Browse Items (868 total)

• Still Harmless [BASS]ically

• Reverie of Solitude

• Crosswinds

  Crosswinds represents a melding of the traditional woodwind sound of the clarinet with digital live electronic techniques, and the piece explores the potential for this relationship in three parts.

  To begin the piece, the stage performer breathes through the clarinet, which serves to inform the electronic elements to come. This initial breath is captured by the computer program and is modified and reduplicated to create the sonic tone of a soft wind always present beneath the piece to come. This is the first step in uniting the digital and woodwind elements, as the same breath which animates the clarinet also activates the electronics.

  From this most fundamental element, the breath becomes a single sustained note from which the computer will generate all of its subsequent tones. The impression is one of a mentor relationship, where the traditional instrument provides the tools and the support for the electronic elements. The disposition is contemplative, though it alternates between a subdued easiness and a playful mystery, as if to introduce the digital aspects to the range and variety of the clarinet’s moods. The rapport between the two is hesitant in the first part: the electronics contributing a subtle reverb as the performer teaches the computer dexterity through a number of broad leaps, hinting at but never fully embracing the main motif.

  As the theme becomes more self-assured, the digital element now produces its own tones, parroting the clarinet melody to signal its readiness to be an equal partner in the conversation. As the clarinet begins the second part of the piece, the computer now provides a harmonizing undercurrent each time it is invited to do so by the performer.

  In the third part, the electronics play counterpoint to the skill of the clarinetist, the two elements intricately entwined. From the elemental sound of wind first produced by the performer and perpetuated by the computer, the piece concludes in a celebration of the relationship built between the two, and the main theme is fully expressed as the two take it in variations.

  Crosswinds is, in many ways, an experience of the history of our music through the relationship between traditional clarinet and modern digital techniques: the common elements they share, the singularity of their own particular strengths, and the beauty that can be experienced when they collaborate.

  Program note by Walter Jordan
  Please credit Walter Jordan when using this program note

• Axis Mundi - 34.2320° N, 82.8945° W

• Phase Change

  for oboe and stereo fixed media (2013)
  written for Katherine Woolsey

  This piece is inspired by the three phases of water: vapor, liquid, and solid. The oboist begins the piece without the reed in place and only the sound of pure air. An atmospheric exploration with timbral trills leads to “condensation,” in which droplets begin to form and eventually give way to a flowing stream. The final section “freezes” the music into a stark, frozen texture which contains static harmonies, glacial multiphonics, and fractured melodic lines like shards of ice. Many melodic motives in the piece come from a three-note pitch set which is inspired by the shape of the water molecule itself.

  Katherine Woolsey, oboe

• Foreign Masonry

  The narrator in Jorge Luis Borges’ 1945 story “The Aleph” describes a remarkable singularity under an acquaintance’s cellar stairs: a point where the universe in its entirety can be experienced at once. At the end of the story, he describes other Alephs that might exist in the world:

  “The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court…No one, of course, can actually see it, but those who lay an ear against the surface tell that after some short while they perceive its busy hum…The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions, since, as ibn-Khaldun has written: ‘In nations founded by nomads, the aid of foreigners is essential in all concerning masonry.’”

  “Foreign Masonry” uses a single multiphonic built from the baritone saxophone’s lowest note as the mysterious column, its multitudinous harmonic series representative of the entire universe.

• Vorticose

  Vorticose was performed at the Sound Horizons music festival in Boston, in a live-control sound diffusion setting using Harvard University’s 40-speaker “Hydra” sound system. -May 2015
  
  A quadraphonic (4-channel) version of Vorticose was featured at the New Ideas in Music and Sound concert series in Boston. -October 2015

• Inter Diabolus et Virgo (Between the Devil and a Virgin)

  This work uses Supercollider and a midi controller. The score does not have time indicated and can be performed at any length. There is also room for improvisation and expansion of sounds and ideas durning the performance using the midi controller.

• Traversing Eternity (Exploration of Stars)

  This work is a collection of 12 movements that are comprised of all the zodiac symbols for any given month notated. The computer part is subtle and is used to alter the timbre of the instruments in real time to make a “hyper” instrument. The composition does not have to be played with all 12 movements. The ensemble can pick their birthday months or randomly choose.

• Small Groups of People Bring Collapse (Laptop Anarchy)

  There are six parts written in Max/MSP. No conductor is needed and the time is automatically set in the patches.