Browse Items (868 total)

• The Tunnel of Quantum Love

  The Tunnel of Quantum Love (2015) portrays the theory that an atom can be in many places simultaneously. The initial sound journeys through many states: gaseous shimmers, through warped high speeds, distorted slow motion, chaos, and unnamed atmospheres. Maybe one day we will discover the Tunnel of Quantum Love and experience this simultaneity ourselves.

• Star Map

  Star Map (2014) is an electroacoustic piece for flute and quadraphonic playback that is inspired by the Forsyth Petroglyph, a rock with carvings that was first discovered in Forsyth County, Georgia in the early 1800s. The carvings consist of circles and other designs that are thought to be astronomical in nature, representing the constellations Draco, Scorpio, and a fragmenting comet. A comet event occurred around 3300 BC, and the carvings may represent this event due to the presence of other symbols that could be interpreted as the Cosmic Crocodile from Mayan mythology, which was decapitated, leading to a massive flood. The comet impact of 3300 BC caused tsunamis that destroyed coastal civilizations of the time.

  The piece is in three sections: the first features the constellations Scorpio, Draco and Sagittarius, and more specifically, the red giant star Antares in the Scorpio constellation (evoked by the drones and flute centered around the pitches B and C) and x-ray flares sent out by the constellation Sagittarius. The second section illustrates the comet breaking into fragments, and the manipulated recorded flute signifies our perspective of time. The third section returns to the environment of constellations from the first section.

• Ritual Habit

  An electroacoustic music composition and dance collaboration

• Petit Hommage a Rene Magritte for fixed media

  Petit Hommage a René Magritte for fixed media (2017) is inspired by “L’Usage de la Parole,” a painting by the Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967). Famous for his approach in depicting every day, recognizable images in unusual juxtapositions within a single work, the painting centers around a cut-out of notated music in the shape of a person wearing a bowler hat. The figure is situated on top of a dull pink box, mysteriously inscribed with the words “Le savoir” (knowledge), which drifts upon what appears to be choppy, rose-colored waters amidst a dark, menacing sky.

  Petit Hommage a René Magritte for fixed media combines transformations of the notated music, particularly the I6 inversion, in dialogue with a variety of other sounds related (and sometimes unrelated) to the disparate elements found in Magritte’s painting. In the central section, the audio was extracted from an interview with René Magritte describing his thoughts on poetic content in his art: “Yes, in fact…eh… I believe that there is a familiar feeling to poetry, and this familiar feeling to poetry would be what I would call, for simplicity’s sake, the ‘tourist’ feeling…who will look far for poetry.” The audio clip ends at this point; but in the original, Magritte continues: “…and the poetry they find they know it before, it is a familiar poem given by very strange things, so that the familiar can become the occasion to discover the poetry which is not familiar– unknown poetry.”

  Special thanks to Monique Osorio for the pre-recorded piano sample and Jennifer La Rue for providing the English translation.

  Duration: 2 minutes.

  Note: It is recommended, but not required, to project an image of René Magritte’s “L’Usage de la Parole” during playback in a darkened hall.

• 青い空 (the Sky is blue)

  3:00

• Turtles All The Way Up

  Composed for New Music On The Point 2017 festival.

• "while the earth is still turning"

• Sound of the Baskervilles

  A fixed media sound collage, whose title was granted permission by Milton Babbitt.

• Arched Interiors II

  Arched Interiors II (2008) is a musical composition for piano and electro-acoustically transformed sound. The mode of performance for the piano involves bowing and scraping the strings to produce timbral modulations shaped directly by the physical gesture. These sound-gestures provide both the motivic foundation for the composition and the recorded source audio for development of the electroacoustic sound. The original version of Arched Interiors was written in 1991 for Margaret Leng Tan, and premiered by her in 1992 in the ORF Funkhaus Wien. This original version, as well as another, Double Arched Interiors for two pianos without electroacoustic sound, included additional passages focused on complex plucking techniques.

• The Mirror of Enigma

  The Mirror of Enigma (2004/2008) interprets antiphonal form in relation to the programmatic idea of an enigmatic mirror—a mirror that reveals a coexistent space in which behaviors and meanings appear in mysterious relations. There are three movements. The first, “Videmus nunc per Speculum in Aenigmate” — we see now through a mirror in an enigma, presents an initial confrontation with the enigmatic mirror. In the second movement, Images Fugitives, reflections take flight within the mirror, then in the concluding movement, Transfiguration and Ecstasy, the reflections are mysteriously transfigured and attain a state of ecstasy. The electroacoustic sounds are created from recombining transformed spectra of harp tones, as well as from samples of the instruments played in the acoustic ensemble.