Jay Campbell, multi-tracked cello, recording/mixing
excerpt from the middle of a 2 1/2 hour realization, 2020

Descensus Trio Jay's version (excerpt) 2020

n0st4lg1a

Kunstkammer

Inventare Nr. 1

Je me réclame du vivant - reprise de moyen age

first and second studies in collaboration with Sarah Saviet and Joseph Houston, created during Fall 2022

piano harmonically aligned with the open violin tuning

realized by Sarah and Joe

recording is taken from the live concert recording, December 2nd, 2022, KM28, Berlin

violin/piano study 1 & 2 for Sarah and Joe (by Catherine Lamb)

Valerio Tricoli - A Circle of Grey
LP on Xing (XONG collection XX11) out September 2023, order at https://www.soundohm.com/product/a-circle-of-grey-lp
Collector's edition available at https://www.soundohm.com/product/a-circle-of-grey-lp-tape and at https://shop.flash---art.it/products/valerio-tricoli-a-circle-of-grey

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Xing presents the new LP A Circle of Grey by Valerio Tricoli, eleventh release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies accompanied by a unique cassette tape loop, titled and signed by the artist: 20 short compositions, each developed from a different sonic fragment of the record.

A Circle of Grey is an electroacoustic composition blending philosophical contemplation on transience, impermanence and musical exploration. Its unique sonic palette takes on the refractions of a non-colour and an experience poised between tangibility and abstraction. Primarily utilizing synthesizer sounds and manipulations of found sounds through a Revox B77 tape machine, A Circle of Grey defies easy categorization, as Valerio Tricoli seamlessly integrates a variety of techniques and elements into a dry, broken, deserted but eventually haunting sonic landscape. At its core, A Circle of Grey is characterized by a constant tension between sounds shimmering on the surface of the loudspeakers and sounds moving in the depths of the aural field, as if an imagined reality is experienced through the ever-changing reflections of broken glass. An apparently aimless, timeless wandering on sands of silica and quartz, where all is co-present and distant, asserted and negated, where relics of humanity are found and soon lost. Opting for an evocative, non-descriptive plan, the composition calls for interpretative ambiguity: despite these existential themes, there is also a sense of beauty and hopefulness. Tricoli's use of circularity and subtle variations in timbre and dynamic create a sense of depth and progression aimed to transcend linear time, the movements in the composition continuously folding back on themselves and echoing in the listener's mind.

Xong is the name of the collection produced by Xing, a vinyl-only record label of works by both Italian and international personalities linked to the variegated worlds of live performativity. The collection explores a geography of artists who present this sonic field as a platform to expand their staged worlds. "The space of the record" is given focus and amplifies their poetics as both a sonic and physical phenomenon. Xong is a unique project that draws out divergent understandings of the performative and live arts, beyond genre and intersecting between different practices. Xong collects a series of original creations that constitute an expanded program. Each physical record is a numbered edition on white vinyl hosting the solidification of the gesture. A wave upon wave, a series of "Music-Non-Music" to actualize both the artists and listeners imagination.

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Composed by Valerio Tricoli in 2022/2023, Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, Cover photo by Bruno Raciti, Artwork by Xing, Printed by handle with care Berlin, Format vinyl (white), Released by Xing in a numbered edition of 150 copies
including a collector’s edition of 20 copies, each accompanied by a unique cassette tape loop (2 min), numbered and signed by the artist, Cat.n° XONG collection XX11 (2023), Label Xing.

A Circle of Grey

XX11 - Valerio Tricoli - A Circle of Grey (excerpt A)

Adrianne Munden-Dixon and Leo Chang’s “Some Time” presents stuttering physical exchanges between Munden-Dixon’s violin and electronics and Chang’s amplified piri. These pieces are tense and tightly-woven, yet constantly unraveling and reforming. Chang’s “ampiri” is a Korean double reed instrument running through electronics and played in unconventional and non-traditional ways. Recontextualising the instrument “quasi-autodidactically” aligns with Chang’s approach to free improvisation and his artistic practice, as it forms a dynamic relationship with more established tradition and lineage. Munden-Dixon has seasoned experience in the new music, contemporary ensemble, and orchestral worlds, with more recent forays into free improvisation using her violin in conjunction with electronics. Our first exposure to Munden-Dixon’s work was oddly via a genuinely bizarre Youtube video of an improvisation involving prerecorded and manipulated Irish music, metallic objects, sinuous violin playing, recorded sounds of gulping water, and coffee mug rattling. Munden-Dixon’s and Chang’s unrelenting diversity and adherence to honest and unpretentious playing is evident throughout “Some Time”.

Adrianne Munden Dixon / Leo Chang - Some Time - [sample]

Based on Nemtsov's 2016 opera "Sacrifice" this suite was written and premiered by Klangforum Wien on December 12th,  2022 in Konzerthaus, Vienna. The final movement captured here from the premiere, is a lyrical conclusion to the whole suite featuring the electric guitar as a musical protagonist. I vividly recall the joy of playing the part with its rich microtonal harmonies and tactile textures as it bridged between the musical material coming from the ensemble and the electronics.

Sarah Nemtsov - Sacrifice Suite (W. Klangforum Wien, Final movement, live in Vienna 2022)

May song (2022)
six voices and prerecorded audio
Performed by Exaudi, at Exposure 2023, Milton Court, 22 May 23

Cressida Sharp, sop.
Jessica Gillingwater, mez-sop.
Tom Williams, counterten.
David de Winter, ten.
Michael Hickman, bari.
Simon Whiteley, bass

James Weeks, cond.

Text by Goethe (1771), trans. Lisa Jeschke & Lucy Beynon (in Jeschke, Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women, Materials, 2018 http://material-s.blogspot.com/2020/10/lisa-jeschke-anthology-of-poems-by.html.)

How beautiful shines 
To me, the nature! 
How the sun glows! 
How the mead smiles!

Blossoms penetrate 
From each branch 
And a thousand voices 
Out of the shrubbery

And joy, and joy 
From each breast. 
O earth, o sun,
O joy o lust!

O love, o love!
As golden, as beautiful 
As the morning clouds 
On those heights

You bless gloriously 
The fresh field
The blossoms’ steam 
The bountiful world.

O girl, girl
How I love you! 
Your eyes gaze! 
How you love me!

This is the way the lark loves 
Song and air
And morning flowers
The smell of heaven

How much I love you, 
My blood warmed
By you, for me, a youth, 
And joy and courage

For new songs
And dances
May you be happy eternally 
As long as you love me.

Prerecorded sounds include two field recordings of a wind turbine in Bernau bei Berlin, recorded by Peter Cusack, 2021.

Art: Unknown photographer, WT-Energiesystems Albertshof wind turbines, Bernau bei Berlin, c. 2020

Thanks to James Weeks and Exaudi, and to Paolo Carlotto and Nick Moroz for audio engineering assistance.

May song

for 8 channels (stereo version)

The light and the heavy

The static and the wet

The oblique and the reflective; 
The tight and the loose

Precisely indecisive


Weight Stranding was inspired by anamorphic art, as the piece explores exaggerated sound qualities and processes of each of the aforementioned pairs of adjectives.   There are essentially two types of anamorphic art; the first is oblique where the distorted image is immovable (static) and the beholder has to change their point of view to see the real image.  The second is catoptric (mirror), where the image is completely distorted and upon placing a mirror at the center the true image is revealed.  The two types of anamorphic art relate to Weight Stranding by utilizing excessive manipulation of stereo imaging in a multichannel context.

Through form and musical gestures the pair of contrasting adjectives describes the qualities and processes of each corresponding section of the piece, but each pair can also be used to describe every section in terms of the sound quality and/or the sound process. This results in a piece that can be heard as monolithic but still remains linear, as traditionally we listen to music from beginning to end.  Each section can live on its own, but all are connected through exaggeration (precision) instead of development (indecisive) of the qualities and processes of the musical material.  The qualities and processes can be heard as a metaphor: as we all carry our own personal Weight our qualities and processes become motionless, and life is Stranding us, engulfed, in the moment both figuratively and literally.

Weight Stranding

AI Phantasy [tape]

David Quang-Minh Nguyen is a composer of concert music.  Along with the concert music that he composes, he is also an audio engineer for music and post production.  His current interests lie in composing acousmatic works dealing with multi-channel loudspeaker expansion, sound spatialization, and immersive audio.

Being recognized nationally and internationally, David has had his pieces presented at the June in Buffalo New Music Festival, during which he received individual master classes with Harvey Sollberger, Martin Bresnick, Roger Reynolds and Brian Ferneyhough.  David was an active participant for Festival DME under the direction of Åke Parmerud, Musique & Recherches Académie d'été de composition éléctroacoustique under the direction of Annette Vande Gorne and João Pedro Oliveira, and the Sounds Around Me Festival under Thomas Gorbach.  He was also selected by Master Artist Robert Normandeau for a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

Among others, his works have been performed at Electronic Music Midwest Festival, New York City Electronic Music Festival, SEAMUS, Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, International Computer Music Conference, 15th Sound & Music Computational Conference, 2018 MISE-EN Place Bushwick Open Studios, 2018 Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, Spaced-Out Radia, Washington State Festival Of Contemporary Art Music, CEMI Circles, MOXSonic, and Diffrazioni multimedia festival.  He has been published on ABLAZE records Electronic Masters Vol. 7 and received an honorable mention for the XII° Destellos Electroacoustic Competition 2019 for his work Misprints as well as achieving 2nd place for XIII° Destellos for Adumbrations , a finalist for PRIX CIME 2019 and won 2nd for the ASCAP/SEAMUS award for his work Weight Stranding. 

   	David Q. Nguyen holds a BM from Old Dominion University where he studied with Andrey R. Kasparov and Mark Chambers.  He has received his Masters and is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his primary teachers are Sever Tipei and Scott A. Wyatt.

Weight Stranding

David Quang-Minh Nguyen

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