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innova
116 Sonic
Circuits VII: International Festival of Electronic Music
José
Halac: The Breaking of the Scream (10:52) Mark
Applebaum: Dead White Males ReMix (6:03) Mario
Verandi: Figuras Flamencas (12:30) Mike
Frengel: Long Slender Heels (3:15) Thomas
Gerwin: Rollenspiel r2(17:02) Christina
Agamanolis: Aftermath (5:27) Timothy
Oesau: Angola du Sons (6:20) Hideko
Kawamoto: Night Ascends from the Ear like a Butterfly (8:10)
José
Halac: The Breaking of the Scream
The
Breaking of the Scream is based on a poem by Argentine poet Pablo
Anadon and a traditional folk song from the Northwest of Argentina.
The poem, originally in Spanish, is entitled "Seasons of the
Tree" and is centered around the idea of the departure of the
loved one and the painful remains of the sentiments no longer
recognized (for full text see: www.SonicCircuits.com). The folk song
describes the purely carnal and sexual desire of a man who compares
himself with a tiger. These two ideas are merged with screams,
chanting, drums, and electronic manipulation of these sources. After
my very own experience, I can describe this piece as THE ultimate
homage to divorce.
José
Halac is an Argentine-American composer whose music has concentrated
in recent years on the merging of western techniques of composition
with popular musics, voices and indigenous singing from South America
and the rhythms of Northwest Argentina, resulting in a new and avant
garde world music. Halac received a 1994 National Endowment for the
Arts grant to write a song cycle, a 1998 New York State Council for
the Arts grant, seven ASCAP Standard Awards, the 1996 International
Music Council-UNESCO Rostrum Award, as well as several Meet the
Composer Grants. [jose@interport.net]
Mark
Applebaum: Dead White Males ReMix
In
1993, the American Composers Forum commissioned the orchestral work
Dead White Males. In this 1998 ReMix I collected
digital samples from the recorded premiere, and through rather
prosaic operations I arrived at this piece--one which has little, if
anything, to do with the discursive vector of the original orchestral
work. One area of fascination for me is inherently postmodern: the
aesthetic squeezing of plastic sounds--themselves containing a
particular modernist investment from my own compositional past--into
the foreign working conditions of the software: industrial,
techno-oriented, cinematic. Dead White Males ReMix used Pro
Tools software as its compositional platform.
Mark
Applebaum received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San
Diego where he worked with Brian Ferneyhough. His music has been
performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia with notable
premieres at ICMC and the Darmstadt sessions. He has received
commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company,
the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and Zeitgeist, among others. He is the
recipient of the American Music Center's 1997 Stephen Albert Award
and served as the Dayton-Hudson Visiting Artist at Carleton College.
He currently teaches at Mississippi State University. Applebaum has
two CDs on the innova label: Mousetrap Music and The Janus
ReMixes. [apple@ra.msstate.edu]
Mario
Verandi: Figuras Flamencas
Composed
in the Electroacoustic Music Studios at Birmingham University, the
source materials for Figuras Flamencas include samples from
Spanish flamenco music and spoken texts from Blood Wedding by
Federico García Lorca. By means of sound manipulations on the
computer a new surreal parallel sound world is originated from the
recognizable flamenco sound world. The musical discourse flows as a
sequence of superimposed and juxtaposed transformations and
confrontations between the flamenco world and the surreal world. The
piece intends to evoke a metaphorical journey across a flamenco
dreamland which is "corrupted by surreal sonic creatures."
Lorca's texts were the source of inspiration behind the music as well
as the core element to organize the musical discourse.
Mario
Verandi is a composer and sound artist born into a theatrical family
in San Nicolas (Buenos Aires) where he later studied music and
computing at college. In 1986 he moved to Barcelona and joined the
Phonos Electronic Studios where he had an intensive period of
learning, experimenting and performing using electroacoustic means.
In 1990 he made London his home and in 1994 he completed a M. Mus. at
Birmingham University where he is currently finishing a Ph.D. in
composition. His work has received a number of prizes and awards such
as a prize in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards
'96, a main prize in the Musica Nova Awards '96 in Prague, a prize in
the CIEJ Musics Electronics Awards '89 in Barcelona, a Finalist Prize
in the Bourges International Music Awards '98, an Honorary Mention in
the Prix Ars Electronica '97 in Linz, Austria and in the Stockholm
Electronic Art Awards '97. In addition, the DAAD (Germany) has
awarded him a grant for the artists-in-residence program in Berlin in
the year 2000. Figuras Flamencas also appears on Cultures
Electroniques Vol.6, France.[mev533@isdugp.bham.ac.uk]
Mike
Frengel - Long Slender Heels
Long
Slender Heels was composed in 1999 at the Bregman
Electro-Acoustic Music Studio at Dartmouth College. Composer Mike
Frengel graduated with a B.A. degree in electroacoustic music from
San Jose State University in 1995, where he studied with Allen
Strange and Dan Wyman. He spent another two years in the Bay Area
working at Apple Computers as well as remaining affiliated with the
C.R.E.A.M. Studios at SJSU as a Research Scientist. Frengel received
an M.A. in electro-acoustic music from Dartmouth College in 1999,
where he studied with Jon Appleton, Charles Dodge, Larry Polansky,
and Christian Wolff. He is now at City University in London, where he
is working towards a Ph.D. in electroacoustic music. Frengel's
compositions have been included on the ICMC '95, CDCM Vol. 26 compact
disc, performed live at numerous international music events, and
broadcast over American, Canadian, French, and Slovak radio and the
World Wide Web.
[Michael.C.Frengel.Adv99@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG,http://music.dartmouth.edu/~mfrengel/mikefrengel.html]
Thomas
Gerwin: Rollenspiel r2
Rollenspiel
r2 is meant as a musical investigation of the
abstract form of a circle or sphere. Because I did not want to lose
the contact to sounding reality within this abstract task of creating
this piece, I used for this examination the sounds of a rolling or
falling ball in around wooden bowl. This sound material was the sole
basis and inspiration for the different digital and analog methods of
evocation, processing and composition which I used in my computer
music studio to represent the structural idea. But, working with the
concrete material, more and more 'stories' and 'individuals'
appeared, playing different roles. That's because sounds are beings.
They are born, spend a distinct life span at discrete places and then
die. Sometimes they form higher organisms. "Rollenspiel" is
a German pun meaning "a game with a rolling ball" and
"playing a part" (as in theatre, etc.).
Thomas
Gerwin is a classically educated composer and musicologist. To
improve and widen his artistic expression, he worked together with
other disciplines like theater, film, dance and painting and came
into the field of electroacoustic music very early. After teaching
experimental music and composition for many years, he constructed the
audio library at Center for the Arts and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe,
Germany 1990-1998. Recently, he won the Karl-Sczuka-Förderpreis,
an award which is given yearly by German State Radio SWR
(Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk). He is founder and director of the
Studio for Media Art and Acoustic Design 'inter art project 'and a
member of the Board of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
(WFAE).[thomas@gerwin.de http://swo.de/ThomasGerwin]
Christina
Agamanolis: Aftermath
I
often find some kind of peace after a disaster has passed, whether
the disaster is of a personal nature, or it is something of a much
larger scale. Aftermath is a composition about this peace. All
of the sounds used here were made from two main sound samples ("zzzz"
and "oh" modulated by laughter), processed with SoundHack
and Turbosynth, and sequenced in Studio Vision.
Christina
Agamanolis holds a B.M. in Technology in Music and Related Arts
(TIMARA) from Oberlin College, and currently is a master's student in
the Composition for New Media Program at California Institute of the
Arts (CalArts). Her primary teachers have been Kristine Burns, Gary
Nelson, Richard Povall, Marc Trayle, Morton Subotnick, and Sara
Roberts. Ms. Agamanolis has interned/worked for Realworld Production
Company at Beachwood Studios and Midtown Studios in Cleveland and
attended the Aspen Music Festival for two years. Along with having
her works featured at Oberlin College, CalArts, Threshold, and
Society of Composers Incorporated(SCI) concerts, She also has
performed at Connecticut College's Electronic Media Symposium and
Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Studio in New York City.
[biskit@shoko.calarts.edu]
Timothy
Oesau: Angola du Sons
By
design, Angola du Sons is invasive and unsettling. It is
intended to be experienced in a completely dark concert hall at a
volume slightly below "permanent damage." In this setting
the concertgoers' expectations are negated and, in fact, used to
enhance the listening experience.
Timothy
Oesau received a bachelor of music degree in composition from the New
England Conservatory of Music in1995, where his primary teachers were
Malcolm Peyton and Robert Ceely. He has composed works for soloists,
chamber groups, orchestra, and electronic tape. In addition to
composing, Oesau is an active performer. He performs with several
ensembles in the Twin Cities and has performed with New England
Conservatory's Callithumpian Consort, a performance group that
champions the work of twentieth-century composers such as John Zorn,
John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He currently resides in
Minneapolis. [toesau@iname.com]
Hideko
Kawamoto: Night Ascends from the Ear Like a Butterfly
Night
Ascends from the Ear Like a Butterfly, composed in1999 and
dedicated to my grandmother, Tami, was inspired from Haruo Shibuya's
poem, "Coliseum in the Desert." The words Shibuya uses in
this poem such as 'night', 'a time of music', 'rain',' black
fountain', 'piano-string', 'useless choir' and 'butterfly' gave me
compositional ideas. These images were developed in my imagination
separately from Shibuya's poem. To me it is very interesting that
once one finishes a piece, it leaves the creator, and is grown on its
own inside somebody maybe or maybe not the same as in the creator's
mind. The piece has its own life. I am hoping my piece has left me.
Hideko
Kawamoto, born in Toyama Japan, is an active composer in
electroacoustic and instrumental music. Currently she is a doctoral
student and a teaching fellow in composition, studying with Phil
Winsor at the University of North Texas, where she received the B.M.
and M.M. in piano performance. Her works has been played at a number
of institutions and festivals including Beckonings 1999 at the
Stanford University, Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, Aspen
Music School and Festival, and Women in Music Conference at the Ohio
University. She also studied with Mario Lavista, Martin Mailman and
Bernard Rands. Her music is published by the Whole>Sum Productions
(C. Alan Publications). [hk0008@jove.acs.unt.edu ,
http://people.unt.edu/~hk0008]
Each
year the American Composers Forum curates a program of live, video,
and electro-acoustic music by composers around the world. The program
is reproduced and then sent out as a Do-It-Yourself kit for budding
impresarios to prepare their own presentations. (To find out more
about how you can host a Sonic Circuits event, see
www.SonicCircuits.com) Over 165 composers have been programmed since
1993 on international radio stations and at many sites throughout the
world: art galleries, colleges, conservatories, raves, chapels, and
courtyards. 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 collide.
Sonic
Circuits is supported by the Jerome Foundation Producer:
Philip Blackburn Thanks
to the following curators and helpers: Benjamin Jacobsen, Jan
Gilbert, Tim Donahue, Mike Halvorsen, Jason Shapiro, Chris Strouth,
Pete Thomas. Mastered
by Bob de Maa. Graphic
Design: Philip Blackburn, Chris Strouth Cover
art: Robert Kostka, Ancestors (1987, watercolor 10" x 14"),
Gaia (1989, watercolor13" x 22")
The
American Composers Forum offers some 20 programs that link
communities with composers and performers. Founded in 1973 as the
Minnesota Composers Forum, it now has more than 1,400 members and 10
chapters in US cities. It is the publisher of innova Recordings
and of Sounding Board, a monthly newsletter. Membership is open to
all.
332
Minnesota Street, Suite E-145, St. Paul, MN 55101-1300, USA. Telephone:
(651) 228-1407x23; fax: (651) 291-7978. www.SonicCircuits.com www.composersforum.org innova@composersforum.org
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