gorgeous, incredible textures, what a wonderful piece!!!

I asked Marc Weidenbaum to share a track of guitar music that I could do something with. He sent "Night There and Back," a very full, minimalistic texture. I wanted to find a way to just stay with it a long time. I made a ChucK script that would choose a duration to play a clip of his track forward, then jump back to a position just after that clip began, that is, to granulate his piece in order, maintaining its overall narrative. I also wanted to maintain its metric feel; so, that meant to step completely through his file, my remix would end up lasting some 29 minutes. At each randomly chosen cut, a synthesized note plays. I added a bass line and some guitar fills to mark the space of the soundscape his track creates.

Disquiet Night There And Back Remix

Hartoel

Dan Jones:
acoustic guitar

Zach Schneider:
tenor guitar, flute, tin whistle, mandolin, organ, triangle, tingsha bells, bell, tambourine, egg shaker

Wubbubb Bwoop

This playful melody is part of a series of piano pieces inspired by birds. It flits, sparkles and floats, suspended like birds in the flickering evening light.

By the Time I Looked up They Were Gone

E521 | Islam and science fiction have more history together than you might expect. In this episode, we speak with Jörg Matthias Determann about the many ways science has fueled the imagination of people in Muslim-majority contexts over the last few hundred years. In his latest book, he shows how artists and missionaries participated in "cultures of astrobiology," or the study of life on other planets. Exploring the ways that a variety of authors, artists, and governments have imagined a future with and for Muslims, Matthias shows that there are many overlapping and competing visions of Muslim Futurism.

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2022/02/scifi.html

Jörg Matthias Determann is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. He also serves as an associate editor of the Review of Middle East Studies.

Shireen Hamza is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the history of medical exchange in the medieval Indian Ocean world.

CREDITS

Episode No. 521
Release Date: 13 February 2022
Recording Location: Doha, Qatar / Chicago, IL
Sound production by Shireen Hamza
Additional thanks to Sam Dolbee
Music/Sound Elements: ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Ḥamādah. Riḥlah ilá al-Qamar. Behna Films, 1959. https://archive.org/details/ATripToTheMoonEnglishSubs/A+Trip+to+the+Moon+(1959).mkv
Bibliography and images courtesy of Jörg Matthias Determann available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2022/02/scifi.html

Islam and Science Fiction | Jörg Matthias Determann

Understanding is Relative (Solo Piano)

Muladhara Chakra 8.0 Hz

8.0 Hz Muladhara

commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, Music & Artistic Director
premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with soloist Jay Campbell, conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni
recorded at Walt Disney Concert Hall, courtesy of the LA Phil

excerpt of first five minutes, of ~twelve 

note | Amaru refers to the world serpent in Andean cosmology - rainbow-colored, two-headed, and dwelling beneath the earth. Associated with the emergence of underground water sources and transitions between worlds, Amaru is also related to the dark constellation serpent Mach’acuay whose seasonal appearance coincides with the warm rain season in the Andes and the appearance of terrestrial snakes.

'Amaru' joins a group of recent works that engage Andean & Irish cosmologies, my ancestry. With the distinct opportunity to write for the end of a program and next to a previous work, 'Talamh (land)', I wanted to explore a somewhat risky process: that of detuning an orchestra of strings. As 'Talamh' explores the topographies of Ireland through focused soundscapes, I wanted 'Amaru' to explore the loosening and tightening of ensemble, strings, conductor, and soloist through rich harmonies, wild harmonic gestures, and emergent, cyclic forms.

Amaru [2022] | LA Phil

On his third solo recording for Cantaloupe Music, Florent Ghys radically retools his approach with Ritournelles & Mosaïques — a wide-ranging two-part opus that pulls back the curtain on an intrepid composer, double bassist and electronics bricoleur in full sonic exploration mode. The project’s first single, “Printemps Permanent,” sets the tone for the lively ride to follow. 

Ghys began work on the project in late 2019, but like the rest of the world, he soon found himself in the midst of a prolonged isolation period, which inspired him to expand his creative palette. On his previous album Télévision, Ghys had begun with an audio-visual idea; this time, he started at the root: with the sound.

“I just wanted to make something that sounded great,” he says, “so I spent a lot of time studying the sound of my bass — analyzing it, making sample libraries, recording it — and then studying the different microphones, different rooms, different basses too. So it really started from the sound, and then adapting my audio-visual ideas to that.”

Ritournelles (available on CD) is essentially the electro-acoustic, ambient instrumental portion of the program, while Mosaïques (available digitally) is more sample-based and electronic, seething with textural complexity. “Despite the differences though,” Ghys explains, “they really come from the same initial artistic impulse.”

Ritournelles & Mosaïques

Printemps Permanent

Buy on Bandcamp

Found It

Storm of the Gods

[piece title] [year written] | [performing ensemble]

inti figgis-vizueta (b.1993) is a composer and educator who works to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. Described as a “rising new music star” (LA Times), with “smooth and serrated melodies” (New York Times) and an “intriguing…highly integrated sound” (Gramophone), “wrought from a language we’d do well to learn” (Washington Post), inti has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Dallas Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Reflektor, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Music Festival, Spoleto Music Festival, Kennedy Center’s Sounds of US Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Wild Up, Roomful of Teeth, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, Music from Copland House, Crash Ensemble, violinist Jennifer Koh, and cellists Andrew Yee and Jay Campbell, among many others. inti’s work has been featured at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall Concert Hall, Symphony Center, REDCAT, National Concert Hall (IE), Southbank Centre (UK), Philharmonie de Paris (FR), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (NL), and Konzerthaus Berlin (DE). 

Upcoming projects include Earths to Come in VR for the Venice Film Festival, mad scramble for crumbs for Opera Saratoga, Metahaven’s film The Feeling Sonnets, and works for flutist Claire Chase, pianist James McVinnie, and cellist Andrew Yee with Roomful of Teeth. inti is the recipient of the Lotos Foundation Prize, ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award, National Sawdust Hildegard Award, Café Royal Foundation Music Grant and residency fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, Civitella Ranieri, Juilliard Summer Percussion, and Music at Copland House.

inti has held faculty positions with Luna Composition Lab (21-24’), Wildflower Composers (20-22’), Fresh Inc Festival (22’), and Atlanticx Composition (21’). She regularly lectures on her music with recent visits to Harvard University, The Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, and CalArts, among many others. inti has curated programs for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Current Series, Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding, and American Composers Orchestra SONiC Festival. She is the 2024 Robert M. Trotter Lecturer for the College Music Society 67th National Conference. 
​
inti studied with Marcos Balter, Felipe Lara, Donnacha Dennehy, and George Lewis. Her mentors include ﻿Tania León﻿, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Derek Bermel, and Andrew Norman, among many others. inti honors her Quichua bisabuela who was the only woman butcher on the plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.

Amaru [2022] | LA Phil

inti figgis-vizueta

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