Armillaria ostoyae ​is a type of choice edible honey mushroom, one example of which is famous for being the largest known organism in the world. In writing the piece, I took a single line of pitches and created a pitch matrix, which allowed me to come up with related material that could be cloned, but also warped and adjusted. ​A. ostoyae i​s parasitic to conifers, and each fruiting body is genetically identical, even though fruiting bodies may only look marginally related to one another. Put another way, it’s a single set of genetically identical cells communicating and coordinating with one another to achieve a common goal.
In this direction, fungi begin as spores are released into the environment, either deposited by wind or animals. One spore must contact another spore of a complementary mating type (​A. ostoyae​ reproduce sexually) in order to reproduce once they come to rest. It is highly parasitic to conifers. Once those two isolates fuse, they form coalesced colonies and produce mycelial cords, allowing the fungus to obtain nutrients over distances (essentially plugging into the network Matrix style) and eventually maturing into a fruiting body, which will continue to receive nutrients until it forms and eventually drops spores, completing the fruiting cycle and beginning the spore distribution (and thereby the propagation of itself) all over again.
Musically, I was interested in creating musical cells that reproduced and “grew” over time as they contacted each other. The contrapuntal possibilities also fascinated me, as one fruiting body might look different from another due to variation in the conditions throughout the forest, but would still come from the original source material (reminiscent of the mycelium linking the mushrooms to a single network, and organizing them into a sort of destructive mycological conifer-eating army).

Armillaria Ostoyae

Light GLASS Light - I - Pink

08 Suite For The Gods - III - Apollo

Susurrus

Eucatastrophe

Ubi Caritas

Poema

...to live without illusion

Wrestling with the infinite in the vastness of space, and the unknowable in galaxies. 

Performed by Ascending (Tricia Frasure and Caitlin Foster).

MESSIER 83

But where is the Lamb?

"between the flo/es" in an interactive sound sculpture created in Iceland during a deep winter residency. The music is created entirely from sounds that were recorded and curated in the small town of Ólafsfjörður, high up on the northern shores of the country. "between the flo/es" is partly a prepared soundscape written in tribute to the town that birthed its sounds, but also as a commentary on the effects of climate change in the northernmost places of our world as part of a larger installation work. The listener enters a delicately adorned space within a space, symbolic of both the fragility of the natural world and the deep reliance the Icelandic people have on community. "between the flo/es" premiered 29 January, 2017.

between the flo/es

An entirely graphic score realized by Frank Felice at the Butler Elektronik Musik Festival, 2018. "Phases" is a celebration of change, growth, shifting, and the depth of color found in dark places.

Phases

I am a composer of new music and a classically trained pianist in the Indianapolis area. Check me out!

Gabrielle Cerberville

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