This piece grows from source recordings of irrigation recorded at the family farm where I grew up in Washington. This is an acousmatic exploration of the sounds and theme of sustenance.

Sustenance

Junky (1996). From Traces on Empreintes DIGITALes IMED0053 www.electrocd.com

Junky

A HINT OF MISCHIEF was written for New Ear, Kansas City’s professional new music ensemble, as part of my residency with the ensemble from 1998-2001.  The members of the group are long-time friends and colleagues, and they all knew what they were getting into when the residency began…
For the first year of  the residency, visiting cellist Yehuda Hanani graciously (and bravely) agreed to perform a premiere piece as part of his concert with the ensemble sight unseen, and in fact unwritten at the time of the agreement.  My thanks to Yehuda, and to the members of the ensemble, for their musicianship and their courage.

The title stems from critical remarks made by Scott Cantrell, Music Editor of the Kansas City Star at the time, in a review of a previous New Ear concert which had included a piece of mine for saxophone and electronic tape, performed by Jan Faidley.  Cantrell wrote, “Mobberley’s music rarely proceeds without some hint of mischief.”  Indeed.


A Hint of Mischief for Chamber Ensemble

A giant of the avant-garde shows us how to listen. 

For more, visit Resident Advisor: https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?exchange=293

EX.293 Pauline Oliveros

Water is Thicker than Blood

To create the sounds in this piece, I trained a neural network to listen to some audio and predict what it thought came after. I then asked it to guess what came after its prediction and after that and so on. By conditioning the network’s predictions on its own output, the resulting audio begins to sound less and less realistic. In a sense the network begins to dream up new audio it has never heard before. When I used guitar as the input, the timbre is clearly recognizable in the dreamed audio but rather than decaying, the notes are surreally stretched and superimposed with each other. I then wrote another program that would listen to my live input and choose dreamt sounds to accompany them, allowing the two parts in real time to speak in sympathy.

Like two strings speaking in sympathy

A resident of Golden Meadow, LA, remembers his family cemetery on Bayou Lafourche.

Recollections - Family Cemetery - Golden Meadow, LA

A resident of Morganza, LA, remembers the flood of 1927 when she was a child.

Recollections - Flood of 1927 - Raccourci, LA

A resident of Morganza, LA, remembers fishing in Leeville, LA, and reflects upon the deterioration of the wetlands.

Recollections - Land Loss - Leeville, LA

A resident of Port Vincent, LA, remembers the flood of 1983, which devastated parts of Livingston and East Baton Rouge Parishes.

Recollections - Flood of 1983 - Port Vincent, LA

"Coastal Voices" presents the first in a series of podcasts about the Mississippi River Delta and Gulf Coast. Episode 1, "The Power of Rivers and the Limits of Control," listens to the stories of people responsible for flood prevention in southern Louisiana. The way we control the Mississippi River has an impact on how we understand the coast. #coastalvoices https://coastalvoices.lsu.edu/

Sustenance

allisonic