Trio for electric cello and digital delay by Tom Flaherty

The Lithuanian composer, Osvaldas Balakauskas, presented the score to Solza Gala for electric cello, electronics and tape to me following an entire concert of his music for electric cello at Merkin Concert Hall, NYC. The concert was sponsored by the Lithuanian-American Society. Here is a recording of the premier performance of the work on an electric cello concert at Greenwich Music House, NYC. The electronics feature a ‘Jimi Hendrix’ style wah pedal.

The composer says the following about the work. I would like to add that his music is highly influenced by jazz and minimalism. The work seems very appropriate to this time.

The title Solza-Gala (1995) (pronounced sa lz ha l) is the original Tchetchen name of the city called Grozny. It has nothing to do with expressing the horror to which this city and all the Tchetchen people have been condemned but only a gesture of solidarity.

The composition consists of 9 concentrically disposed (A-B-C-D-E-D-C-B-A) episodes which are based on different 5-tone scales and a unique metro-rhythmical system realized by the permanent motoric motion.

Solza Gala for electric cello and tape by Osvaldas Balakauskas

Recorded live in concert at Greenwich Music House, NYC in 1996

The electric cello has no acoustic sound. Therefore, it is possible to transform its sound into a completely different instrument using software such as Max by Cycling 74. Further, a realtime computer score was created in Max making each performance original.

Variations II for any number of players and any sound producing means by John Cage

Music by Sarah Hopkins
Jeffrey Krieger, electric cello

In Cello Chi, a deeply resonant, (over)tonal environment is constructed in which the performer might attain an ecstatic merging of body, voice and instruments.

Cello Chi, For A Singing Cellist (1986)

Old Badman (2011) was commissioned by the e-cellist Jeffrey Krieger in 2008. This commission coincided with the passing of the American composer Donald Erb (1927-2008). Donald Erb was a great teacher, mentor and friend to Arthur Hernandez, and had written the work, Suddenly It’s Evening, for Jeffrey Krieger in 1997. Both Hernandez and Krieger decided that it would be appropriate that this new commissioned work would be dedicated to the enduring memory of Donald Erb. The title, “Old Badman” comes from the last movement of Erb’s last large orchestral work, Evensong (1993). Old Badman is an American folk legend that Erb humorously adopted as a moniker for himself due to the iconoclastic reputation that he had developed over his music career. The work begins with a direct quote from the opening motive of the first movement of Evensong, followed by a passage of music that, if not a direct quote, is certainly a familiar passage in the later music of Donald Erb. From there, Hernandez takes this material and creates a uniquely original work of music all its own.

Old Badman for electric cello and computer by Arthur Hernandez

Memory for electric cello

Music by N. Sean William with Jeffrey Krieger, electric cello.

In Come Window Golds Coming, the late N. Sean William used extremely limited materials to evoke a miraculously radiant twilight world between silence and sound. 

Come Window Golds Coming (1988)

Music by Ronald Halier with Jeffrey Krieger, electric cello.

Dutch composer Ronald Halier’s UITT (particolare) offers an exploding view of a single gesture (a microtonal screech played almost on the bridge), taking us deep inside this seemingly chaotic noise and bringing the details of its complexity into focus, the sounds of the bow recalling the textural brushstrokes of an oil painting.

UITT (particolare)

The poet and composer, the late N. Sean William created this work performed by Jeffrey Krieger on electric cello.

Come Window Golds Coming (1988)for electric cello

recycled tyvek is a computer interactive video improvisation using video and sound collected for the collaborative, parallel media project, Reliquary of Labor by media artist, Gene Gort, composer, Ken Steen and Jeffrey Krieger, e-cello. The improvisation is also inspired by the cello-like instrument of North India, the sarangi. This instrument has 40 shimmering, sympathetic strings which must be tuned according to the determined mode or raga. The video image is a metaphor for the resonating goat skin attached to the belly of the sarangi, and is essential to its particular quality of sound.

recycled tyvek

Alvin Lucier’s indian summer (1993) focuses on the use of the stereo playback system. The performer must improvise using the rhythmic beating of a slightly detuned, rising unison double-stop. A harmonizer setting of a variable range from 0-10 cents allows the performer with a pedal to slightly detune one speaker producing a second set of acoustical rhythmic beats. The work challenges the performer to improvise using these two interacting sets of beats. At times there is almost a physical sensation of being gently pushed or lifted by the rhythmic beating patterns coming from the stereo speakers. The length of the improvisation is open ended. indian summer is by far the most untraditional and controversial performance piece in my repertoire.

Indian Summer (1993) by Alvin Lucier

Jeffrey Krieger has been for three decades among the new generation of solo recitalists who have incorporated technology - the computer and video - as well as an electric cello built by Vermont craftsman, Tucker Barrett into performance. He has received numerous national awards for this work among which a prestigious 1993 Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts which allowed extensive touring in the USA, a 1996 State of Connecticut Commission on the Arts Artist Fellowship for work in multi-media, as well as awards from the Canada Council, the Roberts Foundation Creation of New Work Initiative, New England Foundation for the Arts, and American Composers Forum.

Mr. Krieger has performed at prestigious venues, music schools and conservatories, museums, and international music festivals across the US and abroad. Past performances of note have been as featured soloist with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center's New York State Theater and the Saratoga Festival, a solo recital sponsored by the American-Lithuanian Society of New York of music by Lithuanian composer, Osvaldas Balakauskas at Merkin Concert Hall, NYC, and a performance of Videocello, a multi-media improvisation by Mr. Krieger at the Kennedy Center. 

Mr. Krieger has been a frequent performer and guest lecturer at educational institutions such as the Cincinnati Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, Yale University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Conservatorium of Music, Hobart, Tasmania. Performances at international music festivals have included the Boston Cyberarts Festival; International Festival of Electronic Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven; Subtropics Festival, Miami International University; New Directions Cello Festival at the Knitting Factory, New York City; Ebeltoft Festival, Denmarck. In 2000 he was soloist on the electric cello with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, and in 2001 performed composer, Robert Carl’s A Wide Open Field for electric cello with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts. In 2007 and 2008 he served as Cultural Ambassador to India performing concerts of American music sponsored by the US Embassy which included performances at the American Center Auditoriums of New Delhi and Mumbai.

Mr. Krieger has recorded numerous electric cello works for New World Records, Vienna Modern Masters, Capstone, Innova, O.O. Discs and Ablaze Records. There is a extensive collection of recordings on Youtube at youtube.com/user/acdcvc.

Mr. Krieger has a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Hartt School of Music and a Master of Music Degree from the Yale School of Music. He has served as Principal Cellist of the Hartford Symphony from 1979 to 2021.

acdcvc

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