Name: ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS I from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN (2019) by Brian Ciach in Composer project - Brian Ciach
Duration: 7 min 28 s
Description: All variations were created from recordings of a vibrator on the piano strings. I used Logic Pro, granular synthesis, and MIDI to create the sounds.

Composer project - Brian Ciach

Steve Reich refers to Caleb Burhans as "a unique, unusual, and distinctive voice" — all of which the young composer and multi-instrumentalist brings to bear on his Cantaloupe Music debut EVENSONG (July 30). Order now at iTunes and you'll get two exclusive bonus tracks: “In Time of Desperation” (with Caleb on piano) and “As Desperation Sets In” (Bill Kalinkos, clarinet and John Orfe, piano).

Featuring ALARM WILL SOUND, the TRINITY WALL STREET CHOIR and the TARAB CELLO ENSEMBLE, the recording is a testament to Burhans' versatility as a composer and the defining statement of his complex connection to the church — an “emo-classical” epic where sacred meets secular in a pure, dynamic expression of musical influences that range from classical to ambient to post-rock. While the album presents motifs from the Christian church service (book-ended with the opening “Magnificat” and the closing “Nunc Dimittis,” recorded with the Trinity Wall Street Choir), it refracts them through the modern lens of new music and the avant garde.

Order the CD, with liner notes by Grey Mcmurray, here: http://bangonacan.org/store/music/evensong

Oh Ye Of Little Faith … (Do You Know Where Your Children Are )

Who Made the Inch of Grass was written for Corey Hamm and Nicole Li as part of their Piano and Erhu Project, and they recorded it for Volume Two of their project compilation, released on Redshift Music in January 2015. This was my first time writing for erhu, an instrument that I have long wanted to explore. I am particularly attracted to the lyrical nature of the erhu and its tradition of ornamentation, so I knew I wanted to feature those elements. 

As I was starting on the piece, I remembered a short melodic fragment left over from another piece, buried in my stacks of papers. This fragment had to be left out of the earlier piece for logistical reasons, but I had been hanging onto it because I liked it and wanted to use it somewhere else. I had a hunch it might work for Who Made the Inch of Grass.

That fragment now forms the first few phrases of the piece. I developed it into a delicate, lyrical line, ornamented with traditional erhu slides, warbles, and vibrato. This material is juxtaposed against a floating, asynchronous piano that weaves in and out of the melodic framework. Throughout the piece, the two parts play quasi-independently, dancing around each other, tied together harmonically but not playing at the same time. Sometimes the erhu takes the lead, at other times the piano takes over. The end result is a rich, dreamlike texture, constantly changing through the push and pull of the musical materials.

Who Made the Inch of Grass

Brian Ciach, Piano 
Recorded at the Trianon Theatre, San Jose, CA, October 5, 2015 
Recording engineers: Brian Ciach and Jay DeShan 
Mastering by Jay DeShan
https://sigh-ackmusic.org/index.html

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4R6EVzWEUA

SCORE: http://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/ciach_fourth_piano_sonata_score?workerAddress=

ABOUT THE MUSIC
This work is a "screaming motley" depicting triumph over great struggle. It is in “palindromic sonata form”, in that the sections of thematic material return in reverse order. Among other extended piano techniques, I use the Stopped-String Slide (1:50), where the fingers of one hand press strings and slide down them as they are played on the keys with the other hand, producing various harmonic overtones. Like a large, heavy iron lid frantically placed onto an over-boiling cauldron, the piano’s fall board is slammed shut, ending the final flurry of notes. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach is currently the Assistant Director and Instructor of Music (Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition) at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose, California and a Music Engraver for the Subito Music Corporation. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 


Fourth Sonata, "The Great Scream" (2015)

Piano Sonata # 3 -perf. by Dim.Tsanev-piano

Krassimir Taskov-Piano Sonata # 3 (Short/Breve)-2014

Krassimir Taskov - Piano Sonata # 4 (Short/Breve)-2014

Prokofiev Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83 ii

Remembrance

Lu, Sonata For Trumpet And Piano, I. The Early Years

Blackwood, Sonata For Trumpet And Piano, II. Andante

All variations were created from recordings of a vibrator on the piano strings. I used Logic Pro, granular synthesis, and MIDI to create the sounds.

ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS I from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN (2019)

Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello
Hot Air New Music Festival
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Osher Salon
February 25, 2018

Copyright © 2008 by Brian Ciach

ABOUT THE MUSIC
In the beginning stages of writing the Chaconne for cello and electronic music, I recorded a large collection of cello excerpts, intending to use many of them for processing and synthesizing into an electronic accompaniment. I ended up making an entire 9-minute piece from just the tuning fifths that my cellist friend played to warm up, using none of the intended excerpts. You will hear the cellist play these fifths at the opening. The electronic music follows like an echo with an elongated and distant version. These fifths repeat over and over, like a chaconne, and are transposed and then stacked to make harmonic swirls. Harmonies of minor and major seventh chords predominate the progressions. These falling fifths also occur at different rates of speed--some very slow, some quite fast--creating canons of augmentation and diminution. In short, the entire electronic portion of the piece is a grand mensuration canon (a canon of different speeds) built from the tuning fifths at the opening (though this is not necessarily intended to be audible). The cello presents an antagonistic contrast to the harmonious electronic music. Gestures of aggression are subdued after a climax in the "golden section" of the work (at a point where the ratio is .618 in proportion to the whole), where both cello and electronics reach there loudest. The cello is left singing victoriously as the electronics drop out. I used the Riverrun and eVerb plug ins via ProTools to create the electronic music.

SCORE
https://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/bri...

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is a composer, new music pianist, and instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored" (New Music Box). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language.  He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is the Assistant Director and Instructor of Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition at the Hunter School of Music (San Jose, California). His compositions are published by Potenza Music and nomus21. 

WEBSITE
https://sigh-ackmusic.org

Chaconne for cello and electronic music | Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello

The Body Electric performed by the Wellesley College Composers Conference chamber orchestra.

The Body Electric (chamber orchestra version)

Urban Sprawl performed by Alarm Will Sound.

Urban Sprawl - Alarm Will Sound

Performed by Brian Ciach, The Hunter School of Music, San Jose, CA, October 16, 2018.

Prometheus Unbound

Performed by Alarm Will Sound at the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival 
Missouri Theatre Centre for the Arts, Columbia Missouri

The Einstein Slide (2012)
Addendum to Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2010)

The Einstein Slide is a short chamber concerto inspired by a medical slide of Albert Einstein's brain on display at the Mütter museum, a medical oddities museum in Philadelphia. 
	Lucy Rorke-Adams, the neuropathologist who donated the slides to the museum, has found that Einstein's brain is remarkably youthful for a man aged 76. "The blood vessels are gorgeous", she says. To reflect this, the music is ever inspired and brilliant, undergoing constant shifts and a childlike exploration of material. Scientists have found that Einstein's brain was lacking a complete Sylvian fissure, a type of wall separating the parts of the brain responsible for mathematical ability, spatial reasoning and three-dimensional visualization. Some argue that the synergy of these diverse segments in Einstein's brain allowed him to think differently. The Einstein Slide evokes this, musically, by way of constant shifting between sections. 
	There is also the "musical equation" toward the middle of the score. This is a musical representation of the formula E=mc2 in the form of a puzzle canon. Overall, the key areas of the work are C and C-sharp, reflecting, in a musical way, the c squared notion of the famous equation.


VI. The Einstein Slide (Chamber Concerto)

Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language. He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is a Lecturer of Music Theory and Composition at San Jose State University and Assistant Director and Instructor of Music at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 

      In 2011, Brian earned a doctorate in music composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he also studied music theory and electronic music. He was the recipient of two Dean's Prizes in music composition at IU in 2009 and 2010 for Mölna Elegy and his orchestral dissertation, Collective Uncommon. He also received the Presser Music Award at IU in 2008, which funded travel to the premieres of two of his compositions in Berlin, Germany and Pavia, Italy. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at Indiana University. Additional studies were with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin in the summers of 2008 and 2009.  Brian studied privately with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Richard Wernick from 2004 to 2006. Ciach has two concurrent Master's degrees in piano performance and composition and a Bachelor's degree in piano performance from Temple University, where he studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, Harvey Wedeen, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and composition with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead. 

For more information, please visit: sigh-ackmusic.org

EDUCATION: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (DM, Composition, 2007-2011), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (MM, Piano Performance, MM, Composition, 2002-2004), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (BM, Piano Performance, 1998-2002), Delaware County Community College (AA, Liberal Arts, 1995-1998)

EMPLOYMENT: Instructor of Music Theory, Santa Clara University, Assistant Director, Instructor of Music (piano, improvisation, music theory, and composition), The Hunter School of Music, Music Engraver at the Subito Music Corporation

INTERESTS: cooking, chess, biking, running, swimming

ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS I from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN (2019)

Brian Ciach

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