(1998, 10 minutes, for saxophone quartet)
Recorded by ROVA
BRAWL was composed for Rova with the intention that they would leave their mark on it: using solo sections, cutting contests, and a combination of notated and loosely structured sections. The beginning of the piece is fully notated, and improvisational techniques are incorporated as the piece progresses. Brawl was composed during a residency at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California. According to Forms in Music (J. Humphrey Anger, 1900) a "brawl" is "an old French dance in commom time, of a gay character." This "Brawl" is not exclusively in common time: in reference to Dr. Carl Djerassi's birthplace, it also uses compound Bulgarian rhythms. On June 4, 1998, (a few days after the piece was completed) a much-publicized brawl took place in New York City, in which 40 drunken firemen terrorized a Manhattan bar, fought tooth and nail, exposed themselves, and caused general mayhem.

BRAWL

EWA7 Part 2 (of 3) Originally composed for a site-specific performance in a factory in Nuremberg
Puncher, The Product of Force and Motion, Transmission of a Yellow Pipe, Mechanical Firing of a Yellow Pipe
	Puncher uses a rhythm that was sampled from a giant metal punching machine, complemented by percussion on found factory objects, detuned piano and a robotic guitar.  The Product of Force and Motion incorporates a warehouse of old and new technology, including shortwave radios, tape feedback, a test-tone oscillator and the sampled rhythms of a metal-crushing machine.  In a a solo guitar interlude, Roger Kleier creates a layered electronic drone by using the small motor of a hand-held kitchen mixer to excite the pickups on his guitar.  The metal-crushing rhythm returns, only to be replaced by its human counterpart, performed on factory metal, drums and guitar, joined by a tangle of oscillators, electronics and shortwaves.  The factory’s deafening safety buzzer was used in the original performance to signal the musicians to stop playing, and it is used here in its sampled form to cue out the din. Transmission of a Yellow Pipe starts with a spaghetti western-inspired guitar melody (written after watching many Sergio Leone movies dubbed into German) and continues with a keyboard solo based on samples of a pipe that stretched the length of the factory. I recorded the pipe being struck with a hammer at various points along its length to get many different timbres and pitches. Mechanical Firing of a Yellow Pipe is Jim Pugliese and Sim Cain’s interpretation of the multi-pitched utilitarian polyrhythms of the factory.

EWA7  Part 2

EWA7 Part 3 (of 3) 
Originally composed for a site-specific performance in a factory in Nuremberg
Impulse Turbine, Combustion Chamber
	Impulse Turbine opens with the walk and whistle of percussionist Hans-Günter Brodmann, continues with a beating metal rhythm inspired equally by industrial environments and Bo Diddley, and ends with the sampled subtones of violinist George Kentros. Combustion Chamber is driven by factory percussion, drums, analog synth sounds, electronics, and altered guitar. Rusty brake drums and pipes were wheeled out on carts in the original performance, and these found percussion instruments were sampled and reintroduced into the studio recording. This original fragment opens and closes Combustion Chamber, and reveals one final use of the safety buzzer, which closes down the multiple machines of EWA7.

EWA7  Part 3

EWA7 Part 1 (of 3)
Annie Gosfield, Ikue Mori, Roger Kleier, James Pugliese, Sim Cain
Rotation, The Rails to Fürth, Revolution, Translation, Cylinders, The Unaflow Principle, Friction
	Originally composed for a site-specific performance in a factory in Nuremberg, Germany, EWA7 incorporates sampled factory sounds that I recorded during a residency in Nuremberg's industrial environments. I have performed EWA7 with my ensemble in an abandoned factory at Warsaw Autumn; at the Anchorage below the Brooklyn Bridge; in the 50th anniversary of electronic music at the American Academy in Rome; and in festivals and venues in the UK, Finland, Serbia, Canada, and the US. EWA7 is performed for the most part without a score. Each musician has his or her own way of interpreting the piece. For example, some percussion parts are notated, some are loosely composed, and some are site-specific, dependent on the metal objects available and the space itself. In lieu of a chart or score, I have included notes for EWA7, which detail the instrumentation, inspiration, and musical content of the many sections of this 43-minute work. 
	Rotation is based on the simple sounds of an engine starting.  This opening piece begins the transformation from machine sounds to music, and represents the starting of the musical engine.  As each musician enters, the machine builds momentum and becomes more complex. The Rails to Fürth is named for the first railway built in Continental Europe, which spanned 8km between Nuremberg and Fürth. This journey had personal significance for me, as some of my relatives were relocated to Fürth after World War II, after years of being refugees in Eastern Europe. Revolution uses altered samples of a prepared piano which evoke the rotary sound of a music box, a primitive but effective machine for making music. Translation is Ikue Mori’s own interpretation of shifting factory frequencies in her solo for electronics.  Cylinders is a fragment from the original performance: in this recorded artifact from the factory, two percussionists stepped off of the stage to beat on three twenty-foot long cylinders with hammers. The Unaflow Principle begins with a guitar being strummed with a paintbrush, accompanied by the rhythmic patterns of heavy machinery, bells, and factory percussion. Friction is a multi-tracked solo of a gong being bowed, scraped, and beaten by Jim Pugliese, in a fully acoustic interpretation of the harmonic richness of industrial sound.

EWA7  Part 1

Composed by Annie Gosfield (2012, 13 minutes, for violin and tape)
Recorded by Pauline Kim Harris at Harvestworks in 2016   Commissioned by Gaudeamus Muziekweek  
Long Waves and Random Pulses is a duet for violin and jammed radio signals. I composed and researched the piece at the American Academy in Berlin, using original recordings of jamming sounds that were used to block radio transmissions in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union in World War II. The violin merges and emerges, shifting from music, to noise, to pure signal while fading in and out of the sounds of intentional radio interference. The electronic backing track includes a repeated six-note figure that was drawn from original recordings of an Italian radio jamming device, a buzzing pitched pulse from a German jamming device, a quote from J. S. Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor as it could have been heard in a jammed broadcast, and many extended techniques that evoke the sounds of these otherworldly radio signals. The violin part alternates between virtuosic and textural playing, shifting between notes and noise. As for the title, Long Waves refers to the long wave radio frequencies that many of these interrupted signals were broadcast on. Random Pulses represents a method of radio jamming that uses a random pulse noise to override the program broadcast on the target radio frequency.

Long Waves And Random Pulses

Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery EXCERPT 1, 
2:00 
(2000, 15 minutes, for string quartet and percussion quartet)
 Commissioned by Other Minds and the American Composers Forum 
Recorded by FLUX Quartet and Talujon Percussion on “Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery” Tzadik, 2001   

Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery was inspired by machine and factory sounds: the metallic scrapes, squeaks, and bangs; the ambient buzzes and whines; and the imperfect rhythmic repeats of heavy machinery. During a residency sponsored by the Siemens Corporation in Nuremberg, Germany, I conducted six weeks of research into these utilitarian industrial sounds, visiting factories, observing and listening to all types of machinery, and recording sounds on site. I was particularly fascinated by the sense of gradually changing environments that occur in a large factory as the sounds shift from the ambient hum of fluorescent lights, to the grinding harmonics of buzzsaws, to the rhythmic crashes and bangs of huge metal presses. Machine rhythms go in and out of phase, dynamics vary wildly, and in an environment of ever-changing activity and noise, the frequency spectrum fluctuates from sub-audio rumbles to barely audible high-pitched whines. My interpretation of these shifting environments ranges from the literal (rhythmic transcriptions of the recordings that I made on site) to the fanciful (Russian constructivist inspired evocations of industrial activity). Strings focus on microtonal variations of pitch, replacing equal-temperament with the untuned buzzing, humming, and grinding sounds of machines. Percussion instruments are all of indefinite pitch, and imitate the banging, scraping, and hissing cacophony of the factory.   If all pieces are biographical, this is no exception. When I first started work on Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery, I awoke to a veritable lexicon of machine and work-related sounds: a large crew of jackhammers tearing up my street, men on scaffolds hammering away at the brick facade outside my window, and a symphony of band saws, crowbars, and sledgehammers renovating the apartment upstairs. Trying to work through the constant noise created more moments of desperation than inspiration for me, but the cacophony and hammering always brought me back to the random rhythms and shifting patterns of utilitarian noise.

Flying Sparks And Heavy Machinery EXCERPT #1

This is a 5-minute compressed excerpt of the opera "War of the Worlds"
it is a "mini opera" made up of different sections of the entire work
Composed by Annie Gosfield 
Adapted and directed by Yuval Sharon
Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group
Christopher Rountree, Conductor
Sigourney Weaver, Narrator
Eric Garcetti, Mayor (as himself)
James Hayden, Commander / Crooner
Hila Plitmann, La Sirena
Hugo Armstrong, Professor Pierson
David Castillo, Officer
Jon Keenan, Gunner / Stage Hand
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Co-produced by The Industry and NOW Art
The War of the Worlds radio play by Howard Koch 
used by permission of Peter Koch
 Recording from the world premiere, LA Phil commission 
with generous support from Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa 
in honor of the Deborah Borda Women in the Arts Initiative
Full program notes: http://www.anniegosfield.com/WOTW_Program.pdf
NYT Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/arts/music/review-war-worlds-los-angeles-philharmonic.html
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_O5JUg0HhE&feature=youtu.be
Twitter Documentation (cardboard aliens!) https://twitter.com/_waroftheworlds

War of the Worlds (Excerpts)

Annie Gosfield (sampling keyboard), Ikue Mori (electronics) and Sylvie Courvoisier perform live at The Stone, NYC, on July 24, 2018. Excerpt taken from 8:13 - 13:35

1.Gosfield, Mori, Courvoisier at the Stone

Composed by Annie Gosfield
Performed by Steven Gosling at The Stone, NYC, 2010
Published by PSNY(2009, 10 minutes, for piano solo) 
"Five Characters Walk Into a Bar" is inspired by the clandestine activities of the Danish Resistance in World War II, and the 5-character codes that the resistance used to transmit secret messages. These five characters (originally letters, represented here by pitches) snake their way through individual bars (measures) in which they repeat, cycle, and transform, inspired by the resistance’s use of encryption, and the transformation and abstraction of information.

Five Characters Walk Into a Bar

Composed by Annie Gosfield
Performed by Blair McMillen
Published by PSNY(2006, 12 minutes, for piano)
Commissioned by Blair Mcmillen, premiered at the Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, September 8, 2006

When I composed "The Wanton Brutality of a Tender Touch" I wanted to make use of Blair McMillen's great technique and enthusiasm. The title was inspired by a recent televised brawl: one baseball player wrapped his arm around another player's waist, and drew him in close in order to deliver a wicked roundhouse punch. In one graceful series of movements, what looked like a fleeting moment of tenderness became an unbridled expression of fury. I was intrigued by the idea of creating a piece that borders on brutal, yet is delivered with Blair's flawless precision and accuracy.

The Wanton Brutality of a Tender Touch

Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider” works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. The New York Times recently described her as “a fabulously creative composer” (Zachary Woolfe) who “exuberantly exploits the inadvertent music of contemporary life: static, distortion, the clangor of industry and the siren song of space junk form part of her digital palette.” (Steve Smith). Seth Colter Walls wrote about "Ms. Gosfield’s thrilling chamber orchestra writing" reviewing the opera “War of the Worlds,” a collaboration with the L.A. Philharmonic and director Yuval Sharon, which was included in best of 2017 lists in the New Yorker (Alex Ross) and the L.A. Times (Mark Swed). She was the 2015 Fromm composer at the American Academy in Rome, a 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and received the FCA’s prestigious “Grants to Artists” award. She composes for others and performs with her own ensemble, with performances at Warsaw Autumn, the Bang on a Can Marathon, MATA, MaerzMusik, the Venice Biennale, OtherMinds, Lincoln Center, The Stone, The Miller Theatre, and The Kitchen. Annie's discography includes four diverse solo releases on the Tzadik label. Large-scale projects include War of the Worlds, an opera performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the streets of L.A. and Walt Disney Concert Hall; EWA7, a site-specific work created during a residency in the industrial environments of Nuremberg, Germany; and Daughters of the Industrial Revolution, a concert-length piece inspired by her grandparents’ immigrant experiences in New York City during the Industrial Revolution. She writes about the compositional process for the New York Times’ series “The Score.” Gosfield held the Darius Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College, and has taught at Princeton University and California Institute of the Arts.

Long Waves And Random Pulses

Annie Gosfield

Related tracks