In 1987 I saw Bert Turetzky perform Kenneth Gaburo’s ‘INSIDE’ and Tom Johnson’s ‘FAILING’ at a contemporary music festival. I remember hoping at the time that I would one day get the opportunity to write for Bert. I also remember being impressed not only with his bass playing but also with his ability to control the bass and his voice at the same time. When he asked me, some years later, to compose him a piece, I decided to incorporate vocal sounds into the fabric of the piece, though in a rather different way from the two pieces I had heard. As a result, TNT (Tureztky ‘N’ Tape) uses both vocal and bass sounds to make the tape part, and calls upon the performer to use both instrument and voice simultaneously, with extensive and intricate interaction between soloist and tape, especially in the rhythmic “groove” sections. In these, soloist and tape participate in the formation of, or improvisation over multi-layered grooves that might be at home in a jazz or latin sound. The tape part was constructed entirely of bass and vocal sounds, collected, edited, and mixed using Csound software on a NextStation computer. It was performed by Bert Turetzky as a work-in-progress in 1997, then revised, remixed, and completed for premiere performance by bassist Robert Black in Estonia in 2001, with a recording on the CDCM series.

1994

Contrabass and Fixed Media

10:00