MKamp

Music inspired by the tallest oak tree on the North American continent — the Henley Oak — and the general epic-ness of the place it calls home, the Round Valley of Mendocino County in Nor—Cal. 

Written for Banglewood 2013.

Performed by:

Charlie Magnone — piano
Brendon Randall–Myers — Guitar
Ted Babcock — vibes, percussion
Lucie Grugier — cello
Pat Swoboda — bass
Chuck Furlong — bass clarinet

...all of whom are totally bad—ass.

Henley Oak

Bang on a Can Summer Festival
Monday, July 29, 2013 @ MASS MoCA's Hunter Theatre.

Todd Reynolds, conductor
Lina Andonovska, flute
Megan Clune, clarinet
Daniel Cutchen, oboe
Molly Germer, violin
Micah Ringham, violin
Hannah Nicholas, viola
Douglas Machiz, cello
David Sánchez, double bass
David Abraham, marimba/glockenspiel

universe explosion is an acoustic piece as a zoomed out timeline of the universe, from big bang to heat death.

universe explosion [live @ MASS MoCA 7.29.13]

Live performance at MASS MoCA at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival.

Chuck Furlong - Bass Clarinet
Lucie Grugier - Cello
Brendon Randall-Myers - Guitar
Pat Swoboda - Bass
Ted Babcock - Drum Set
Charlie Magnone - Piano

Inside Out

Invisible Anatomy Teaser

if you like this, please help us make this album a reality: http://kck.st/2kDCBCE

from the debut Marateck full-length "Time Is Over" (2017)

for more thrills and chills, find us on the following fine web pages:
facebook.com/marateckband
marateck.bandcamp.com

Marateck - Heart Failure

Recorded by Lydian Quartet

I – NODE: Tuning Knot  00:00-03:22
II – Recently Found Fragments: Chant Loop  03:28-11:38
III – Striding Rituals: Nocturnal Gatherings for Mass Wooing  11:44-17:30
III.5 or 5.IV – Optional habits  17:43-18:40
IV – CODEX: I know I know this (…almost remembering…)  18:44-25:04
V – Turn the Corner: Post-Rapture Celebration  25:08-28:04
VI - NODE: Ex nihilo…In nihil [-for Mary Ruth-]  28:05-35:30

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past is dedicated to the Lydian String Quartet and was composed as part of their Composition Commission Award, which was made possible by the generosity and vision of Marjorie B. and Martin Cohn. It was composed in San Francisco and Cambridge and is 35 minutes long.

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past (2013-14/rev. 2017) for string quartet

6 Mmmhmm

"power is everywhere" is an assemblage of various writings/talks by Foucault. The singer is observer, actor, and deliverer of the message. She is not there to simply sing the text – she is there to instigate the way the music unfolds by way of what the words tell us. She is powerful, taking note of what happens and how to move forward. She is everywhere all the time. My piece is influenced by opera, song cycles, theater, and might even be considered a surreal singspiel.

Left Coast Ensemble, with Nikki Einfeld (soprano)
video: https://youtu.be/75lAqvPOLjQ

TEXTS (indicates omitted words)
Power (is everywhere.)

We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it "excludes," it "represses," it "censors," it "abstracts," it "masks," it "conceals." In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production.

Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it... We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby a discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism. In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating. Madness is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition, which dissolves in time the truth of the work of art.
 
Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions. The judges of normality (are present everywhere.) We are in the society of the great teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge.
 
The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order. What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something, which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one, perhaps, nearing its end.
 
But there exists a system of power which blocks, prohibits, and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtly penetrates an entire societal network. (Intellectuals are themselves agents of this system of power - the idea of their responsibility for "consciousness" and discourse forms part of the system.) The intellectual's role is no longer to place himself "somewhat ahead and to the side" in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather, it is to struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of "knowledge," "truth," "consciousness," and "discourse."

Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.

Power exists only when it is put into action; it does not require your consent.

If no one knows who you are, can you be forgotten? If memory is power, are those who are forgotten powerless? The powerless are everywhere.

power is everywhere, an observed distraction for soprano & ensemble on texts of Foucault (2017)

Premiere performance by
The Yale Philharmonia
Julian Pellicano, conductor
Woolsey Hall
New Haven, Connecticut
6 December 2018

Plastic Action for Orchestra and Noise

Diane Seuss is a poet, a thinker, a seer, a sayer - an oracle of sorts. Her collection Four-Legged Girl is a complete game changer in the way it:
-tells stories, 
-captures the way we remember, reinvent, forget, 
-manages to shock and touch and move us,
-catches us off guard and draws us only further in.

It Wasn't A Dream is a collection of six settings of Seuss's poems from her collection. It is for soprano, tenor and piano four-hands. I composed it for the Brooklyn Art Song Society in 2018. Here is the opening setting of the first third of the title poem. Thanks to soprano Charlotte Mundy, tenor Andrew Fuchs, and pianists Miori Sugiyama and Michael Brofman.

I - It Wasn't A Dream (part 1) from It Wasn't A Dream (2018)

It is difficult to think of a song, any song, without the words.

Consider all the ways songs are made – words first and then music, music first and then words, the haphazard fusing of sound and action given speech, the democratized & collective assembly of a rally cry given melody, the purposeful need to make something created solely to be remembered so one “knows” they need to buy that product while at the store or they “must” vote for that candidate while at the polls or they “will” thank their god while at the church.

Songs occupy so many parts of our being. They are remarkable devices for connecting the written or the spoken with the act of musicking – to sing; to music a story, to song an emotion or remember a memory or be inspire to do something you hadn’t considered doing only moments earlier. So to take away the words of a song is a surgical act that assumes the music will survive without the text; that the message is somehow still intact even though it is no longer being told with the word and only with the sound.

It is fitting that the opening of Mitchell’s Blue is:

“Songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey Blue
And there is a song for you”

These remixes are works that sail away from the original song, but they definitely started out at the port of the song. Perhaps THAT is the joy of the remix – it honors the port of departure as the most important location in the journey. It’s not about where you are going; it’s about where you started from.

-- 

Hildegard was a polymath; a poet, a doctor, a musician, a theologian, a philosopher, an artist and a leader. Her text to the Ave Maria is original poetry and does not use the traditional liturgical texts. While liturgical in nature, her version is clearly centering a very active role for Mary – not just the mother of Jesus, but healer, creator, builder, warrior, leader.

“Hail Mary, 
O authoress of life, 
rebuilding up salvation’s health, 
for death you have disturbed, 
that serpent crushed 
to whom Eve raised herself, 
her neck outstretched 
with puffed-up pride.”

Ave for alto flute, viola & cello, a remix after Hildegard von Bingen (2020)

Composer and guitarist of rock, metal, experimental, theater, soundtrack, and classical music. Co-leader of Scarcity, frequent guitarist in Dither, sometimes conductor of Glenn Branca Ensemble.

Inside Out

brendonrandallmyers

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