Screeching Violins and Raspy Cellos: Some Alternative Favorites

Study Score: http://www.editiongravis.de/verlag/product_info.php?info=p1918_Tramespace-I.html

Asko|Schönberg Ensemble
Clark Rundell, cond.

Geertekerk, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2013, Opening Concert
September 2, 2013

Live recording made by Richard de Gruyl for Concertzender/VPRO during Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2013

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Tramespace is a hybrid word composed of two French words, “trame” (woof, or weft in English), meaning the crosswise threads on a loom over and under which other threads (the warp) are passed to make cloth, and “espace” (meaning space). The metaphorical loom is a context from which the musical materials are woven. Just as each thread is carefully placed and integrated to create a textile, each sound gesture, each musical impulse is threaded with precise intention. As the musical filaments are carefully interlaced – heterogenous, yet collaborating to become one – the surface becomes rich with patterns while depth is made by the multitude of interacting strands. At times, the weave is loosened and a thread becomes entangled, exposing the threads as merely threads just momentarily and no longer as fabric, shifting perspective and seeing things anew, even altered once the yarn becomes rejoined.

In tandem, the concept of space and its elusive quality is something Onishi became interested in during conversations with close friend, composer Mahir Cetiz, most notably regarding the “compositional space” in his work, Départ dans… As space is inexorably tied with time, with an elapsing sense of immediacy and memory, the awareness of physical and metaphysical space is fluid. As music passes with time, it fills a space, interacts with it and leaves it. It makes you aware of the room you are sitting in, yet your sense of inner space has expanded limitlessly. For Onishi, “…it lingers to the territory of the unknown…” and for him, this piece “is, in a sense, an attempt to circumscribe this metaphysical space using the sound that is developed over time.” His work is also informed in part from the philosophical discussion of “self” that is put in the context of the world as a space by Japanese philosopher Shizuteru Ueda in his “Two-Fold Being-in-the-World.”

Tramespace I was commissioned by Gaudeamus Muziekweek as a result of receiving the Gaudeamus Prize in 2011. Tramespace II, still a work in progress, is commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris.

Tramespace I and II can be played separately, although playing them together forms a coherent whole as a diptych.

- Program notes by Michelle Lou

Tramespace I (2012-13)

Kekeme (Stutterer)

for Contrabass-Clarinet, Cello, Prepared piano and Percussion
Carol McGonnell, Contrabass Clarinet
John Popham, cello
Russel Greenberg, percussion
Chris Goddard, piano

Inhibited Momentum

Note: video footage of this performance can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/89395213

Nieuw Ensemble
Yoshiaki Onishi, cond.

An Evening of Today II
January 16, 2014
Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Départ dans... (2010, rev. 2013)

Score: http://www.editiongravis.de/verlag/product_info.php?language=en&info=p1903_Tr--epilogue-.html

Recording of the new, definitive version

Kevin McFarland, violoncello
Ryan Streber, recording engineer

Columbia Composers Concert
Cary Hall, DiMenna Center (New York)
April 14, 2014
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When I wrote my Culs-de-sac (en passacaille) for string quartet in 2009, it was evident to me that I should develop the sonic soundscape that I have created in that piece. I have decided that I write a cycle of compositions for string quartet and its subsets.

Tr (épilogue) marks the second piece that I completed in this cycle. Its title has a precursor; Tr for violoncello and piano, of which I took the formal scheme as a point of reference for the solo piece. I took the duo piece, stripped away the piano part, and enlarged the piece by adding musical commentaries.

As the title may suggest, I intend that this piece conclude the cycle. In the spirit of concluding the cycle, my focus in this piece was to illuminate the gestures and situations of ‘farewell,’ in the sense that the envelope of the phrases has the conscious trajectory of fade-out.

Many thanks to Patrick McGuire who, in the symposium Creative Dialogue V, premièred the work-in-progress version as a part of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Also thanks are due to Anssi Karttunen and Magnus Lindberg, whose commentaries and feedbacks were crucial to the development of the piece. For the revised version, a rather extended coda (Coda (à Séverine)) was added. I am indebted to Séverine Ballon, who kindly demonstrated a technique utilized in this coda.

Tr (épilogue) is dedicated to Pierre Morlet and Mark Andre.

- Yoshiaki Onishi

Tr (épilogue) - for violoncello solo (2012, rev. 2014)

Ensemble Synaestesis in Vilnius, Lithuania.

for

flute
clarinet/bass
alto sax
electric guitar
synth
violin
viola
cello


Some Semblance for guitar and ensemble

Recording Engineer: Jordan Strum
Percussion, Christian Smith
Piano, Chris Goddard
Live Performance from May 2nd, 2014 in Pollack Hall, McGill University
In the piece, the 808 becomes the prime metaphor for the complex forces of appropriation in popular culture. The rhythmic symbolism inherent in the piece stems from the device: 8 popular dance rhythms over 8 decades, and how this relates to the proliferated use, and wide-spread appropriation, of “the 808 sound” in contemporary pop and dance music. The piece is structured around the abstract presentation of 8 distinct rhythms: the march, waltz, tango, bossa nova, swing, as well as a rock, punk and hip hop beat. The rhythms are initially presented chronologically: scaled and juxtaposed accordingly. The scaled temporality of my materials (80%... 80%... 80% and so on...) assumes some notion of hierarchal design, however in a cascading system of ‘rhythm to instrument’ assignments the piece achieves a more balanced state of material interaction. In this presentation, rhythmic materials emerge from punctuating impulses or silence, and through different scalings suggest, through each repetition, ever-changing material associations. By composing in this structure I hope to encourage a dialogue between the emergence of cultural forms without privileging any one in particular. 


EIGHT0H8 (2013) By David Bird (b. 1990)

Raphaël CENDO Rokh (2011/2012) | ECCE ensemble

Live recording.

Daria Binkowski, Flute
Karen Kim, Violin
Meaghan Burke, Violoncello
Wei-Chieh Lin, Piano
Ryan McAdams, Conductor

December 6, 2014
Goethe-Institut, Boston

www.eccensemble.com


Raphaël CENDO Rokh | movement 1 | ECCE ensemble

Raphaël CENDO Rokh (2011/2012) | ECCE ensemble

Live recording.

Daria Binkowski, Flute
Karen Kim, Violin
Meaghan Burke, Violoncello
Wei-Chieh Lin, Piano
Ryan McAdams, Conductor

December 6, 2014
Goethe-Institut, Boston

www.eccensemble.com

Raphaël CENDO Rokh | movements 2,3 | ECCE ensemble

Raphaël CENDO Furia for Violoncello and Piano (2009/2010)| ECCE ensemble 

Séverine Ballon, Violoncello
Wei-Chieh Lin, Piano

December 6, 2014
Goethe-Institut, Boston

www.eccensemble.com

Raphaël CENDO Furia for Violoncello and Piano | ECCE ensemble

'i did not see it to the end' was written by Jessie Downs for Academy.  This is a performance from December 15 2011.  visit Jessie's website at http://jessiedowns.tumblr.com/

Screeching Violins and Raspy Cellos: Some Alternative Favorites

Eric Hickam