As I listen to this piece, I am humbled by His grace. emotional nakedness... yes, I can definitely feel that myself as I listen to this piece.

Commissioned by Copland House for CULTIVATE 2021
Completed 03/25/2021

Recorded by Pala Garcia (violin), Alexis Pia Gerlach (cello), Moran Katz (clarinet), and Peggy Kampmeier (piano)

Based on Mokha Laget's 'Moroccan Capriccio'

I first met Mokha at an artist colony during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. We both felt extraordinarily fortunate to have been given the opportunity to concentrate on creating art during such an exhausting time, and as such, we both spent the majority of our residencies working in our respective studios. It was only in the tail-end of Mokha’s stay that I finally got to see her work. 

I was instantly enthralled. Her paintings possessed a palpable immediacy through their surprising scale, vibrant contrasts, and endearing whimsy. They were frequently unpredictable - trying to follow any one particular shape, I would quickly lose my place in a sea of impossible geometries. Even so, when I stepped back to consider the whole, Mokha’s paintings nonetheless felt cohesive and organic. We spoke then and there about collaborating, eventually deciding that I would write a new work based on her Moroccan Capriccio. 

The resulting piece, Intuitive Geometry, seeks to capture the same kind of mercurial yet self-consistent discourse that defines Mokha’s resplendent art. Filled with whirling arpeggios, mixed meters, and restless modulations, the piece is one of constant motion. Should any listener try to follow any one particular instrument, they might quickly become lost - yet even as ideas ricochet between the members of the quartet, the piece remains united through its economy of material. Virtually every gesture is built out of an unevenly oscillating third, ensuring that the piece as a whole maintains its congruence.

It was delicious fun translating Mokha’s kaleidoscopic architectures into music, and I am truly grateful for her friendship and artistic generosity.

Chamber Pieces

Intuitive Geometry, for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

Commissioned by Deus Ex Musica as a winner in their 2020 Composition Competition

Completed 03/01/2021
Recorded 12/22/2021 by Megumi Stohs Lewis

The Psalms have always held a great degree of significance to me, both as a Christian and as an artist. Much has been written about their beautiful composition and their timeless imagery, but beyond the Psalms’ considerable literary beauty and their theological profundity, I have always been drawn in by their honesty. For such early literature, these songs are remarkable for their frank depictions of their respective authors’ emotional states, whether ecstatic joy (as in Psalm 126), deep contrition (Psalm 51), assured hope (Psalm 23), or meditative ponderance (Psalm 39). The emotional nakedness of the Psalms always reminds me of God’s pursuit of our hearts: He would know us in our truest selves, rather than our constructed, ‘religious’ selves. It was with this posture that I began to write A Mere Breath, a reflection on Psalm 39. 

Psalm 39 feels uniquely ahead of its time, prefiguring the book of Ecclesiastes with its existential themes of ephemerality and uncertainty. Its surprising emotional complexity is perhaps what has made it so enduringly appealing, appearing in pieces from Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem to Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. I found myself identifying with the Psalm thanks in no small part to the time in which I had begun writing my piece: as the world continued to square off against the Covid-19 pandemic, I was applying to more school and was not altogether sure where I would be the next year. I identified with the Psalm’s thinly veiled frustration and confusion that stemmed from recognizing the sheer smallness of humanity in the face of an eternal God. 

A Mere Breath casts the violinist as psalmist, contending with the depths and scale of the eternal. Wispy and capricious, the violin part gradually unfolds the piece’s main theme, a plaintive, Hildegard-like hymn of simple beauty. Pursuing it across a variety of figurations, the soloist eventually takes hold of the melody with relief, swells in thanksgiving, and ultimately vanishes into nothingness.

A Mere Breath, for violin and electronics

A commission I did for a friend a year ago under another name, really proud of it so sharing it on main as well. Please enjoy :)

Free DL

Faded Memories

Xfdghdfghjfhgjkghfjlk (Remaster)

never

Shouts to Noxin:
https://soundcloud.com/nnoxinn
Shouts to Ivons (Photo) :
https://soundcloud.com/ivojunyent

SyS15Ma II

The second track of “Her Elegy” released November 3rd. “Dedication,” the name of this second movement is a tribute to the unwavering commitment my grandmother had toward her family, and more specifically, my musical life. 

“Dedication” is a calm and simple waltz in irregular meter, reflective of Ida’s endless love and persistence. The first three tracks (Evocation, Dedication and Meditation) take you on an original solo piano journey of losing and remembering someone you love, followed by an album which twists into a narrative told by Ida - prima stage-grandma of her star piano prodigy grandson, Dustin. This album bends through synth-wave-art-rock, mixed with Ida's favorite works by Liszt, Debussy, Chopin and Rachmaninoff. The next track “Meditation” releases December 8th.

Her Elegy: Dedication

Download / Stream

Luis Miehlich is a composer originally from Heidelberg in Southern Germany, who moved to the small town of Trossingen to study music design in a rural conservatory. He has previously released music through labels such as Archives, Hibernate, Inner Space Travels and also Whitelabrecs with Timecuts in 2019 and the final edition of our Home Diaries series back in 2020. He has also contributed to albums and compilations on eilean rec, Shimmering Mood Records, Ambientologist and El Muelle Records.

Through his studies, Luis has had the opportunity to develop formats for the concert hall and has been able to realise numerous concert projects, bringing together instrumentalists, experimenting with pieces from classical and early music, electronics and visuals. This developed into a further opportunity, in which he had the chance to perform live Ambient sets during a 3-stop mini-tour of japan. These live performances became the backbone of this album.

‘Re-Cartographies’ is based upon a three step process: first the music was sketched out to be played by an ensemble made up of fellow students. It was then rehearsed, developed and finally recorded. Luis then used these recordings to make new ambient pieces, using processing such as granular synthesis, rearranging and looping the material and using spatial effects.

The opening ‘Cartographies’ pieces developed upon the Home Diaries project, adding long silences to the approach to further explore the idea of slowing down time. Then around the same time, still during the Covid-19 pandemic, Luis started sketching small watercolour scores every morning. These later became the base for the two ‘Small Score’ tracks; photographs of these original paintings have been included inside the CD sleeve. These sketches left a lot of freedom to the musicians playing, only notating the contour and structure of the melodies to be played with no set pitches being specified. The charm of the resulting music stems from the fact that everyone interpreted the sketches differently.

At Trossingen, Luis became interested in revisiting these concepts and turning them into a concert programme and this album is made of music recorded in preparation for the concert, which had the subtitle Halbschlafkonzert, which translates to ‘half-asleep concert’. Luis enjoys the state of listening to music whilst almost dozing off to sleep, and wanted to create a stream of music that fits this somewhat subconscious listening-mode. 

Whilst compiling the material for this album, Luis was trying to work with space: The pieces, or blocks, often start out very intimately and end in big ambient spaces. Often, artists will approach ambient music using either synthetic or reverb-led drones, or through more traditional sound sources such as Modern Classical sound. Luis wanted to combine dry chamber music and enveloping ambient in one record and the result is something which feels half-asleep, yet focused at the same time, as Luis aimed to slow down the world.

Credits:
Elisa Wörner - Violin (5-10)
Viola Bürck - Violin (9-10)
Tristan Dorn - Viola (5-10)
Kevin Santana - Cello (9-10)
Haeseong Seo - Alto Flute (9-10)
Manuela Pinto - Clarinet (2-5)
Laura Mingo Perez - Piano (9-10)
Marius Jentschke - Guitar (3-5)
Luis Miehlich - Electronics (1-10) and Piano (1-8)
Franziska Kewes - Vocals, Lyrics and additional Composition (10)

Written and produced by Luis Miehlich
Audio Engineering by Luka Swoboda
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Cover art reinterpreted by Harry Towell
Original cover concept by Luis Miehlich
Art and design by Andrew Heath

Re-Cartographies

wlr153 Luis Miehlich - Re-Cartographies

A public domain recording of Erik Satie Gymnopedie No.1, as recorded by Robin Alciatore, being processed by the Dark Chamber reverb mode in ValhallaRoom. The decay is set to 12 seconds. There is a fair amount of chorusing being used. If you compare this to the NarcissusPianoCathedral2 example, you can hear how the chorusing in the Dark Chamber mode is more "diffuse," and less prone to random pitch jumps.

DarkChamberPianoCathedral

frozen trough
I cup the warm breath
of my horse
---
My response to this week's Naviar Haiku challenge, informed by the hot summer we are having down here in Sydney, Australia.

Enjoy!
---
Naviar Haiku challenge #312: https://naviarlab.tumblr.com/post/189860392413/naviarhaiku312-frozen-trough
Poem: Debbie Strange (http://debbiemstrange.blogspot.com)
Picture: Jonathan Knepper (https://unsplash.com/@jknepp)

Warm (naviarhaiku312)

Braille & Arco5 - Desastre

Composed in 2005, in collaboration by @senglar /Braille and @Arco5
Remastered October 4, 2020

Download the track here: https://arco5.bandcamp.com/track/desastre
Spotify; https://open.spotify.com/album/4jD6whMcDrODQskQBGomQy

A Mere Breath, for violin and electronics

Bobby Ge

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