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innova
115 Sonic
Circuits VI: International Festival of Electronic Music
1.
Warren Burt (Australia): La Strega Bianca Della Luna II (The
White Witch of the Moon) [APRA] (8:06) 2.
David Barnes (MA): Panic in Legoland (5:10) 3.
Paul Koonce (NJ): Walkabout [ASCAP] (16:30) 4.
Pedro Rebelo (Scotland): 1st of 3 Shorts about Noise and Rhythm
(3:13) 5.
André Ruschkowski (Germany): Les pas interieurs (Inner
Steps) (11:12) 6.
Rasmus B. Lunding (Denmark): Det Nødvendige (The
Necessity) [KODA] (14:15) 7
Stephen Montague (England): Tigida Pipa [PRS] (9:30)
Warren
Burt: La Strega Bianca della Luna II
La
Strega Bianca della Luna II (The White Witch of the Moon #2) is a
twelve- tone composition in five simultaneous equal temperaments: 13,
17, 23, and 29-tone tuning. Each of five sine wave synthesizers is
tuned to the nearest pitches in one of these scales to standard
twelve-tone tuning. All five synthesizers then play the same five
voice, twelve-tone canon simultaneously. This results in each tone
being not a steady tone, but a complex sound with many different
rhythmic beat patterns. The harmonies that are formed do not then
conform to standard tuning, but make a series of unique sounds, each
with its own beat pattern and timbre. The piece was made with John
Dunn's "Kinetic Music Machine" algorithmic composition
software. Each time the piece is performed, the program generates a
different twelve-tone row to form the structural basis for the piece.
This recording is an eight-minute version of the piece that was
originally installed in the Warrnambool (Australia) Art Gallery
between April 29 and May 3, 1998, which was funded by a grant from
Arts Victoria, the Victorian state arts funding board.
Warren
Burt is a composer, writer, radio producer, and video and computer
graphics artist who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He has
performed his music in Europe, the U.S., and Australia and New
Zealand. Most recently, a recording of his computer voice opera Miss
Furr and Miss Skene, to a text by Gertrude Stein, was released by
VOYS, Inc. of Minneapolis, and he received an Australian Composer's
Fellowship for the years 1998-2000. [waburt@melbourne.dialix.oz.au]
David
Barnes: Panic in Legoland
Over
the last fourteen years David Barnes has grown accustomed to using a
multi-track tape recorder as his primary compositional tool. His
experimental compositions use a wide range of acoustic and electronic
instruments and sounds which he records one track at a time and
arranges during mixdown.
Panic
in Legoland is his first work composed entirely on computer using
sampled sounds. Barnes loves the level of control that this type of
composing offers, but the price is the number of hours that a
perfectionist can spend getting a piece just right. Legoland
was composed in eight months.
The
samples in this piece include: Didjeridu (by Daniel Orlansky), kit
drumming (by Barnes), tenor sax (by David Peck), bubbling water,
scissors, distorted conga, distorted bass hammer dulcimer, an iron
bowl-shaped sculpture, creaking door hinges, chainsaw, groaning
toilet plumbing, hubcaps, vocal sounds, electric guitar, a box of
Legos, and a circuit-bent electronic instrument made from a "Speak
and Math." No synthesizers. [barnz@javanet.com]
Paul
Koonce: Walkabout
"The
focus of my recent electroacoustic music has been on the integration
of environmental sounds with the traditional sounds and styles of
instrumental music. The goal behind this has been to explore ways in
which more conventional sounds and idioms can be reenchanted through
engagement with the extramusical associations of the environment and
its places.
"Walkabout
(1998) continues this rich exploration of environment and music, with
a work whose particular focus is on the juxtaposition and threading
of musical styles..."Into this arena of musical argument and
delight is where Walkabout takes us as it elicits a host of
particulars driven out by its chronic siren call reverberating in
every tableau along the way. Like a mooring for memory's alchemical
trip through all that does not belong, it both calls and warns of the
epic escape, romantic even, which this circuitously wrought path
promises. Or so it would seem to the ears of this composer who would
imagine it, want it and all the serendipitous rejuvenation it
promises, for this is the story of no one's path but my own through
the escape of one's more sensible ways to other places. Yes, it is
for want of the stories of leave taken, of escape and return and
getting lost, of reports of having been found missing and seen not
here but there, that I have told this now retravelled tale, of places
gone and things seen on the walkabout path I took."
Paul
Koonce (b 1956) studied composition at the University of
Illinois, and the University of California, San Diego, where he
received a Ph.D. in music. He has produced compositions in the
electronic, computer, and acoustic media which have been presented in
the International Festival of Computer Music, Japan; the Roulette
Concert Series, New York; the San Francisco New and Unusual Music
Series; the Darmstadt Festival for New Music, Germany; the Kunst
Museum, Bern Switzerland; and New Music America, Montreal. He has
received awards and commissions from the Luigi Russolo International
Competition for Composers of Electronic Music, the National Flute
Association, Prix Ars Electronica Electronic Arts Competition, the
Electroacoustic Music Contest of Sao Paulo, the International
Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, and is the recipient
of a McKnight Foundation fellowship through the American Composers
Forum. He is currently assistant professor of composition at
Princeton University. [koonce@music.princeton.edu]
Pedro
Rebelo: First of 3 Shorts about Noise and Rhythm
This
set of three pieces explores transitions and ambiguities between
periodic rhythm and noise. Only the first is heard here; the
remaining sections further explore periodicity, discontinuity, and
disruption. The first piece starts with self-contained fast rhythms
which gradually become fragmented into less controlled, "played"
gestures.
Pedro
Rebelo (b 1972) studied electroacoustic composition at UEA,
Norwich (England) with Simon Waters at master's level. Presently a
doctoral student under the supervision of Nigel Osborne, Peter
Nelson, and Richard Coyne at Edinburgh University, Rebelo's approach
to music making is defined by the use of improvisation and
interdisciplinary structures. He has been involved in several
collaborative projects with visual artists and is currently exploring
the relationships between architecture and music in virtual
environments. Both his instrumental and tape music have been
performed in festivals and concert series across Europe, the U.S. and
Australia.
André
Ruschkowski: Les pas interieurs
"The
sonic point of departure for my composition Les pas interieurs
(Inner Steps)--realized at Studio "La Muse en Circuit"
Paris--were recordings made in the immediate surroundings of the
studios in Paris in August 1997. I captured the sounds of peoples'
footsteps walking or running in this specific acoustic environment,
with their various characteristics and tempi. As a contrast to this
'concrete' sound material, electroacoustic sound generated by means
of Granular Synthesis also was used. All material was transformed and
fit into a structure which largely corresponds to the original sound
recordings.
"The
original source material is perceptible in the final composition only
at certain moments, for it is overcast by heavy electronic
transformations, and in others, the volume is sometimes much reduced
for reasons of musical dramaturgy. This process could be
described--in analogy to fine arts--as an 'acoustic layering
technique.' The title Les pas interieurs thus refers both to
the sonic point of departure, and to dynamic transitions between
different musical states in successive stages of this composition."
André
Ruschkowski (b 1959, Berlin Germany) received his Ph.D. in
musicology in 1993 at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. He began
his compositional studies in1984 and has been composer-in-residence
at several studios for electronic music (i.e. Berlin, Paris, and
Vienna). Since 1992 he has lectured at the Music Academy "Mozarteum"
in Salzburg (Austria), the Technische Universität Berlin, and
the University of Cologne (Germany). He currently is professor for
Electronic Music at the "Mozarteum" at Salzburg, where he
directs the Electronic Music Studio of the composition department. He
has won prizes and mentions from various competitions for electronic
music (i.e. Italy, France). His works are recorded on CD's of Ton
Art, Berlin and "La Muse en Circuit" Paris.
[andre.ruschkowski@moz.ac.at]
Rasmus
B. Lunding: Det Nødvendige
Det
Nødvendige (The Necessity) is based on a poem by Thorkild
Bjørnvig--one of several "environmental poems" he
has written since 1960, all dealing with the natural environment and
the interaction of man in all aspects. The piece was written for, and
originally performed in a twenty-five-speaker version at
Sound/Gallery on the main square in Copenhagen.
"In
dealing with the musical context my goal was to try and achieve the
mix of poetic phrasing and a very straightforward sort of
"poem-concrète" one finds reading Bjornvig's poems.
The basics of the composition were recordings of singer Line
Tjørnhøj-Thomsen singing and reading the poem. These
recording were then transformed, or used to transform other sound
sources into hybrids of their own, relating to the mutant-like
environmental state of society described in the poem by Bjørnvig.
The form of the piece was derived from the poem itself, and a very
anarchistic approach was deliberately used in 'constructing' the
piece."
The
piece was executed at DIEM (Danish Institute for ElectroAcoustic
Music) in Århus, Denmark, and awarded a grant by the Danish Art
Council. Construction, bass, and percussion--Rasmus B. Lunding;
Voice--Line Tjørnhøj-Thomsen; Percussion--Henrik
Corfitsen
Thorkild
Bjørnvig (b 1918) is recognized as one of Danish
poetry's foremost writers. Beside his primary work, he has also
gained recognition as a researcher, analyst, and translator (being
the prime translator of Rainer Maria Rilke's and Hölderlin's
works in Denmark). Bjørnvig has been writing and publishing
his "environmental poems" since the mid-sixties. Through
these poems (and several essays) he has shared his huge knowledge and
concern for all aspects of environmental issues long before any
politician would recognize water pollution as an existing factor at
all, for example. Along with all this, Bjørnvig is recognized
as one of the major writers in Nordic poetry this century for his
many subtle and complex works. Still, the sense of nature, as a
sensation in its own right, as a metaphysical encounter, is often (if
not always) a very important factor in these works, as well.
Starting
out in the late punk scene in Århus, Rasmus Bruuse Lunding
gained recognition as one of the more weird and intuitive guitar
players emerging in Denmark around that time. Later the musical
horizon was widened a bit through encounters with rock, jazz and
improvisational groups and musicians mainly in Århus, but
around Europe, as well. Since the beginning of the nineties Lunding
has devoted his time primarily to composing, basically for smaller
ensembles and, since 1995, for computer. Although he deals with
sound, his main inspiration comes maybe not so much from music but
from people like Bjørnvig and Henry David Thoreau and their
approach, not only to their work, but to life itself.
Lunding
has also worked as technical coordinator at theICMC94 (International
Computer Music Conference) in Århus, and attended classes in
software synthesis and digital sound processing at DIEM. Lunding had
a piece presented at ICMC97, and has been featured on several
releases over the years, in groups as well as solo.
[ras.blund@get2net.dk]
Stephen
Montague: Tigida Pipa For
4 voices playing woodblocks and claves, and tape. Singcircle: Suzanne
Flowers, Jacqueline Horner, Angus Smith, Martin Elliott; Stephen
Montague (sound diffusion); Gregory Rose--conductor
Tigida
Pipa was composed in Ghent, Belgium, and completed in London in
January, 1983, but revised several times until 1989. The text
consists of invented words and percussive sounds whose inherent
rhythmic structure propels the work at breakneck speed through a
rondo of sonic adventures. It was described by The Financial Times
(London) as "...a tongue-twisting, tempo-twisting vocal toccata
brilliantly sustained" and by Opera magazine as "...a
virtuoso ritual for percussionists-cum-vocalists, ebullient and
inventive far beyond the Steve Reich school of minimalism." The
work was inspired by some of the invented text compositions of Frank
Denyer and written for the London virtuoso vocal ensemble Singcircle
(director, Gregory Rose).
The
original tape (using the sounds of Godfried-Willem Raes's home-made
log drums) was realized at IPEM/Belgian Radio Studios, Ghent, in the
Autumn of 1982 and winter of 1983. The 1989 revision was realized in
the composer's studio in London.
Tigida
Pipa was commissioned by Elms Concerts for Singcircle with funds
provided by the Arts Councilof Great Britain. The first performance
was February 19, 1983, at London's Rosslyn Hill Chapel (Hampstead)
with Singcircle (Gregory Rose, conductor). Tigida Pipa also
appears on a Continuum (New Zealand) CD: Stephen
Montague--Orchestral and Chamber Music (Continuum CCD 1061),
1994.
Stephen
Montague (b 1943, New York) studied at Florida State and Ohio
State universities and went to Warsaw, Poland, on a Fulbright
Scholarship 1972-74. From there he moved to England where he has
based his wide-ranging freelance composition career ever since. He
was a founder and chairman of the Sonic Arts Network concert series,
and has served as chairman and artistic director for the Society for
the Promotion of New Music. [SRMontague@aol.com]
Each
year the American Composers Forum curates a program of live, video,
and audio electro-acoustic music and art by composers around the
world. The program is reproduced and then sent out as a DIY kit for
interested venues to prepare their own presentations. (To find out
more about acting as a host for a Sonic Circuits event, contact ACF.)
Over 135 composers have been programmed since 1993 on international
radio stations and at many sites such as Minneapolis and St. Cloud,
MN, Chicago, IL, Starkville, MS, Cedar Rapids, IA, East Lansing, MI,
Boston, MA, Tacoma, WA, and Santa Fe, NM. In this way composers,
performers and listeners alike catch an up-to-date glimpse of what is
being done at the cusp where music, art, and electrons meet.
Sonic
Circuits is supported by the Jerome Foundation Producer:
Philip Blackburn Thanks
to the following curators and helpers: Ryan Brown, Brian Heller,
Scott Miller, Chris Strouth, Pete Thomas, and Pamela Z. Mastered
by Paul Stark at Twin Tone Records. Graphic
Design: PhilipBlackburn, Chris Strouth
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 and
over ten chapters in U.S. cities. It is the publisher of innova
Recordings and of Sounding Board, a monthly newsletter.
Membership is open to all.
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