Browse Items (868 total)

• Ghosts of Cluny

  The Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, established in 910 by William I of Aquitaine, was the leading center of monasticism in the Middle Ages and boasted the largest church in Christendom prior to the 16^th-century reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  Today only the bell tower of the church and a fraction of the great abbey remain, having been devastated by plundering during the French Revolution.  Otherworldly echoes of the millennium-old ruins resound in Ghosts of Cluny, a piece which evokes both the sacredness and the immense acoustic space of the former monastery.

  The work was realized in the IMPACT Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and was named a Finalist in the International Composition Competition “Città di Udine,” ninth edition.

• Ghost Sonata

  Incidental music to the play of the same name.

• Georgannas farewell

  for tape and early digital sound sources.

• Georganna's fancy

  Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

• GATES

  Eight channel acousmatic composition awarded First Prize in the 2014 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition.
  
  Completed in 2013, GATES is an electroacoustic composition that was partly inspired by the Pleiades constellation. A musical mapping of an image of the constellation occurs in the middle and at the conclusion of the composition. One can hear this depiction in the “wood block” timbres. This representation of Pleiades relates to a passage from Ignatius Loyola’s autobiography, St. Ignatius’ Own Story as Told to Luiz Gonzalez de Camara (1555).
  
  It was his [Ignatius’] greatest consolation to gaze upon the heavens and stars, which he often did, and for long stretches at a time, because when doing so he felt within himself a powerful urge to be serving our Lord.
  
  (From A Commentary on Saint Ignatius’ Rules for the Discernment Of Spirits, Jules J. Toner, 1979.)
  
  I chanced upon this unique passage after an evening of stargazing. Initially, I did not think much of it, but re-evaluated the occasion after unintentionally opening to the following passage in Vladimir Solovyov’s essay, “Nationality from a Moral Point of View” (1895). … “the Spanish genius Ignatius Loyola founded the order of the Jesuits for the struggle with Protestantism on peaceful grounds” (Ed. & Trans. Wozniuk). Following this discovery, and seeing as it was one of two mentions of Ignatius in Solovyov’s entire collection of essays, I resolved to use the musical mapping of the constellation as a central and unifying element in this composition. The title refers to the use of noise gates during the creative process. Bending string and brass timbres, time stretched voice, and layers of filtered noise contribute to the drama of this composition. The composer is grateful for the assistance of the many musicians who participated in recording sessions that were utilized in this composition; especially Chicago-based musician, Tyler Beach, for his valuable insights and session performances on the acoustic and electric guitars.

• Funnel Cloud

  Funnel Cloud explores the relationship between artifice and reality through the metaphor of a tornado. After the tornado rumbles through a small village, a lone survivor wanders into an art gallery only to find the paintings coming to life with a dancing man, swirling jazz and aboriginal incantations. The last image in the gallery is surprisingly a painting of a tornado that comes to life, grabbing the survivor and drawing him into the artistic netherworld.

  The music in Funnel Cloud plays an important role in representing the various states of the art vs. reality paradigm. The tornado sounds are all synthetic while the sounds within the gallery are transformations of familiar music. Inversions of “Dorothy’s arrival in Oz theme” from The Wizard of Oz carry the survivor through the various exhibits in the art gallery. Reversed jazz, vocal music from Bali and odd transformations of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantstique bring the individual paintings to life. The question of what is real and what is synthetic is ironically presented through music, image and transformation.

  Funnel Cloud received the Animation Award from the 11th Annual Louisiana Video Shorts Festival (1999) in New Orleans, LA.

• From this point on

  Can also be performed in three channels, with one speaker on stage between the performers. Feel free to contact the composer for performance materials.

• Fractus IV: Bonesaw

• Fractus III: Aerophoneme

• Fractus I

  Fractus I received first prize in the 2012 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition.