Just discovered your music and am quite moved...

So beautiful this music by Cassandra Miller!!

So unique and beautiful. New music doesn't have to be jarring and confrontational. It's fine if it is but there are other options. Thank you.

Recording from Berlin Konzerthaus 31.08.2016

Performed by Orchestra of Estonian Academy of Music and Theater, conducted by Paul Mägi.

Mechanics Of Flying (2016)

https://cassandramiller.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/bel-canto/

Bel Canto

Commissioned by Ensemble Kore with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Recipient of the 2011 Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (Canada’s highest honour for composition)

Marie-Annick Béliveau, mezzo-soprano
Geneviève Déraspe, alto flute
Xavier Brossard-Ménard, clarinet
Jonathan Barriault, guitar
John Corban, violin
Pemi Paull, viola
Yegor Dyachkov, cello

The piece is above all a portrait Maria Callas. It’s based on the opening statement (the opening sighs) of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte – Maria Callas’ live version of it, with all the full generosity of her vibrato, swoops and portamenti (all the things outside of notation). At the beginning, it’s as if we hear her young voice, and towards the end, the voice of her later years.

The path of the piece through time is not only about the ageing of an extraordinary woman, but also about the listener. Time slows down to allow for an engagement with detail, for a closeness or submersion in the sound, and possibly for clarity or meditative stillness.

Two simultaneous ensembles perform here without coordinating with each other. This makes for layers of melody, creating a sonic depth of field – echoing perhaps the depth of the Greek landscape in which I felt the warm revelation that originally inspired this piece. Moreover, to separate the ensemble into two smaller groups, without conductor, enables an intense chamber-listening between the players. This intimacy allows them to carry out with great musicality all of the non-notatable things I mentioned earlier – the swoops and vibrato, and all the unnamable subtleties of vocality.

Bel Canto

Bel Canto, Ensemble Kore with Marie-Annick Béliveau (2010)

Musique à danser des îles d'Auvergne.
https://www.facebook.com/soumailles/
Hervé Capel 
Guilhem Lacroux
Jacques Puech

Photo : Julien Sagne

L'autre jorn me permenave - Aval dins lo limouzin - Soumailles

From the album Luft, released on 08/08/2019 on Eilean Rec.

For full album:
https://michaelcutting.bandcamp.com/album/luft

Seeking Safe Harbour

Let Me Breathe, for bass clarinet and electronics. 
Bass clarinet: Chiara Percivati; Electronics: Daniela Terranova
Recorded live in Trieste by Paolo Carrer (Conservatorio 'G. Tartini', 13-11-2019). Commissioned by ACM Chamber Music Trieste (a special thanks to Fedra Florit).

Let me breathe (bass clarinet and electronics)

Music for Cello and Humming is available at https://blankforms.org/publication/judith-hamann-music-for-cello-and-humming-cd/

For her first album releases as a soloist, nomadic Australian cellist and composer Judith Hamann presents two collections of her sonic inquiries into shaking and humming. Her CD, Music for Cello and Humming, features two pieces for cello and humming written specifically for Hamann by composers Sarah Hennies and Anthony Pateras alongside Hamann’s own “Humming Suite” and “Study for cello and humming.” Having arisen intuitively from Hamann’s investigations into shaking, just intonation, psychoacoustic phenomena, and the voice in relation to the femme presenting body in performance, humming here also references dislocation, or ventriloquism.  Although teetering on the edge of audibility, the intimate and vulnerable closed-mouth sounding enters into subtle interference with her cello, drifting into acoustical beating and bringing instability to otherwise more formal grid structures. The capacity for rupture of this volatile fragility reaches its apotheosis on Hennies’ “Loss,” a piece that deliberately instructs Hamann to hum beyond the limits of her voice range. Going against the grain of chamber music orthodoxy, the guaranteed failure set in motion by this instruction yields a generative sound of effort reminiscent of Xenakis’ storied desire for an instrumentalist to play with the sorrow of knowing they can’t do everything. With an arc suggestive of sudden life change, “Loss” casts queer epistemology onto composition, positioning failure, undoing, unbecoming, and transforming as alternative ways of knowing or being. Hennies’ signature composite merging of individual components here brings oral sounds that include breathing and coughing together with humming, cello, and sine waves. Like Glenn Gould’s 1982 Goldberg Variations or Pauline Oliveros’ Accordion and Voice, this timbral meeting of bodily utterances with consummate musicianship imbues Hamann’s humming work with a breakable, human strand, here as humbling as it is uncomfortable.

Music for Cello and Humming‘s sister release, Shaking Studies, is also available. Music for Cello and Humming is accompanied by an essay on both recordings by Nora Fulton.

Judith Hamann undertook her doctoral studies with renowned cellist Charles Curtis, with whom she is currently engaged in a discourse based project, ‘Materialities of Realisation.’ She has additionally demonstrated a superlative capacity for improvisation and engagement with sonic arts through work with artists Dennis Cooper, Éliane Radigue, Áine O’Dwyer, Ilan Volkov, Toshimaru Nakamura, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Golden Fur, Jessika Kenney, Anna Homler, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Lori Goldston, among others. Her recorded appearances include Tashi Wada’s Duets, Graham Lambkin’s Community, Alvin Lucier’s Illuminated By The Moon, and Gossamers, with Rosalind Hall.

Judith Hamann - Humming Suite III - Harmonics Étude For One Cello And One Voice

Stockholm Saxophone Quartet:
Mathias Björnstad
Jörgen Pettersson
Anna Magnusson
Linn Persson

Livestream: Johan E.Andersson
The concert was presnted by Estonian Music Days 2020

As I studied the recordings of various wolf howls I quickly learned that sensing each other’s presence through songs or voices, and the power or intimacy such a common experience creates is familiar both to people and the loneliest wolf cub. I viewed the spectral track of two different wolf packs and found fascinating musical references in the howling ensembles of the pack members. For example, in one of my recordings, the alpha established a specific pitch, the next wolf joined by sliding downwards, the third by sliding upwards and together they reached a pulsating unison that resounded throughout the woods. This pitch was also picked up on the other side of the forest and so they kept answering each other in this multi-choral manner for three minutes. While the pulsating unison might amplify the sound and give the impression that the number of wolves is greater, without the purpose of claiming territory the wolves’ bodies release happiness hormones and strengthen the ties within the pack.
In these 3 pieces similarly to wolves, the saxophones interact with each other in a temporally flexible manner, choosing and synchronising entrances and listening to the delicate microtonal shades of the unison.

Us... and Them... (2020) for saxophone quartet and wolves

Deforestation in Finland has accelerated tremendously in recent years. Most old forests have already been cutted, but also logging growing forests  for the pulp industry is still increasing. When the logging machine comes, the scene is like from a horror movie. Like the sounding too. 

A little piece of old forest that had remain near our home was nearly clear cutted brutally. It took four days to do that, and this recording is from the third day.  A Black Woodpecker cried hearth-breakable during the first day and a Raven pair flew over and over again during all the days of logging. 

This piece is recorded near my bird feeder. The Raven is heard best between 5-6 and from 11.15. The other birds are mostly tits of the woods. Between 9-10.30 a Willow Tit (most likely) is singing weakly it's fall song. In the picture the logging machine is resting for a moment. Enjoy with headphones, thanks!

(MKH8020 ab80cm, SD702, 24/48, +6dB in post, flac)

https://holotna.pic.fi/kuvat/2020/201023_3.jpg

Jan Eerala Finland

The Final Cut - 15/10/2020 - Makholma Forest

Sarah Nemtsov
"Wolfsgesänge" (2019)
for amplified cello solo with electronics [and video (ad libitum)]
in memoriam Wolfgang Zamastil
*
Sonja Lena Schmid (cello, decoder ensemble) -
*
LISTENING WITH HEADPHONES recommended
*
picture: videostill (& photo) by Rosa Wernecke and Heinrich Horwitz

Wolfsgesänge (2019) Cello solo - EXCERPT

Andrey Nemzer, countertenor, Ekaterina Pressler, Piano. Sergej Newski/Leonid Imennykh electronics.

Tarussa (2020) for voice piano and playback  after Paul Celan

Soft sand being blown over a hard crust of sand on a dune in the Namib desert. Read about my expedition to Namibia at https://mindful-audio.com/blog/namibia-sound-recording-2020

Bel Canto, Ensemble Kore with Marie-Annick Béliveau (2010)

Cassandra Miller composer

Recent comments

Related tracks