Well-controlled orchestration describing the dark side, but where's the hope?

“Appellations que vous trouverez ci‐après, dans ce Livre: de même que la véritable composition de la Verge Foudroyante, et ses effets qui font trembles les Esprits, et dont Dieu se servit pour armer son Ange, qui chassa Adam et Eve du paradis terrestre, et de laquelle Dieu frappa les Anges rebelles, précipitant leur orgueils dans des Abymes les plus épouvantables, par la force de cette Verge qui forme des nuées, qui disperse les ouragans et les fait tomber sur quelle partie de la Terre que vous voulez.” ‐ J. Karter

“Appellations that you will find below, in this Book: as well as the true composition of the Lightning Rod, and its effects which make the Spirits tremble, and which God used to arm his Angel, who expelled Adam and Eve of the earthly paradise, and with which God struck the rebellious Angels, rushing their pride into the most dreadful Abysses, by the force of this Rod which forms clouds, which scatters hurricanes and causes them to fall on what part of the Earth you wish.”
‐ J. Karter ( English approximation )

la Verge Foudroyante was recorded by Irvine Arditti in Salon Brahms, Vienna, Austria, 29th June 2022.

la Verge Foudroyante, for violin solo

25.22.2014
Festival “PIANO+”, IMATRONIC, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
“GAMEBOY” [WP]
Sebastian Berweck – voice + sampler
Sebastian Schottke – sound direction


Jagoda Szmytka: GAMEBOY - excerpt (2014) for sampler, voice and video projections

One solo track of my latest solo projects Failure Circle (using only a no-input mixer and effects)
https://kecaptuyul.wordpress.com/solo-projects/failure-circle/
On this track I was trying to make some ugly chaotic noise but something else emerged...so I've let it grow...before it turned to something else again
Picture by JJGfree taken during Failure's Circle first live show
https://eg0cide.com/2018/03/10/eg0_174-sdt1/

Failure Circle - A Mistake Within A Mistake

[re]Glossolalia, Note:
Updated: June 20, 2018

Written in 2018, [re]Glossolalia was composed as a companion work to another composition of mine from early 2017 for alto saxophone and live electronics. Both pieces heavily critique the sometimes insidious and subversive nature of late-night rural US radio broadcasts, utilizing excerpts recorded from a circuit-bent radio. The broadcasts used in this piece vary in content, covering topics such as: predicting the United States’ role in bringing about the biblical apocalypse, why monetary donations earn entry into the afterlife, to the “comforts” of mutually assured destruction, and so on. Compositionally, the piece presents an unpredictable, dense, and continuously fracturing interpretation and dialogue of that radio content – exploring the balance between real and imaginary sound worlds in a type of liminal space. The sonic materials for [re]Glossolalia were created and transformed using custom-written granular synthesis programs, duffing oscillator synthesis, FM synthesis, and through hardware hacking.

Please note: I don’t intend for this piece to present a prescriptive worldview, or condemnation of socio-political affiliation and / or religious beliefs. However, I do intend to utilize this as a platform in which I can bring blind hatred, anti-intellectualism, and dangerous zealotry under scrutiny.

-

A further element of this work is the installation portion, which was placed in the Talbot Rice Gallery stairwell and elevator entry routes.  These placed fractured elements derived from this composition within the space of the gallery as "echoes" which inhabited the gallery.

[re]Glossolalia (2018)

Connotations (2015) for string orchestra and electronics
Total Duration 9' minutes.

Ensemble Holophony Project
Preview Full Score at www.panayiotiskokoras.com/en/works.html
Studio edited mix © Panayiotis Kokoras

Connotations [string orch & elec]

Nodus Tollens (2018)
for orchestra (2222-4331-timp-strings)
Winner of the 2020 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize

noun. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre - which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The composition of Nodus Tollens was motivated by John Koenig's online work, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Our socioeconomic and political climate is deeply divisive and partisan today, and suffers immensely from criminal injustice and strife. One can simply go online or turn on a television and learn of countless stories of death, war, hunger, natural disaster, and any amount of unending turmoil. The continued self- imposed ignorance and lack of desperately needed change will eventually lead to disastrous consequences. We are all in the same car barreling down the highway at breakneck speeds, and it will only take one small bump to end in a fiery demise. If we cannot grasp onto what is important and work towards a common good, we will bury ourselves in the graves we have already begun to dig.

Nodus Tollens alternates between tense anger and frustration and introspective moments of clarity. It represents my confusion and struggle to find where my life's path is taking me. This struggle may define others' moments of insecurity as they progress through their lives. The work begins with a solo cello playing over a slowly growing background of rumbling low strings, icy harmonics, and winds echoing the cello's ideas. The cello's beginning melodic fragments comprise every piece of the evershifting foreground and background of the piece. The rhythmic conversation of two against three is also used as a quasi anchor, to which sections constantly return before new sections occur. Bits and fragments of ideas float intangibly past the listener, seemingly important at the moment, but appear after the fact to not be important at all. We may be meaningless creations of a dead world, but that does not take away from the importance of self-discovery, and documenting and cataloguing our journey.

Premiered by the Metropolitan Orchestra of St. Louis on 03/31/2019

Nodus Tollens (for orchestra)

Written in 2019, ISOLATE was composed as the first piece written exclusively for performance with my handmade electronics performance interface Master Hand, also known as “Franky”.

In this work I am exploring compositional concepts such as performer agency in live electronic music, the use of harshly juxtaposed sonic elements, complex / nested gestural materials, and an investigation of density and texture in higher-order ambisonics. In regards to the sounds themselves, the materials used to create this composition are widely varied and range from closely recorded vocal samples (breath, vocal fry, and so on) to more intense methods of digital synthesis such as granular synthesis and Tom Mudd’s gutter synthesis. The result of all of these factors is a work which inhabits both periods of near stasis and the highly chaotic, in which musical materials and gestures continuously fracture and constellate. ISOLATE is presented in mixed-order ambisonics; many elements are generated in real- time, which are diffused and output natively in fifth-order ambisonics. Meanwhile, there are fixed-media cues which, using Master Hand are further manipulated and diffused in first-order ambisonics.

In regards to the interface itself, “Franky” is a real-time electronics performance interface developed for implementation with Max/MSP and Wekinator. Originally designed as a spin on the core design concepts of video game controllers, such as the failed Nintendo Power Glove, this interface makes use of a specially made glove and exoskeleton which places five small 2-axis control sticks at the user’s fingertips, alongside of a ribbon sensor and a 3-axis gyroscope. With some practice, this type of interface allows for nuanced control over various parameters in a performance system. Beyond the sensors and interface, this system is further augmented both by carefully tuned mappings, and by the implementation of Wekinator as a platform for building gesture recognition using machine learning. This build of the interface is the second iteration in what is currently planned as an ongoing project.

ISOLATE (2019) // Binaural Audio

song cycle for autotuned mezzo-soprano, keyboard, and electronics. Performed by Andrea Camacho.

II. Suau

I. Necesito Refrenarme

Cory Brodack (b.1997) is a composer from the St. Louis area. He writes both electronic and acoustic music, inspired by aspects of the human condition and the unique connection between performer, score, and audience. Brodack’s awards include the Rudolf Nissim Prize, an honorable mention in the American Prize, and ECU's Orchestra Composition Competition. Performers of his music include the Metropolitan Orchestra of St. Louis, Andrew Pelletier, David Bohn, and Daniel Anastasio. He earned his bachelor's from SIUE, and is currently pursuing his MM at BGSU.

Nodus Tollens (for orchestra)

Cory Brodack

Recent comments

Jacques Bailhé

Related tracks