Deafening Silence is based on field recordings gathered in the Hawaiian Islands of Maui and Kauai in summer, 2021

Mix Bounces

the Deafening Silence

This piece for field recordings, processing, and trumpet is based on field recordings from Ireland, Switzerland, and France including one of the most violent wind storms I have ever experienced.

Dreaming at a Distance

second track on Pale Blue on Neuma Records; a solo tour around Europe in Spring, 2019; weather, birds, horse & carriage in Cork and the Gap of Dunhow, Ireland; a fierce storm in Millau, France on the edge of a steep hill, sheltered in a drafty garage, the violent gusts whipping through tiny cracks.

Glen Whitehead Pale Blue Master M1 16 Bit

Dawn Of The Din

On Pale Blue (Neuma Records) M(aia)saura; the Legend of Smetty - In-residence at the Ucross Foundation, Wyoming; The nearby Piney Creek breathes in Spring, a Coyote heaves a lonely call. The nearby Lake de Smet has a Native American legend of a mysterious creature. Maisaura was the first dinosaur in space (fossil on a space capsule), a nod to creatures long extinct, or miraculously rummaging in a lake, unseen.

M(aia)saura

Composed by Matthew Burtner, 2012
Golden Sparrow (2012) uses a recording of the characteristic song of the variety living in the Chugach State Park, in Alaska. This characteristic call defined the soundscape of my childhood in the
Chugach mountains. The piece begins with the unaltered recorded sparrow. The electronic part was created by time stretching the sparrow song to 100 times its original length. This micro song
becomes a gentle harmonic accompaniment over which the trumpet plays, singing a new melody from outside the concert space. Like a sonic beacon, the trumpet reflects the suns rays, directing
them into the concert hall in beams of sound. A performer on the stage listens for the trumpet sound and gradually opens a container of light, releasing the light into the concert space in a theatrical
ritual.

Golden Sparrow - for trumpet, electronics and container of light

Sound Anthology, International Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, Volume 42, Issue 1, by the MIT University Press published in April, 2018

Sands That Move for any instruments and fixed media is based on the Great Sand Dunes National Monument highlighting the long history of this site and the people who, from age-to-age, have stood in awe and wonder of this geographical phenomenon at the northern edge of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. These constantly shape-shifting sands have gone by many names from the earliest people to the Navajo who called it Saa waap maa nache, "sand that moves,” and the Apaches who settled in New Mexico who called it Sei-anyedi, "it goes up and down.” Presently a legendary tourist attraction that is surrounded by many ongoing mining and land-ownership disputes that threaten the survival of natural habitats and livelihood of local people, the material of this interactive sound media piece consists of a sand dune “singing” by being rapidly engaged and triggered by students from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in a summer course called Sonic Landscapes in 2016 that I taught alongside Geography Professor Dr. Brandon Vogt and Alaskan composer, University of Virginia Professor Dr. Matthew Burtner. Through research, three years of trial and error as we taught this course annually, experimenting and improvising with moving the dunes as a sonic membrane, the exhaustive efforts by twenty odd students successfully triggering the dune was finally captured.

Sands that Move

Sound Anthology, International Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, Volume 42, Issue 1, by the MIT University Press published in April, 2018

Mysticeti is an improvisational piece for any instruments and fixed media through the lens of sonic documents from a day on the ocean in Stewart Bay, Alaska in 2012. The accompanying soundscape is rendered from hydrophone recordings of Humpback Whales “bubblenet feeding” amidst the sounds of glacial melt, strong currents and background tapestries of faraway human activity. The push and pull of forces beyond our control is paramount to this piece. The improviser should adopt the mindset as a pod performing a sound dance ritual as if transducing the phenomena of this oceanic experience; humans peering into portals far beyond our comprehension, the hints of unimaginable depths, uniquely alien sounds, unsustainable thresholds, sound-beams of astral inversions, sub-aqua sonic projections confronting a fast melting-geo-plasma, and calling to living bio-mountains who carve earnest tone shaped glissandos encoded with time, memory and action.

Mysticeti

Sound design for Theatreworks play "Heisenberg by Simon Stephens, fall 2017 -  Stereo version from the original surround sound production. Directed by Joye Cool-Levi

An improbable love story between two people so “utterly dissimilar that of course they are made for each other.” (NYTIMES) A beautiful play built for two magnificent actors that reveals how life can change in the most unexpected ways. Heisenberg is never mentioned in the play, but it’s his famous idea, that the world is fuzzy and unexpected permeates the piece. It’s a beautiful jewel of a play and just the thing to follow Shakespeare.

Heisenberg.Theme

Legends of Ucross was created at the Ucross artist residency in March, 2019. With glimpses of Spring this dynamic sound postcard features the Piney Creek resonating across the first breaking of ice, a coyote wailing across the valley, a myriad of birds in the frigid dawn chorus and improvised movements, shuffles and choreographed exertions of fellow residents, photographer Rhona Bitner, visual artist Laura Tanner Graham, visual artist Barbara Pearsall and writer Anika Streitfeld in the middle of a frozen Lake Sted caught on hydrophones, contact air microphones. Conch shells add context to the piece and the Lake Sted session was aided by local ice-fisherman who lended us their fishing holes and auger. Many thanks to my fellow Ucross residents for helping to create an unforgettable experience!

Legends Of Ucross

April 5, 2019 
Glen Whitehead, trumpet
Rachel Musson, tenor sax
Ellen Weller, soprano sax, flute
Huw V. Williams, acoustic bass 

Singing Sands
42 Degrees
Fantazia Tazmania
Shedding Vortices
Ucross Legends
Mysticeti

Glen Whitehead 1

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