photo by Zach Mendez

Allie Taylor - violin
Sarah Beth Overcash - violin
Sophie Choate - violin
Zechariah Mo - viola

placing ceremony [2018, rev. 2022] | music academy of the west

Sam Wu Hydrosphere

Small Fanfares (2023) for flute, oboe, clarinet, & vibraphone

Little World

Little World (From "The End We Start From" Soundtrack)

live performance by the Fidelio Trio at Ithaca College on February 26th, 2024

note | This past Fall I spent countless hours roaming the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks as their Musician-in-Residence. I took particular joy in listening to the changing soundscapes throughout the day, from colorful talkative birds to plump, overly comfortable rabbits chewing right by my feet. At dusk, the insects took over and I would make a point to join them each evening. Sometimes I would see shadows at the edge of my vision that would move with me.

Near the end of my residency I shared those experiences with other fellows, slightly jokingly. But they shared their own numerous experiences with shadows in the garden. It didn’t feel too surprising; gardens have their own memories and ghosts, especially, I’m sure, those with complicated legacies. I’m happy they felt comfortable enough to say hello.

shadow in the garden [2023] | Fidelio Trio

Tuesday

Scrub

Waiting

This mix emerges from a collective music session that took place in winter 2023 in Kingston, Ontario at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. The quartet that assembled to record was coordinated by David Parker who welcomed in three musicians to experiment with: Jonas Bonnetta, Chantal Thompson, and Stefan Christoff. The sessions resulted in The Starlight Electric, a session of heartfelt improvisation that will be released as an album in 2024. In preparations for this project to be out in the world, the group put together this mix for ACL, sharing some of their musical influences.

https://acloserlisten.com/2024/08/14/the-starlight-electric-presents-winter-sunshine-mix/

The Starlight Electric presents WINTER SUNSHINE [mix]

Premiered by Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, August 14, 2024 at Harris Concert Hall, Aspen, CO

Aspen Contemporary Ensemble
Tim Weiss, conductor
Sasha Ishov, flute/piccolo
Clayton Luckadoo, bass clarinet
Liam Kaplan, prepared piano
Reed Puleo, percussion
Herdis Guðmundsdóttir and Laura Gamboa, violins
Felix Vesser, viola
Miles Reed, cello

Program note:
HAUTEPÂTE is named after the painting technique pioneered by French artists Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet. The technique itself, haute pâte, translates to “matter painting” and involves using paper, gravel, and sand in addition to oil paint to create three-dimensional, relief-like surfaces that project outwards from the canvas. Years ago, I was introduced to Fautrier’s “Les Otages” series, which the artist created after hearing Nazi troops abusing and executing prisoners in the forest near his studio space in Paris. This series features abstracted and disembodied human remains that bear little resemblance to living human forms. While writing this work, I was thinking of violent, institutional brutality (both abroad and within the US) as well as how we compartmentalize this terror away. I attempted to represent this mental rift with two highly contrasting musical materials–one heavy and aggressive with frayed edges and forceful onsets, the other chipper and bright with tight rhythmic synchronicity. In the spirit of the haute pâte technique, I was interested in composing and developing complex musical gestures that, to me, sounded three-dimensional, almost as if rising from the surface of a painted canvas.

HAUTEPÂTE

Casey Cangelosi, percussion
Video performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMBCd9PfuMA
Casey's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIw9gkSYmyj21uAd85Ydu8g
Casey's Website: https://www.caseycangelosi.com/

Hypernova (2020) for percussion solo and electronic playback was written for Casey Cangelosi.  In outer space, a hypernova is a type of stellar explosion which ejects material with unusually high kinetic energy, an order of magnitude higher than most supernovae.  The piece is centered on broad and expansive explosive gestures that give birth to sparkling and technically virtuosic phrases.  The soloist plays a small kit of vibratone, five tuned gongs, tamborim, hi-hat, and kick drum.  The accompanying electronic part is made entirely of acoustic hand-stopped or bowed piano samples that were recorded during and assembled as digital instruments.  There are four main types of these samples used throughout the piece:
 
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the pedal up.  The most agile tape parts are primarily made with these sound samples.
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the sustain pedal down.  Most low, resonant tones and some mid-range notes use these samples.
- Bowed piano, modified with post-production effects to give it an organ-like quality.
- Hand-muted, no-pedal piano samples with the envelope reversed to play backwards as a swell gesture.  You hear this sound at the very beginning of the piece.
 
Check out and follow along with the performance part: https://issuu.com/ericguinivan/docs/guinivan_hypernova_performance_part
 
Please contact the composer at https://www.ericguinivan.com if you are interested in purchasing a physical copy of the music for performance.

HYPERNOVA for percussion and electronics

Eric Guinivan