CONCERT 4 International Electroacoustic 7:00 PM - 8:45 PM
Risto Holopainen 1970 Sweden
Prosit! 1998 0:04:49
The substance that floats through Prosit! is a fine wine — and the opening of the wine and the pouring of the bottle serves as a formula, albeit in a loose sense, for the development of the piece.
Prosit! was realized at NOTAM (Norwegian Network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) 7 December 1998.
Dennis Miller USA
Vantage Point 1998 0:10:00
Vantage Point is a work that incorporates both synthetic sounds and those that began life in the real world. The piece explores various sonic environments and moves the listener among them, often abruptly. The formal outline of the piece is delineated by several means. First, the end of the opening section is delineated by a clear cadence that is followed by a short pause, after which a new section begins. In another instance, an abrupt halt in the use of one type of material marks the appearance of a radically different type of texture, while a third section is begun by way of a smooth transition from the preceding section. It is the composer’s hope that the clarity of design will be apparent to the listener and allow him/her to follow the developing elements in the piece.
Benjamin Thigpen 1959 USA
step, under 1998 0:13:55
(this piece is performed with the composers original 8 channel diffusion)
To Nikki Halpern, who wrote —
this is an instant without time :
Threadsuns
above the grayblack wastes.
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.
- Paul Celan
Composed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales [Paris] using the M.A.R.S. workstation, and spatialized in eight channels by my program "Octopode."
Commissioned by Ina-GRM, 1998.
Rajmil Fischman 1956 Peru
Alma Latina (Soul of a Latin) 1997 0:13:07
Time is a strange background against which our lives develop. Linearity is usually out of the question and memory cunningly warps and reinvents our past experience to such an extent that the latter becomes alive, threading between past and future.
It has been forty years since my personal thread started, more than twenty since I left the birth-place and a long time since my last visit. During all this span — especially after leaving and finding other homes — the conglomeration of conscious and subconscious moments bubbled out, combined with new experiences and created labyrinthine inner passages in which sounds, images, smells and other sensations from different periods mixed and evolved into new forms. Music which was previously dismissed and undervalued suddenly acquired a new significance. Strong images of pain and joy amidst the contrasting richness and poverty of a South American city became representative of a historico-political situation. Taste and scent of food, combined with the physical sensation of dance movement, turned into cornerstones of thought about the essence of human condition.
All of these are now part of a humble inner world, a world which is not — and never was — purely and parochially reduced to the life of small territorial area or a capricious national entity. It belongs to a spirit which absorbs and amalgamates to overcome plain existence, whether it is the petty problematic of home and work or the daily tragedy of uncertain survival looming over so many in this world. Indeed, it laughs and mourns, it sings, it dances to the frenzy of grief and joy.
And so, this Latin soul hopes that there is still warmth and a reason to dance, that not all is lost and that, after all and in spite of thoughtless acts and dangerous ventures, life can still go on.
Break 0:20:00
John Ayers UK
The Pleasures of Memory 1998 0:05:51
The Pleasures of Memory was created as part of a collaborative installation with artist Clare Edwards in 1998. The installation dealt with how memory and memories are perceived and shared — through stories, songs, holiday snaps and films. The music was originally about twice the length and designed to be looped and played through headphones so each person could dip in and listen to as much or as little as they liked; each viewer/listener would have a similar but different (private) experience as the sound and visuals interacted in different ways. This is a shorter version designed for closer (public) listening in much the same way. The music is made from three stories told by friends dealing with various memorable events — a birthday party, saving someone from a cave, and losing a younger sister down the toilet. The stories slip between intelligible and unintelligible, details suddenly coming into focus only to be swamped again by the mass of other memories vying for attention.
John Levack Drever 1973 UK
Sound 1999 0:02:00
Text and Voice — Alaric Sumner
Sound was composed for the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art in response to the call for 2 minute sound works on the theme of ‘Trace’. All the sonic material in Sound is derived from the voice.
Mikel Kuehn USA
Music through Prisms 0:12:30
Music through Prisms, for 2-channel tape, was inspired by a vision of applying a light prism to sounds. The prism, a triangular or hexagonal piece of glass, is used to disperse or "split" a light wave into its representative spectrum or constituent colors; hence, the "rainbow" effect that occurs when it is subjected to white light. As sound and light are in a sense the same material (waves) – although their physical quanta are different – what would be the effect of passing sound waves through prisms? The "prisms" in this sense are processes that in some way alter or transform the original sound’s spectrum. Just as glass prisms are capable of breaking white light into all of its representative colors, these musical prisms break, extract, and isolate or recombine elements of the source’s sonic spectrum. In many cases, this entirely distorts the original sonic identity of the source. Over the course of the work’s twelve-and-a-half minutes, a metamorphosis occurs in which the source material (the music that is fed into the prisms) is gradually revealed. The food for the prisms are four previous works of mine, two acoustic: Fünf Parabeln for soprano and chamber ensemble, and Between the Lynes for flute, ‘cello, and piano; and two electroacoustic: Diaspora (electronic), and ...remembrance of things past... (a text-sound composition based on a recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX ).
Jens Hedman; Paulina Sundin
Currents 1998 0:12:40
Currents is a musical tribute to Stockholm, with four sections portraying the city from different sound perspectives. The work also deals with the changes in seasons and different times of the day. The piece was composed at EMS in Stockholm and all the sound material was recorded in the city and its environments with a Neumann dummy-head microphone. The two first parts were composed in 1996 and the remaining two in 1998.
Frank Ekeberg 1970 Norway
Ebb 1998 0:10:43
Ebb was created in London in 1998 during the grey and rainy Summer that never became a real Summer. Around the same time there were record-breaking temperatures in the USA and disastrous tidal waves in South America. The strange weather and the unpredictable seasons in recent years and the possible reasons for this were the inspiration for this piece. It is all in the title. Ebb does not only refer to the water sounds that the work is based on, but it also points to other implied meanings; political, social and psychological. The work deals with regression and decline on several levels, but this is not necessarily obvious on the surface. Ambiguity is created by contrasting beautiful water sounds and drones with distorted sound masses and downward glissandoes. There are familiar sounds intermixed with unknown sonic textures. There are natural sounds set up against sounds of human gesture. These are all integrated in a structure that balances on the edge of a narrative. Ebb is a nearly eleven minutes long journey that does not really end, but continues into the far distance — with or without the consciousness of its passengers.
Daniel Hosken USA
Alchemy: Visions — for tape alone 0:06:03
Alchemy: Visions is the dream/nightmare presentation of mysterious visions. The work is intended as a direct experience rather than a representation or mediation of an experience. The listener receives these visions and must then interpret their nature.
The piece is based on vocal and percussion recordings that are processed by granular synthesis and analysis/resynthesis techniques into a new form that reveals the inner structure of the source sounds while at the same time producing a unique sonic world. The work was realized with the Csound synthesis language and Matt Ingalls’ score generator in my home studio and the studio of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.