for Piano Trio

Image: "Swan Lake" by AlexartZ

Nocturne and Intermezzo Capriccioso

A Piano Experienment

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

Krabat - Uphill

Film score composer, Photographer and multi-instrumentalist. Work on music, sound design, and audio post production.

A Piano Experienment

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