Performer by Corrine Byrne, soprano, and Andy Kozar, trumpet.  January 29, 2025 at the Jewish Museum of South Florida as part of the 2025 New Music Miami Festival

“But am I who I was” is based upon Don DeLillo’s novel Zero K, specifically the “Artis Martineau” section that is told from the perspective of a narrator who is in cryogenic suspension. To prepare the text for the work I trained multiple machine learning algorithms with the text from this section of the novel. I then used these algorithms to create a text that presents the narrator’s thoughts first forming unintelligible single words and sentence fragments, to progressively forming intelligible sentences and phrases, before again becoming progressively unintelligible. To best present this process, I greatly restricted the musical materials and their relationships so that the listener can better experience the linguistic processes and their relationships to the sonic and musical materials. 

I wrote “But am I who I was” for the Byrne:Kozar:Duo and, as such, dedicate it to both Corrine and Andy.

Jacob David Sudol
January 20, 2025
Miami Beach, Florida

"But am I who I was" for soprano, trumpet, and electronics

Jacob David Sudol uses new technologies to create intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena, the inner nature of how we perceive sound, and novel connections between Eastern and Western musical cultures.  His music has been performed well over one and fifty hundred times by many prestigious ensembles and performers across the USA, Europe, and Asia.  In addition, Dr. Sudol is currently writing a chapter on his music for the upcoming Oxford University Press Handbook of Spectral Music.  
	
Dr. Sudol is currently an Associate Professor of Music Technology and Composition at Florida International University and was awarded a 2015-16 Fulbright Fellowship to teach and research in Taiwan.