While recording the Brood X cicadas one particularly loud day in Baltimore, one intrepid cicada landed directly on my microphone and took a solo!

Brood X Cicada: Solo Edition (field recording)

Wind harp by Philip Blackburn made from PVC tubing, High tension fishing line, and cat food can resonators, recorded here with a contact mic but no electronic modification

Windharp

a bush warbler at Oh-hito, Izu, Shizuoka, Japan

bush warbler

This piece celebrates the sounds of clocks, from the tiniest whirring of the bedside alarm clock to the grandest tower chime, through an exploration of these sounds' similarity to sounds of liquid. It has been meticulously constructed from tens of thousands of very short clock recordings, often aggregated at high density to produce gestural shapes that last sometimes only one or two seconds.

Its composition was made possible by the Dias de Música Electroacústica artist-in-residence program, and it premiered in November of 2016 at the Ecos Urbanos festival in Mexico City.

Clock Waters

This is my song for the Temperance card in the Tarot.
© Kevin Quigley, 2013


My life has two many pieces (they're pulling me apart).
My mind has too many things (running 'round in it).
My heart can't understand my mind (or my life).
And my God, oh my God, thinks this is funny (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha).

My word (my word, my promises) is not what it used to be.
My ability (what can I do?) to follow through on anything
Is compromised (yeah!), completely (it is), it seems.
And my God, my God, my God, my God...

My God can laugh at everything,
Can snort and smile and sing,
Can get the mix just right,
And get to sleep at night.
While I can barely tie my shoes,
And I don't even see the ruse
That keeps me in confusion,
Feeling lost and disillusioned.
I keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, keep trying
to get the mix just right!

My skill (What can I do?) gets better with practice. (oh, yes it does.)
My mix, my recipe, my ingredient list (Hey, what's in this?)
Improves with time, with age, with wisdom, with joy, with consciousness,
with love.

And my God can laugh when I'm in pain (ha ha ha ha).
Perhaps that might explain the sunshine
that breaks right through the rain.
It's not all bad.
It's not all work.
Sometimes, you rise above the murk,
And see clearly what is in the mix,
What needs changing and what to fix.
And you can find the perfect balance.
Keep mixing those ingredients:
modifying, purifying, rarefying, simplifying!

My life (oh) has so many beautiful pieces.
And my mind can learn to focus on just what it needs to think about.
And my heart has a way of understanding that sits above the material world.
And my God... Oh, my God knows this is funny.

My words can help me tell the world I love it, 
  so, I will watch what I say and I'll try to be nice.
My ability to do the things I got to do 
  is helped a lot when I adopt a grateful attitude.
My sense of union with the people I love, 
  with the people I don't like, 
  and the folks I don't yet know
Sends me sunshine in the rain.

Yellow Paper Songs

Mixing Sunshine with the Rain

“Spain possesses joyous songs, jokes, jests … Why then has Spain reserved the most potent songs of blood to lull its children to sleep, those least suited to their delicate sensibilities?” ~Federico García Lorca
So many lullabies found around the world are in fact, creepy, macabre and downright scary. This sweetly forbidding lullaby marries two works, "My Heavenly Garden Flower" (a Persian Lullaby) with another by Federico García Lorca...along with some live and pre-recorded electronics, all created by Jane Rigler (flutes)and Haleh Abghari (voice). This was a live performance on Sept. 30th, 2017, at UCCS in Colorado Springs.

Federico's Sleepless Lullaby

Written in 1983 for the degung gamelan ensemble, the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan (1984), with Jon Siddall (director), Gordon Monahan, Robert W Stevenson, Miguel Frasconi, Anne Holloway, Mark Dugan, Hedi Wong, and Michael Bakan. In '83/'84 in Toronto, this piece had many manifestations. First as a piece for solo violin, then for electric violin & electric keyboard, then this gamelan score, then finally for John Puchiele's rock band, Word of Mouth. The "distancing" of the title refers to the various processes of metric & melodic expansion & contraction at work throughout the piece. But some of the performers back then also used to say that performing this piece put them in a sort of trance that distanced them from the outside world.

Distancing (1983)

Jaime D. Rojas Vargas - Sensaciones Del Rio

Flutist, Composer, Improviser, Educator...Listener...Dreamer...Collaborator

Federico's Sleepless Lullaby

janerigsounds

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