Artist: Jake Briscoe and the Moonlighters

Recorded in the UCM Center for Music Technology, Recording Studio A.

2014 UCM Shure Fantastic Scholastic Team:
Grant Conrad
Corey Dyer
Alex Garnett
Cameron Porter
Anthony Vitale

3rd place/Honorable Mention in the 2014 Shure Fantastic Scholastic competition.

Canary In The Mine (UCM Shure Team Mix)

Writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, in his Third Law, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I spent the summer of 2004 living in Capitola, California, within quick walking distance of Monterey Bay. Having completed my doctorate in June, I felt free, for the first time in many years, to compose anything I wanted to compose. Reading one of the volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I was struck by a phrase he used: "the persistence of magic," to describe the continuing echoes in a place, of monumental events that occurred there. Something about the concepts of endurance, and of magic, spoke to me, and sitting on the beach, looking out across Monterey Bay, I began the initial sketches for The Persistence of Magic. However, I became busy with other projects, and dissatisfied with the way the work was going, and let it sit. 
	Almost ten years later, Scott Lubaroff approached me to write a work for wind ensemble that would also showcase music technology. I decided I wanted to include live electronics in the new work, capturing the sounds of some of the soloists in the ensemble and processing them live to create new textures and timbres, unachievable with acoustic means alone. In looking through my sketchbooks and old files for inspiration and good ideas, I came across my sketches for this work and realized that it would be a perfect fit. Current music technology is capable of incredible—nearly magical—feats, and returning to music that had lain fallow for almost ten years reminded me of the events depicted in the novel that inspired the title.
	Many elements of the newly completed work are composed to play with the ideas of persistence, and of working magic. Structured as a concerto grosso in three continuous movements, the work sets a small group of soloists, augmented with technological magic, against the full ensemble. Musical fragments recur throughout the work, beginning with the motives introduced in the initial movement, "Incantation." The second movement, "Drawing the Circle," is a musical setting of a ritual, magical procedure, developing momentum and power. Finally, the third movement deals with the importance of persistence, and the final triumphs that it brings. 

The Persistence of Magic for wind ensemble & live electronics (UCM Symphonic Wind Ensemble)

for open-hole bass flute and computer

Commissioned and premiered by Shanna Gutierrez, with support from NewMusicUSA.

Stutter edits have become a very common audio production technique in the last 10 years or so, and enable the audio producer to effectively recompose or comment upon the rhythmic structure of a work, generally by stepping outside that structure and deliberately creating conflict with it. This piece is based very strongly in groove—stutter edits work best when they have an easily recognizable structure to work against—but it is a complex, shifting sort of groove: momentarily danceable, but designed to catch listeners out over the medium term. Stuttering occurs in all aspects of the work: the live flute part, the live computer processing, the pre-recorded media, and even the formal structure. The computer part of the work makes heavy use of granular and spectral techniques to provide real-time stuttering and stretching of the live flute performance, but also incorporates some pre-recorded, fixed material. The grooves are generated mostly from a set of samples flutist Shanna Gutierrez (who commissioned the work) recorded for me, of key clicks, tongue rams, lip pizzicatos, and other extended techniques on the flute, as well as from ancillary sounds she made while recording the samples, like breathing. The tempo accelerates regularly over the entire duration of the piece, and the flute part gets wilder and wilder, culminating in a blistering-fast, stutter-heavy rave of extended techniques.

Stutter Edit for open-hole bass flute and computer (Shanna Gutierrez, flute)

Composed: 2015
Duration: 17'

Program Notes

Commissioned by the Thelema Trio.

Prayers to Broken Stone
i. the dead land
ii. stone images
iii. supplication
iv. dead man’s hand
v. startwinkle (fading)
vi. death’s other kingdom
vii. waking alone
viii. lips that would kiss
ix. prayers to broken stone

"Prayers to Broken Stone" is made up of nine movements, performed continuously. The movement titles are all inspired by the third part of the poem "The Hollow Men," by T. S. Eliot. The poem is available in its entirety here.

I like Eliot's poetry very much; several of my pieces are titled after his work, and composed in reaction to his imagery. In this particular case, the poetry presents a number of compelling images and fragments, and I took those to form the movement titles. The music in each movement reflects the meaning of the title, and the way the various images fit together, to some degree. In the way I approached the composition of this work, I was also influenced by George Crumb's monumental piece "Black Angels," for electric string quartet. The formal structure of the movements in my piece is similar to that work, and the sound world is somewhat similar as well.

Prayers To Broken Stone (Live Recording)

"Extensions" uses live processing, as well as shuffled live loops, to extend the sound world of a solo saxophone into polyphonic clouds, washes, grooves, and textures. Challenging the performer to exert control over the work via foot pedals and touch pads, in addition to improvising on the saxophone, "Extensions" works to extend the performance paradigm as well as the sonic capabilities of the solo instrument. 

Extensions for saxophone and computer (Eric Honour, baritone saxophone)

Composed: 2010, for Mauricio Salguero
Duration: 9'

Selected for ICMC2013, Perth, Western Australia

Program Notes:

In much of the music I write, the title comes first and has tremendous impact on the resultant score.  When I set out to write a piece for bass clarinet and computer, the word "quirk" came to mind.  Something about the sound of it reminds me of the low notes of the bass clarinet, particularly when played with slap-tongue.  Messrs. Merriam and Webster define "quirk" as "a peculiar trait."  For me, the word always carries a further, slightly negative connotation, as if these idiosyncratic traits are just a little bit dirty – the sort of thing any decent person would keep under wraps.  Nevertheless, as a composer, my quirks are an abiding love of groove and popular music, as well as an on-again, off-again romance with post-minimalist developmental techniques, and something of an infatuation with granular processing.  The piece "Quirk" explores all of these in depth.  It's just as well: the second definition of "quirk" is "a groove separating a bead or other molding from adjoining members." Clearly, even our lexicographers see the links between quirks and grooves.

Quirk for bass clarinet and computer (Mauricio Salguero, bass clarinet)

Phantasm
for alto saxophone and computer
Composed: 2008
Duration: 8'

Title track of "Phantasm: Music for Saxophone and Electronics," released on Ravello Records, 2011. http://www.ravellorecords.com/phantasm/

Program Notes

Phantasm for alto saxophone and computer explores connections between old and new, between high-tech urban sounds and low-tech, rural folk sounds, and between memory and imagination. The piece is rooted in an earlier work of mine for solo saxophone. I was struck by the idea of a revenant – a sort of fragmentary remnant of a ghost – and the somewhat tenuous connections between an existing recording and a new, granularly processed version of the same recording. The materials of Phantasm are exactly these sorts of ghostly fragments: the live saxophone part is derived throughout from the earlier work, but with the materials twisted and bent into new, haunting shapes, distorted through extended saxophone performance techniques. The computer makes use of pre-recorded materials as well as live granular processing of the saxophone to create washes and clouds of sound. The first large section of the work, "Digital Ritual," serves to call the phantasm forth and repeatedly, ritualistically pairs samples of Kenyan Nyatiti harp with various rhythm patterns derived from the West African bembe. As time goes by, these rural, traditional sounds are wrenched into the 21st century, undergoing extremes of digital distortion and aliasing noise as the saxophone's invocation grows more and more frenetic and intense. The second large section of the work, "Phantasm," places a new saxophone line in counterpoint against the revenant of the older, original saxophone recording. Both old and new feature extensive granular processing, to blur the edges between them and achieve a new synthesis of texture and timbre

Phantasm for alto saxophone and computer (Eric Honour, saxophone)

Composed: 2008
Duration: 8'

Program Notes

Commissioned by the Athens Saxophone Quartet
T. S. Eliot's masterwork, The Waste Land, is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential poems of the 20th century. In his notes on the poem, Eliot says that the first part of the fifth section of the poem (What The Thunder Said) employs three themes: "the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston's book), and the present decay of eastern Europe." Regardless of these deeper references, this section of the poem features some of Eliot's most striking and effective imagery. Beginning in the second stanza, at line 331, with the words "Here is no water but only rock," Eliot's imagery turns dry, suffocating, and desperate. His use of repetition over the next 27 lines drives home the feeling of a person lost in a desert of rock, searching endlessly for water, but finding none. In the quartet here is no water but only rock, the music is similarly arid – especially in the opening section – and searches futilely for stability and comfort. It achieves a sort of stability and trajectory in the end, through appropriating the rhythms and energy of rock music, but mixed with a grating, dissonant, aggressive sense of harmony, which offers no succor or release. The closest the music comes to water is in the tenor saxophone solo at rehearsal letter J – which references the "God-Music" section of Crumb's Black Angels – but the search ends once more in rock.

here is no water but only rock (Athens Saxophone Quartet)

Composed in 2000.

For drum set.

Recording from a live performance by Brett Dietz at Northwestern University.

Tab A/Slot B gets its title from the common instructions for assembling paper products—”insert tab A into slot B.” The idea of inserting things carried the piece from its genesis as a random collection of two- and three-beat attacks through to the final touches. The form of the piece is developmental, using the idea of insertion—or interpolation—to generate the metric structure of each of eight sections. When each of the measures in the first section has been expanded by the insertion of extra music, the piece is over, barring a final measure to contain the last note. This piece also draws in large part upon my own experience in playing drum set with a number of garage rock bands and cover bands. My philosophy in drumming was always to hit stuff as often and as loudly as possible, within the musical context. Given the opportunity to create the context singlehandedly, it is no surprise that the soloist for this piece gets to hit everything extremely often and extremely loudly.

Tab A/Slot B

Composed in 2004.

Fanfare for double brass quintet.

Performance by Alan Wenger and David Aaberg (trumpets), Gary Moege (horn), John Check (trombone and tuba).

The word "loft" makes me think of hurling something into the air – and the energy of this work responds to that connotation – but it also makes me think of lofty ideals, the aristocracy of philosophy. Fanfares and aristocracy go hand in hand. "Loft" further connotes the thickness of a layer of down, a measurement of many particles supported by small pockets of air, like the many notes of this piece are supported by the air of the performers. Finally "Loft" was the name of one of my favorite beers. Now sadly abandoned, but formerly produced by the New Belgium Brewing Company, it was a summery, delightful drink, sparkling with energy and effervescence. While the beer, unlike the piece, had no connection to the octatonic scale, the two do share that effervescent quality. 

loft

Composed in 2001.

For oboe and two guitars.

Recording from a live performance at Northwestern University.

Stall Song began as a piece for soprano and two guitars, on texts copied from a bathroom stall in one of the music buildings on the university campus where I teach. The text was not risqué; instead, it consisted of a rather amusing argument about religion and music practice schedules. It began with the words "Practice Saves," which apparently offended another person, who responded "Jesus Saves." A well-reasoned discussion ensued, covering most of the walls of the toilet stall. As the piece developed, the melodic line began to be difficult to sing. Rather than abandon the line – I was quite fond of it – I decided to abandon the soprano and the text, and they were replaced with an oboe. The singing, lyrical nature of the piece is retained and the rhythmic stresses in the oboe recitative near the beginning of the work come from the stress patterns of the original text. The work is in three large sections, almost three separate movements.

Stall Song

Composed in 1996, revised in 2000.

For woodwind quintet.

Recording from a live performance by Quintet Attacca. http://www.quintetattacca.com

"Flamingo Mozambique" derives its title from its use of the Mozambique rhythm, which consists of 3 beats plus 3 beats plus 2 beats repeated over and over again. In the case of this work, this pattern is fragmented and presented in a variety of forms. The piece retains the drive and swing of Mozambique-based jazz while using a modern approach to harmonic language. The music closes with a comical tribute to the traditional ending for a jazz tune in this style.

Flamingo Mozambique

Composed in 2002.

For SSAATTBB choir.

Recording by the UCM Concert Choir, Lisa Billingham, director.

Text (traditional): 
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam, dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

English translation: 
Let light eternal shine on them, O Lord, with thy saints forever, for thou art merciful. Rest eternal grant them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them.

erichonour

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