great piece aaron.....  extremely interesting on all fronts..

First time I've heard anErhu-piano duet, cool, really cool, there should be more of them.

@zach-snyder-817339002: Thanks, Zach, I appreciate the note!

UPDATE (20 Aug 2015): What made the comet sing? Scientists working on Rosetta's RPC instrument have found out why 67P/C-G was singing. Via http://wp.me/p46DHN-1nN
==
ORIGINAL Citation (Oct 2014): Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording. This sonification of the RPC-Mag data was compiled by German composer Manuel Senfft (www.tagirijus.de).  Read full details in ESA's Rosetta blog: http://wp.me/p46DHN-Li 

Copyright Notice

Original Data Credit: ESA/Rosetta/RPC/RPC-MAG
Sonification: TU Braunschweig/IGEP/Manuel Senfft, CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Thumbnail image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

A Singing Comet

Who Made the Inch of Grass was written for Corey Hamm and Nicole Li as part of their Piano and Erhu Project, and they recorded it for Volume Two of their project compilation, released on Redshift Music in January 2015. This was my first time writing for erhu, an instrument that I have long wanted to explore. I am particularly attracted to the lyrical nature of the erhu and its tradition of ornamentation, so I knew I wanted to feature those elements. 

As I was starting on the piece, I remembered a short melodic fragment left over from another piece, buried in my stacks of papers. This fragment had to be left out of the earlier piece for logistical reasons, but I had been hanging onto it because I liked it and wanted to use it somewhere else. I had a hunch it might work for Who Made the Inch of Grass.

That fragment now forms the first few phrases of the piece. I developed it into a delicate, lyrical line, ornamented with traditional erhu slides, warbles, and vibrato. This material is juxtaposed against a floating, asynchronous piano that weaves in and out of the melodic framework. Throughout the piece, the two parts play quasi-independently, dancing around each other, tied together harmonically but not playing at the same time. Sometimes the erhu takes the lead, at other times the piano takes over. The end result is a rich, dreamlike texture, constantly changing through the push and pull of the musical materials.

Who Made the Inch of Grass

Break Up Make Up exists essentially because two Vancouver groups—the Nu:BC Collective (piano trio) and Turning Point Ensemble (chamber orchestra)—wanted to perform together. They approached me to compose a piece that would place Nu:BC as concerto soloists within the larger Turning Point instrumentation, setting up what is essentially a modern interpretation of the baroque concerto grosso.

Immediately my mind went to the idea of pitting the two ensembles against each other: opposing forces that try to wrestle the musical material away in a sort of tug-of-war. But I didn’t want this to be a one-trick pony, so sometimes the ensembles would have to cooperate too, putting aside their differences and playing together as one big happy orchestra. 

That framework allowed me to set up a sort of consonance/dissonance relationship in terms of how well the two groups were “getting along.” It also reminded me of the stereotypical stormy couple: that high-drama, off-again-on-again pair that fights, breaks up, and gets back together repeatedly much to the exasperation of their friends.

Inspired as such by the idea of romantic melodrama, I turned to Liszt—whose music I’ve always hated—but who was perhaps a useful resource in terms of finding musical materials to fit my theme. A dyed-in-the-wool contrarian, I thought why not try to bend the Lisztian zeitgeist to my will? Why not fully steep myself in that uninspiring world of empty flourishes to fish out some kernel that actually resonates, that I can make my own and build upon in an interesting way? 

So that’s what I did. The piece isn’t neo-Romantic, and I didn’t quote Liszt anywhere in it, but I distilled the essence of his music as I see it, reimagining and transforming it in ways that make sense to me. It is an homage? A reconciliation? A giving of the middle finger? I’m not sure, but the journey led me into an exciting sound world that highlights the strengths of the concerto grosso format in a decidedly non-traditional manner.

Break Up Make Up

Composed to celebrate what would have been the hundredth birthday of avant-garde pioneer John Cage, this work pays homage to the ideas and philosophies embodied in his music and his words. Cage was famed for integrating non-traditional instruments into his work and for coaxing unconventional sounds from traditional ones; accordingly, Lizée—herself noted for incorporating turntables and other electronic devices into the concert-music setting—here makes extensive use of various objets trouvés (including typewriters and vinyl records on portable turntables struck with mallets) as percussion instruments, regardless of their original purpose.

 The idea of “preparing” instruments, one of Cage’s most significant contributions to modern music, is reflected here in alterations made to the surfaces of vinyl records, generating new patterns and melodies by creating new paths for the stylus. Lizée has described this piece as a kind of dance party for Cage: “a re-imagining of a rave.”

This work was premiered on March 2, 2012 at the 'So Percussion' concert presented at Koerner Hall in Toronto (Canada).

For more information about Nicole Lizée and her work, please visit our SoundMakers website: http://www.SoundMakers.ca/composers/nicole-lizee


White Label Experiment by Nicole Lizée

The first part of Nicole LIzée's "Vertigo Beach, Études pour piano à Tom Verlaine"

Recorded Nov. 2, 2012 at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main

Who Made the Inch of Grass

Aaron Gervais Composer

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