Live performance, Green Mill, Chicago. Graphic score. Members of Ensemble Mobius Midicus (Carol Genetti-vocals, Terri Reardon-narration, Bob Falesch-electronics), with guest pianist George Flynn. Text drawn by composer (Falesch) from four poems of "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" (by permission from William Chamberlain).Pic: Ensemble Mobius Midicus at Logan Beach, Chicago.


Soft is Not Like Hard

Invited by a fellow composer to write a quintet for a local (Chicago) woodwind group. Until experimenting with the medium, was never excited about classical woodwind quintet music as a listener, finding it a bit colorless and treble-centric I suppose. My solution included some doubling on cor anglais, bass clarinet, and piccolo, and lots of stopped horn to expand the usual range and color. I'm indebted to Christie Vohs (clarinet) and the San Benedetto Winds for doing the first workshopping of this piece, and to Charlotte Cerminaro (horn) and Susan Telford (flute) for arranging its premier public performance.

Quintet for Winds

Title track from the album CLANG, with the duo of yours truly and Jack Wright (alto saxophone), dedicated to "...all whose lives were changed on September 11, 2001."

The final twenty seconds of "Clang-2" always seems to offer hope and comfort: Jack's delicate closing gesture is astonishing for its poetic quality. His final call could be saying "There is still breath here," and feels like assurances of a better world to come.

CLANG was recorded in the studio in early 2001, but the master track quality, after a long struggle in the mixing room, was deemed inadequate for commercial release. Then in the late summer of 2001, I took up the struggle again. Late on the night of September 10th, I found a solution which produced a sound I could live with.

On the morning of September 11th, I hurriedly finished breakfast to begin the final mix and to master the track. Just after getting started, I noticed a message on my answering machine. It was from the Chicago-loop office of my dentist, "Bob, we're cancelling all appointments today due to the national emergency."

This piece, improvised months before the terror attack, was not conceived in relation to any extra-musical image but providence seems to have offered a solution on the eve of that fateful day, 9/11.    

The companion track is http://soundcloud.com/avantguy/clang-1

Yet another track from CLANG is: http://soundcloud.com/avantguy/2nd-school-in-vienna/

Clang-2 (for 9/11)

This is part one of the title track for album "CLANG", with yours truly and Jack Wright (soprano saxophone). The companion track, "Clang-2", the second part of the title track-pair, can be found here at Soundcloud as well:   http://soundcloud.com/avantguy/clang-2-for-9-11


Clang-1

From the CD release "CLANG", with yours truly and Jack Wright (soprano saxophone).

2nd School in Vienna

Frank Abbinanti on piano (keyboard and inside the piano), Bob inside the piano and on piano synth detuned 1/4-tone. Some treatment (computer software) of piano sounds layered in (Bob). At times wisps of musicality seem to emerge. Surfeits of musicality are rare. Wisps are rare too, but just a bit less so.

Wisps No Surfeit

My realisation of four page graphic score by Bob Marsh.
(track graphic is page-one of score)

http://windowdoorriver.bandcamp.com/album/window-door-river-2-3

window/door/river

Violin track (played by Katherine Hughes) from http://soundcloud.com/avantguy/two-constellations metamorphosed through granular bludgeoning (certain layers generated in OS9 app "thOnk_0+2" !n w!tsch our (prozpekt!v+?) hozt had 1+ hand).

Lost Constellations

Excerpts of a very early piece - perpetually unfinished, but a fave nevertheless. The great Katherine Hughes, violin. Still using rack synths back then. String "section" sounds are processed from Katherine's recording. Most other sounds are Proteus-1. The idea was to divide the pitch set into its two hexachords, and give the soloist one of them and the "computer" the other one.  They'd have their own pitch domains and fight over them.  Toward the end, the soloist wins, as she gets to play all 12 pitches.