Written for and performed by The Living Earth Show
Joe Goode Performance Group, San Francisco, CA, March 4, 2015

I spent my teenage years in a rural town in New Hampshire. That town is built around a lovely lake called Lake Massabesic. You can see the lake from nearly anywhere in town. Swimming is forbidden, but a common rite of passage among the local youths is to find a special cove where they don't patrol and go night swimming. If I were to write about my teen years, Massabesic would be a pretty central character. Since leaving the East Coast nearly four years ago I've been in a near-constant state of homesickness, and often find my thoughts drifting back to the lake.

I apologize for the poor quality of this recording! In my excitement for the performance I forgot my Zoom recorder and had to record it on my tablet.

Massabesic

Brenna Noonan, soprano saxophone
Performed at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, 12/9/12

As a saxophonist, the thought of writing a piece for saxophone (and therefore myself) was an intimidating one. I felt too close to the instrument, and was concerned that what I wrote would end up being self-serving and too devised in performance. “Diamond Sutra Vexations” is my attempt to overcome this hindrance. I wrote this piece at a time where I was immersed in deep study of the great microtonal composer Giacinto Scelsi and the Buddhist text The Diamond Sutra. Interestingly, these two subjects of study proved to almost perfectly at odds with each other. Scelsi’s works often have only one note as the focal point, and the rest of the material merely revolves around that pitch. The Diamond Sutra, however, is a text primarily about impermanence that champions non-attachment. These two warring perceptions were both very much active in my psyche during the composition of “Diamond Sutra Vexations.” The basic note of the work is a concert A. The piece reflects my own struggles with embracing these two life views as the music constantly tries to attach itself and resolve to the pitch A, while other pitches orbit around it in magnetic field tension. 

Diamond Sutra Vexations

Commissioned by Nat Evans for his project "The Tortoise." Field recordings from the Sierras of Central California provided by Nat.

The Marvelous Structure of the Existing World

Jäävuori (meaning "iceberg" in Finnish) draws from field recordings, found sounds, sonar, computer-generated sounds, and Karelian-Finnish folk songs to create a wintery landscape. Riddled with anxiety and fraught with the sounds of cracking ice, the piece gains intensity at a deliberately glacial pace as it moves toward a thunderous conclusion: the sound of a glacier the size of Manhattan falling into the Labrador Sea, the largest glacier calve ever recorded. Interwoven throughout are snippets of traditional Karelian laments. The piece serves as a commentary on our world's changing climate, and seeks to evoke the enormity of catastrophic weather events. 

This piece includes a number of found sounds and field recordings:
-Various recordings of ice and water made by the composer
-Lament singers in Finland made by Pilar Mata Dupont
-Audio from "Chasing Ice" documentary
-This piece also borrows audio from Erik Bergman's "Lapponia: II. Joig" performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir from their album "Baltic Runes"

Jäävuori

"Kaiho" is my Masters thesis piece. This is the world premiere recorded at the 2015 Mills College Signal Flow Festival.

Kaiho

A little feedback piece I made.
I used a subwoofer to make this, and achieved most of the sounds by "massaging" it, hence the title.
Best enjoyed with headphones.

Arteles Creative Center, Haukijärvi, Finland

Massage

Commissioned by and dedicated to Brandon Presley, "King Richard's Bones" is for organ and subwoofer. Originally recorded to tape, I created this digital version for ease of consumption. Created 11 Feb 2013, Arteles Creative Center, Haukijärvi, Finland.

I wrote this piece shortly after the discovery of King Richard III's remains, a story that I followed with marked interest. A very old organ had recently fallen into my hands, and I was incredibly inspired by it. However, never having written for organ, I stumbled about the instrument somewhat aimlessly. At the same time, I was also experimenting with subwoofers and feedback. The anachronistic marriage of these two instruments intrigued me, and I moved forward in my composition. It was one day that I was sitting at the organ, depressing the foot pedals and hearing the instrument sigh with each note, that I thought of King Richard III - dying, humiliated in a ditch, a death unfit for even a pauper, and yet there the King lay, forgotten, for centuries. Enter the 21st century, and he is wrestled from his grave and put on display, his humiliation relived through the eyes of the public. This piece, in juxtaposing the antiquated organ with the feedback from a subwoofer, seeks to reflect the anachronism of thrusting the late King Richard III to the forefront of the 21st century.

King Richard's Bones

Instrument-specific composition for the Arteles Harp, in JI
Dedicated to Red Cell
Created at the Arteles Creative Center, Haukijärvi, Finland
Inspired by Lithopedions

Stone Baby

"Big Cat" was commissioned by The Product Division as the score for their film "Dispatch No. 17." It is for tenor saxophone and soprano saxophone. The name is derived from my current interest in "big cats," ie. tigers, lions, panthers, etc, and my attempts to reproduce such animalistic sounds on my instruments.

Brenna Noonan, tenor and soprano saxophones (overdubbed)
Engineered by Angelo Harmsworth at The Connoisseur Society

Big Cat

A field recording I made of three flagpoles found at The Lodge in Santa Fe, NM.

Brenna Noonan

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