|
innova
114 Sonic
Circuits 5
1.
Lawrence Fritts: Minute Variations (5:00) 2.
Robert Normandeau: Le renard et la rose (SOCAN) (5:00) 3.
Eirik Lie 112 Par Sko (TONO) (6:31) 4.
Colby Leider: Veni Creator Spiritus (4:00) 5.
Mike Olson: Office Furniture from Outer Space (BMI) (6:26) 6.
Orchid Spangiafora: Radios Silent (5:18) 7.
Michael Schell/Jerry Hunt: Song Drape 2 (BMI) (6:00) 8.
Beatriz Ferreyra: Soufle d'un petit Dieu distrait (13:23) 9.
Katharine Norman: Hard Cash (and small dreams of change)
(ASCAP) (10:40)
Lawrence
Fritts: Minute Variations
Minute
Variations is based on a one-minute spoken text by Australian
sound-poet Chris Mann [chrisman@interport.net]. After its opening
statement in its original form, material from this theme undergoes
four one-minute variations. The first three variations spin out of
the remarkable energy of the theme. Here, both overt and minute
variations of pitch and timbre are accompanied by ever more dramatic
transformations that turn the voice into a quasi-percussion ensemble.
During the third variation, these percussion sounds are gradually
transformed back into speech sounds that percussively accompany a
voice that is beginning to learn how to sing. The fourth variation
consists only of the singing voice, as soloist, then choir. The work
was realized in the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios on a
Kyma Digital Signal Processing System, and written in response to an
open invitation from Frog Peak Music (A Composers' Collective)
[http://www.sover.net/~frogpeak/]. The work also appears on the Frog
Peak Collaborations Project CD.
Lawrence
Fritts is director of Electronic Music Studios and assistant
professor of composition at the University of Iowa. He received his
Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Chicago, where he studied
with Shulamit Ran, Ralph Shapey, and John Eaton. His electronic works
have been performed and broadcast in the US and Europe. His writings
on music and mathematics appear in Music Theory Spectrum and
Abstracts of the American Mathematical
Society.[lawrence-fritts@uiowa.edu]
Robert
Normandeau: Le renard et la rose [The Fox and the Rose]
Le
renard et la rose [The Fox and the Rose] is a concert suite
composed from two sound sources: the music commissioned by
Radio-Canada for the radio play adapted from The Little Prince
by Antoine de St-Exupéry (produced by Odile Magnan in 1994),
from which one can retrieve the main themes, and the voices of the
actors who participated in the radio play. This piece was composed in
the personal studio of the composer in 1995-96 with the financial
assistance of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
It was commissioned by the Banff Center for the Arts with the
financial assistance of the Canada Council for the 1995 International
Computer Music Conference. The piece was awarded the Golden Nica
(First Prize) at the Prix Ars Electronica 1996 (Linz, Austria).
Robert
Normandeau was born in Québec City, Canada in 1955. His
specialization, since 1984, is in acousmatic composition. His work
adopts the perspective of a "cinema for the ear" where the
meaning as well as the sound contributes to the composition. He
received his master of music (1988) and doctor of music (1992) in
composition from Université de Montréal. He is a
founding member of both the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and
of Réseaux, a concert society (1991). He is a prize-winner of
the Bourges, Phenurgia Nova, Luigi-Russolo, Musica Nova,
Noroit-Léonce Petitot, Stockholm, and Ars Electronica (Golden
Nica, 1996) international competitions. Since 1988, he has been a
lecturer on the music faculty of the Université de Montréal.
His works are included on many compact discs, among them are two solo
discs: Lieux inouis and Tangram, both published by
empreintes DIGITALes. [normandr@ere.umontreal.ca]
Eirik
Lie: 112 Par Sko [112 Pairs of Shoes]
This
piece was written to commemorate the centenary of one of the worst
natural disasters in Norway's history: the landslide in Verdal in
1893, which claimed the lives of 112 people. The piece is quite
programmatic, with simulations of the deep rumble just before the
slide, the terror screams of the victims (some of which actually
sailed along several kilometers on the slide on the remains of their
houses before they drowned in the mud), and finally a requiem. The
music was part of an installation consisting of lights, smoke, and a
large-scale model of the landslide site, complete with mud, moving
houses, and sculptures of people crying for help. The installation
was visited by approximately 30,000 people over a four-month period.
The piece, which was recorded solo in one take without overdubs, is
played by Eirik Lie on a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar.
Eirik
Lie, of Oslo, Norway is a musician/composer who has spent the greater
part of his career working with music for visual contexts. He has
written music for numerous fringe theater groups, installations,
exhibitions, and short films. He has also played with numerous rock,
blues, and jazz bands. Although his primary instrument is the guitar,
the MIDI revolution of the mid-1980s influenced him to begin playing
keyboards and to use electronics. [eirik.lie@notam.uio.no]
Colby
N. Leider: Veni Creator Spiritus
Veni
Creator Spiritus [Come Holy Ghost] is based on the opening phrase
of MS. Wolfenbuttel 1099 36v. The work is a process piece comprised
of several vertical layers and uses sonic granules of varying
duration. The same short sample, taken from the Hilliard Ensemble's
recording Perotin (ECM 1385 78118-21385-2) by kind permission
of Paul Hillier, is used in all layers, but very different timbres
are produced because the material is treated differently in each
layer. A flanging effect is achieved by allowing the compositional
process to proceed at different rates in the spatial domain.
Colby
N. Leider is a composer currently pursuing a master's degree in
electro-acoustic music at Dartmouth College where he studies with Jon
Appleton, Charles Dodge, and Larry Polansky. He also studied organ
with Frank Speller and composition with Donald Grantham while working
towards a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Texas at Austin in 1992. He has been involved in the
design and creation of new performance interfaces for live
electroacoustic music, and his music incorporates materials from
medievalmusic into tape and live electronic idioms.
[cnl@dartmouth.edu]
Mike
Olson: Office Furniture from Outer Space
Office
Furniture from Outer Space was originally written as an
all-electronic, computer-aided, performance piece for three live
players and computer for the 1992 Electronic Art and Design Awards
show in Minneapolis. This tape however, is a studio version of the
piece and makes use of a little electric guitar in places. It starts
out with a completely unplanned free improvisation with Richard Paske
on Bass, Homer Lambrecht on Electronic wind instrument and Mike Olson
on Minimoog (synthesizer). This eventually gives way (when the drums
enter) to scored-out material with an improvisational Minimoog solo.
The electric guitar is played by Jason Goodyear.
Mike
Olson is self-employed as an independent composer/producer of music
and custom audio for interactive multimedia. He received his formal
musical training at the University of Minnesota and currently works
out of his home studio in South Minneapolis. [olson247@tc.umn.edu]
Orchid
Spangiafora: Radios Silent
The
title Radios Silent comes from a sign on buses in
Philadelphia. I like the way it sounds. For me the sibilance between
the two words makes it nearly unpronounceable. It has a similar
effect on my ear to "Clean Fleer," which I believe was the
name of a Rock band in the late 1970s. Radios Silent was made
using really cheap hardware. Most of the loops were dubbed onto
cassette and played back onto a very low end Akai home reel to reel
machine. The noisy section in the middle of the piece was recorded
using a "Yamaha VSS 30 Digital Voice Sampler," which was
basically a toy keyboard sold through places like Toys-R-Us in the
mid1980's. Much of the radio material was miked off a vest pocket
transistor radio.
Orchid
Spangiafora attended Hampshire College in the early 1970s where most
of the material that would wind up on the Twin/Tone records release
Flea Past's Ape Elf was recorded. [carey@seas.upenn.edu]
Michael
Schell/Jerry Hunt: Song Drape2
Jerry
Hunt's Song Drapes are pre-composed accompaniments to
unspecified texts, which can be delivered vocally or in any manner
desired by the performer. Schell's realization of Drape 2 features
some tape-recorded phone conversations of Texas's most famous
political figure, who is heard speaking to his wife, a patronized
beautician and an intimidated U.S. Senator. Song Drape 2 also
appears on the Musicworks 65 CD (Summer 1996).
Jerry
Hunt was born in Waco, Texas in 1943, and lived in Texas until his
suicide in 1993. A pianist by trade, Hunt studied numerous cultivated
and popular styles. His interest in composition evolved from his
study of the keyboard, and he began working extensively with
electronic keyboards and instruments. Frustrated with the limitations
of electronic keyboards and other conventional controllers in the
1970's, he built sensor arrays using video cameras, infrared
detectors and ultrasound generators. His compositions reflect his
extensive knowledge of mystical systems, particularly those of
alchemy, Goetic Theurgy, Tarot, voodoo and Kabbala. The dominant
theme in Hunt's work is mysticism as a precedent in cultural memory
for the agents of modern technology. The importance of his stature as
a pioneer in the history of American music is only now beginning to
be recognized.
Like
Hunt, Michael Schell was born in Waco, Texas in 1961. He grew up in
Los Angeles and attended the University of Southern California, where
he studied with Robert Moore and Frederick Lesemann. He earned his
master's degree in 1985 from the University of Iowa, where he studied
music and video with Kenneth Gaburo and Hans Breder. A composer and
intermedia artist, Schell is known for his video performances, which
explore contemporary themes of longing, isolation, science and the
environment, and for his electronic music performances using
synthesizers and samplers in addition to electric flexlamps and
prepared autoharps. Both interests are reflected in his work with
77Hz, the electronic arts ensemble he co-founded in 1991.
[schell77@aol.com] [http://members.aol.com/Schell77/sd.htm]
Beatriz
Ferreyra: Soufle d'un petit Dieu distrait [A Little distraught God's
breath]
Beatriz
Ferreyra was born in Argentina in 1937. She has composed steadily
since 1968, and collaborated in films, ballets, concerts, and
festivals in France and elsewhere. Her studies included: piano study
with Celia Bronstein in Buenos Aires, harmony and musical analysis
study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and composition study with
György Ligeti and Earl Brown in Germany. Non-occidental musical
systems and music therapy have been the focus of her research in
France and other countries. She has also investigated new techniques
of composition as a result of new methods of musical pedagogy. She
has worked at the ancient O.R.T.F. in Paris with Pierre Schaeffer and
collaborated in the realization of his Traité de l'Objet
Musical and Solfége de l'Objet Sonore. She has also worked
with Bernard Baschet on his Structures Sonores and his new
musical instruments. Dartmouth College invited her to work with the
Bregman Electronic Music Studio in 1975. In addition to her
compositional work, she has been an adjudicator of several
international competitions.
Katharine
Norman: Hard Cash (and small dreams of change)
Hard
Cash (and small dreams of change) uses interviews made on the
streets of London, and recordings of a fun-fair on Brighton Pier.
Throughout the piece the texture is woven with the sound of a
spinning coin, in various guises. The work is an ironic elegy for the
sound of hard cash, and a scherzo for our small dreams of change. It
seeks to merge the hard, unfinished quality of location-recorded
sound, perhaps, the aural equivalent of the hand-held camera, with
the computer-transformed reality of filtered tones and pitches; a
computer music program that explores how things are, how things seem,
and how they might be.
Katharine
Norman is a British composer, based in London. She studied at
Princeton University, and held various academic posts in the UK
before deciding on a freelance career. Her computer music attempts to
cross a divide between abstract music and aural documentary. A CD of
her recent work, entitled London, is available on the NMC label and
was voted one of the albums of the year by The Wire magazine.
Other pieces are available on Discus and Diffusion i Média
labels. As a writer, she edited, and contributed to A Poetry of
Reality: Composing with Recorded Sound; Contemporary Music Review.
Until recently, she was a director of the Sonic Arts Network.
Currently, she is on the board of the International Computer Music
Association. [kate@novamara.demon.co.uk]
[www.novamara.demon.co.uk/kn.html]
Sonic
Circuits V is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation Producer:
Philip Blackburn Advisory
panel: Harold Fortiun, Jan Gilbert, Craig Harris, Richaard Paske,
David Revill, Chris Strouth, Pete Thomas Sequenced:
Chris Strouth, Philip Blackburn Thanks
to Luther Ranheim for liner notes
The
American Composers Forum offers some twenty programs that link
communities with composers and performers. Founded in 1973 as the
Minnesota Composers Forum, it now has more than 1,100 members in
forty-eight U.S. states and sixteen other countries. It is the
publisher of innova recordings and of Sounding Board, a
monthly newsletter for the new-music community.
|
