched in shorter collections.

Through these songs, a variety of subthemes and sentiments are approached – from environmentalism, to mythology and memory, to feelings of loss, loneliness and hopelessness, to expressions of beauty, the supernatural, the sublime; and to the inhabitants of the forest themselves – the trees, plants, creatures and otherworldly denizens. As a life-long hiker and camper, the forest holds special meaning to me – there is really no place I would rather be than lost in a forest.

Here is a preview of Huntress and Pursuit. Please contact me if you are interested in seeing the rest.

Huntress-preview

Pursuit-preview


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“Four Songs” performed on Astralis Duo’s Louisiana mini-tour

Earlier this week, I was ecstatic to hear two fantastic performances of my first song cycle performed by the Astralis Duo. These performances revived a work that I haven’t heard in almost thirteen years, and the songs have never sounded better. Soprano Stephanie Aston has an amazingly versatile voice with much color and sings these tricky songs with so much control and precision. Katalin Lucaks played the piano superbly, bringing out many hidden ideas in the piano part. The presentation itself was really well-done, and was accompanied by interactive video projections by New Orleans composer/video artist Peter Leonard.

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“Four Songs” is a piece I wrote in 2000 when I was a student at UT Austin. I set four poems by Donald Justice; Landscape with Little Figures, Song, Bus Stop and Presences. I hope to post a recording and/or video soon!


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Banff Centre

I started off 2014 with a short residency at the Banff Centre in Canada! I had a fantastic time playing in the snow, making new friends, going on wintry hikes and listening to some fantastic music performed by other residents. I did some composing too, in my little composer’s hut, #7, the Mendelssohn cabin. While small, it had all the essentials needed to work on a new exclusively acoustic piece, a set of songs with the provisional title, “Forest Songs.” For years, I have had a strong desire to get back into writing vocal music. My first and only journey intro writing for voice was about fourteen years ago, when I wrote “Four Songs” for soprano and piano on texts by Donald Justice. In a strange coincidence, it looks like these songs will be revived for several new performances in Louisiana this Spring (details to come).

A couple of years ago, I made several sketches for new songs with a forest/nature theme  and spent considerable time looking for texts. However, due to other projects, this new set of songs was pushed into the background until this month. I’m still looking for texts to go with my various sketches, but I have started two songs that use texts by Hilda Doolittle, “Huntress” and “Pursuit.” I am writing these songs for soprano and small chamber ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano). Ultimately, I hope to write five or six songs in this set and potentially, a couple of instrumental interludes.

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Summer Update!

Hey all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates. Here is what has been going on!

The Anemone Fragments for cello and electronics recently received its second performance at Music on the Mountain, Birmingham Alabama. The piece was once again performed by Craig Hultgren, cello accompanied by *yours truly* on electronics. Craig performed a whole concert of new/recent music for cello with and without electronics. The concert also contained a follow-up presentation of Craig’s Vox Novus project, 15 Minutes of Fame. Here is a recording of the performance.

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In other news, saxophonist Richard Schwartz is recording a new album of newish pieces for solo saxophone, with or without piano and/or electronic accompaniment. My piece Embers, is set to be the title track of his album, which will be released on Centaur Records later this year.

I’ve also been working away on finishing two pieces, Icons for clarinet, violin, bass, electric guitar, and percussion and Crickets and Gongs for orchestra.


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Worlds of Discovery and Loss: The Art of Migration

A few weeks ago I attended the Worlds of Discovery and Loss: The Art of Migration, a festival hosted at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis. This festival was more than a new music festival, it was a collaboration between several artistic disciplines including visual arts and theater. The festival was also infused with scholarly discourse through the inclusion of fascinating scholars like Isabel Wilkerson, Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University and Peter Kulchyski, Professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. This diversity created an interesting environment of dialogue and cross-pollination between disciplines with space to reflect on the overall theme of the festival, which was to examine “the creative worlds generated by different kinds of migration” and to explore “the ways in which artists cross various boundaries, both real and imagined.”

Within the larger theme of the festival, the musical offerings were diverse and quite strong. Participating ensembles included The Empyrean Ensemble, Rootstock Percussion, the Calder Quartet, and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra performing five concerts over the course of three days. The concerts included a variety of recent works, some classics, and works by composer fellows and the composer-in-residence, Lei Liang. As a composer fellow, I was fortunate to get the know the other composer fellows during seminars, concerts, meals and walks. Our guides were Lei Liang, the composer-in-residence along with UC Davis composition professors Laurie San Martin, Sam Nichols, and Kurt Rodhe.

Annie Hsieh, Ryan Suleiman, Tina Tallon, Kari Besharse

Composer Fellows Annie Hsieh, Ryan Suleiman, Tina Tallon, Kari Besharse duing a pre-concert talk

The Empyrean Ensemble premiered Black Grey Red Orange Grey Blue Grey for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, written last November specifically for the festival. When I was composing this piece, I was feeling an intense connection between emotional states, colors, and sounds almost in a synaesthetic way. Here is the recording from the world premiere performance:

“From glowing prismatic intensity to the blackest black, this piece explores specific colors and associated psychological states such as anger, despair, passion and contemplative sublimity. The emotional states came first, and when immersed in these states, one cannot help but see vivid colors and hear prismatic sounds. The colors refract and collide, ebb and flow, bleed into one another, intensify, are erased, then dissipate.”


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Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts

I spent the majority of June at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, a unique slice of artistic paradise near Saratoga, Wyoming. This residency center is on a 15,000 acre ranch, traditionally used for ranging cattle and horses. This place is truly amazing and inspiring. I spent my mornings, early afternoons, and evenings working on a new orchestra piece (still pending), and my late afternoons hiking around the ranch. The setting was incredible, high dry mountains (about 7,500 feet) with rocky outcroppings, moosey wetland areas, magical aspen groves, spring wildflowers, and the rocky creek itself, there was a lot of space and things for me to lose myself in. The other artists were fascinating, and I enjoyed our dinner conversations and extracurricular activities (Saratoga hot springs, Encampment Woodchoppers Jamboree and Rodeo, and Medicine Bow Peak hike) immensely.

The accommodations were great. I am especially missing my studio, The Armstrong Cabin, which was the original homesteader cabin on the ranch from the 1800’s. I especially loved my cliff swallows which nested right outside the window of the cabin and my Bosendorfer (I am currently piano-less).

I have left this paradise, but I hope to keep its magic and peace with me for a long time. I’m back in Louisiana now, working away on my orchestra piece and moving on (real) soon to a cello and electronics piece for Craig Hultgren.


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Embers

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.


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Southeastern Louisiana University Composers Concert

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.

 


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Coming Soon in 2012

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.

http://membres.multimania.fr/musicand/INSTRUMENT/DIGITAL/UPIC/UPIC.htm

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.