Erika Eckert, viola and Paul Rudy melodica, percussion and toys
 
In September, 2010, I arrived starry-eyed at the American Academy in Rome for a year that promised wide open potential. Among the first things I learned was that my studio sits on the site of Galileo’s telescope demonstration to the Lyncean Society of April 14, 1611. I began contemplating the stars in a different way: through a lens of others’ contemplation. On Christmas Eve, 1968, the first images of Earth came to us from space through the Apollo 8 crew. A few years later, Galileo the space probe, was designed to continue to gather and send data even as it’s eyes and ears disintegrated during its plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere: information comes at a cost. Further out yet, Voyager’s image of Earth shows our home as a small blue dot from 3.7 billion miles away, and for the first time we can actually see our own smallness. Galileo, the man, invited a new scientific gaze outward, while Apollo 8 and Voyager invite us to take a look at how we see ourselves. Telescopes are wormholes outward and ideas, the rabbit hole inward. Galileo, among other things, discovered the moons of Jupiter, hence the title of this work. One of his moons, Io, is a beautiful handmaiden, is the lover of Zeus, is a white cow, or companion to Prometheus, who was chained, as She is chained around Jupiter, just where Galileo left her 400 years ago for us to re-gaze upon. In contemplating Galileo’s political and religious challenges, we began to focus compositional energies around the problem of dogma. Dogma, no matter how it is expressed, enforced or perpetuated (whether in religion or science), easily becomes stuck energy, and is a force that tends to limit human potential. Perhaps Leto II in Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune says it most concisely when he reflects that “knowing is a barrier to learning.” Learning outward begs a balancing inward and an openness to changing notions of how our universe works and why we are here.
 
At Rome Around Jovan Moons was created during a week-long intensive collaboration with Erika Eckert at the American Academy in Rome. It uses sound samples from the Cassini, Voyager and Galileo Space Probes courtesy of NASA and the University of Iowa; recordings of my brother Jon’s Ham radio contacts from around the globe; sounds from Rome and the Academy, and in specific, those recorded on New Years Eve 2011 as Rome exploded in fireworks. At Rome Around Jovan Moons was commissioned by the American Academy in Rome for the 400th Anniversary Celebration of Galileo’s Telescope Demonstration, April 14, 2011 with generous supported by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

At Rome Around Jovan Moons

Photographs of Water is a fixed-media work that draws on real-world recordings I have made over the last decade, and on poems recorded for me by David Bartone (1980-) and Ann Brewer Knox (1926-2011). A tentative conversation between ages, and places, the piece is a contemplation of the passing of time and lives. The first performance was given headlining Electroacoustic WALES at Bangor, North Wales, on 7 November 2013.

The full concert work is nearly 16 minutes in duration, and for 11 discrete channels of sound playback: an octaphonic ring plus 3 "solo" channels. The excerpt, a simple stereo mix-down, is from the middle of the work.

Photographs Of Water (2013)- stereo reduction, excerpt

Phyllotaxis (2009)
Jennifer Bernard Merkowitz
Kimberlee Goodman, flute
Duration: approx. 8’30

The word phyllotaxis means “leaf arrangement” in Greek.  It describes the phenomenon that plants seem to grow in patterns that make for the most efficient use of space.  As a plant grows, the number of “turns” made before a new leaf or petal appears is called the phyllotactic ratio, and common ratios include 1/2, 2/5, 3/8—all ratios involving numbers from the Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…).  When looking at the head of a sunflower, the eye is drawn to clockwise and counterclockwise spirals, and there are usually 34 going one way and 55 going the other way—also Fibonacci numbers!  The phenomenon can be recreated by generating successive points on a spiral that are separated by 137.5 degrees—the “Golden Angle” or 360°/Φ.

This piece makes extensive use of the Fibonacci numbers, the Golden Ratio (the relationship of the smaller portion to the larger portion is the same as the relationship of the larger portion to the whole), and the Golden Angle.  The piece is separated into four sections, all of which have a golden relationship with the succeeding sections in terms of elapsed time.  The pitch material of the first section comes from the Fibonacci series mod 12.  The pitches are treated as 3 sets of 8.  The second section’s pitches are derived from the Lucas numbers, a series similar to Fibonacci series but with different starting numbers (2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11…).  While the majority of phyllotactic ratios use Fibonacci numbers, there are also some plants that grow in Lucas number ratios.  The third section’s pitches are derived by dividing a circle into 12 parts and assigning pitch based on where “petals” growing according the Golden Angle would fall.  This creates a kind of constantly ascending pitch ladder in groups of 13 and 8.  Finally, the fourth section includes the pitches that were left out of each pitch group in the third section.  The technical details are provided here for the curious, but the goal is that the music itself—like a pinecone, pineapple, or rose—has an intrinsic beauty that can stand on its own.

Phyllotaxis was composed for Kimberlee Goodman with the partial support of the Otterbein College Faculty Development Committee. The electronic sound is derived from earlier recordings of the flute part and from live processing of the flute, both of which are controlled from a Max/MSP patch.

Phyllotaxis for flute and electronics (2009)

In every human lurks the Striga. Worshipped in the cults of the Mekhet – its public face beautiful and refined – this Belial’s Brood hides in the shadows, waiting for the time to strike the innocent.  Striga has always existed, and always will – regardless of religious practice, of philosophical rhetoric, or of simple hope.
Though bleak, also ever present is the Inner Warrior, the One who overcomes the demon. (S)he is nourished by love and does not fear the beast within.  
This oeuvre is an Everyman tale of good versus evil, where the Inner Warrior faces his worst enemy and greatest love, and epically suffers in order to seek the middle ground.   
The gestative form of this heroic personality came from a lengthy and stimulating dinner conversation one night at the Electronic Music Midwest Conference in 2008.

Midget Ninja Theme Song

American Waters
by Lisa Neher
for unaccompanied voice

American Waters by Lisa Neher

An archivist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent me this high-quality version of "The Sounds of Earth," a montage from the Golden Record that's meant to reflect the evolution of life on Earth.

Golden Record: The Sounds of Earth

Pacific by Daniel Eichenbaum, Indiana University, September 16, 2017

Live premiere of Part 1 of "One Day as a Thousand Years," performed by R. Andrew Lee at Washington State University. November 13, 2017. A complete recording is available from Irritable Hedgehog Music: irritablehedgehog.bandcamp.com

Ordinary Time II 0:00-2:16
Advent 2:16-7:28
Nativity 7:28-12:42
Epiphany 12:42-16:07
Ordinary Time I 16:07-19:07

"One Day As a Thousand Years" is a work for piano and electronics, cast in two large sections following the Christian liturgical calendar. The church year is cast in two broad arches, centered on the two pivotal mysteries of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. The first flows from Advent through the Nativity to Epiphany, the second from Lent through Holy Week and Easter to Pentecost. Beyond their particular Christological import, what unites them is a shared structure: a period of waiting, followed by a crisis point of Divine action, and finally an expansion into the world. In the Incarnation, the "local" Divine event of Christ's Nativity takes on universal significance in the celebration of Epiphany, which proclaims his birth as not only for the salvation of Israel, but for all the world. Likewise the Resurrection, which finds its universalized expansion in Pentecost, the descent of the Spirit on a small band of followers who then carry it out into the world. The symmetry and union of these two spans is deepened by their focus on birth: the birth of God as a human being in the Nativity, and the resurrected Christ as "first born of the dead" –– the former as the Divine becomes man, the latter as the way is opened for man to become Divine.

One Day as a Thousand Years

Buy studio version

One Day as a Thousand Years, Part 1: Advent–Nativity–Epiphany (premiere performance)

Pre-release mix of my new spatial audio work Transfiguration, the final version of which will be included on an upcoming release from Irritable Hedgehog Music, "Pentecost."


Transfiguration is the second of a planned triptych of meditations on the interactions, the comings-and goings-and-union, between the tangible and spiritual worlds. The gospels relate the Transfiguration as the visible illumination of the depth of reality veiled in flesh in the person of Jesus: “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.”

Like its companion piece, Pentecost, Transfiguration is crafted from a simple sound source (in this case, a one-second contrabassoon sample). Following a pen-and-paper sketch, the work blooms from muted simplicity to a rich, layered texture before returning to a single tone, now flush with the afterglow of its brief metamorphosis.

Pentecost

Transfiguration

Transfiguration (2018) PRE-RELEASE

Scrap Metal is an electroacoustic work that explores relationships between sonic material produced on the piano and various metal produced sounds.  Scrap Metal was commissioned by the Music Teachers National Association and the Missouri Music Teachers Association. Scrap Metal was selected for recognition at the 35th Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art (2008) - Trivium, Instrument and Electronics.  Blas Gonzales, piano.

Scrap Metal - Piano and Fixed Media

        A small consort of strings joins a full-sized wind ensemble in Sinfonietta.  Although it is not a concerto, Sinfonietta flips the classical notion of an orchestra on its head.  Whereas the Classical orchestra represented a string ensemble with wind and brass coloration, Sinfonietta takes a full wind ensemble and adds strings for coloration, blending and melding the string timbre with the wind ensemble medium.    
        As this work is not a concerto, balancing the relatively weak quartet of strings with the full wind ensemble creates challenges, which Sinfonietta addresses in four ways.  It uses the strings as individual and string tutti soloists with sparse accompaniment.  It creates windows inside heavy textures to allow the strings to appear.  It doubles the strings with instruments of similar timbre to add strength in fuller tutti sections.  Finally, it uses the disparity of acoustical power between the strings and full wind ensemble to create dramatic tension.
        Sinfonietta relies upon American folk music as a point of departure along with the unique sound combinations available with this instrumentation.  The pentatonic melodies, open harmonic intervals, and regular phrase structure serve as building blocks for the music.  The sound of the human voice, integral to the singing of folk tunes, is embraced in the ornamentation of the solo lines.  Along with this mimicry is a moment of actual singing by members of the ensemble.  Since wind players, brass players, and vocalists all require a breath to make their music, Sinfonietta also celebrates the sound of the human breath.  Written into the score are instructions for the whole ensemble to breathe audibly together.  This airy, musical sound is integral to both the sound of the human voice as well as the sound of a pipe organ, the timbre of which is emulated at the piece's final climax. 

Premiered by Stephen Davis and the UMKC Conservatory Wind Symphony

Sinfonietta for wind ensemble augmented with string quartet

I write.  I teach.  I listen.  I play.  Sometimes these things even happen together.