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New Music Unlisted 6

Torrente for violin and guitar
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla - 2021
(including J.S. Bach - Adagio from Sonate in C, BWV 1005)

Odradek Duo
Andria Chang - Violin
Julián Restrepo - Guitar

This piece was written in memory of my friend Samir Alejandro Yahuar (1984-2021).

Torrente

Bestiario pour guitare, piano et trio a cordes
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla (2019)

Commande de Radio France pour l'émission "Création Mondiale".
Score published by : Babel Scores 
https://www.babelscores.com/fr/DanielAlvaradoBonilla

-I. Enérgico
-II. Calmo, nocturno
-III. Fluído, alucinatorio
-IV. Calmo, misterioso
-V. Contínuo, como una toccata

Ensemble Almaviva
Pablo Márquez - guitar
Ezequiel Spucches - piano
Ana Millet - Violon
Lucía Peralta - Alto
Louis Rodde - Violoncelle

Enregistrement fait à la Seine Musicale (Boulogne Billancourt) le 12 septembre 2020.

Bestiario

Low-fi delirium for alto flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone and electronics
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla - 2022
Œuvre commandée par l'Ensemble Sillages et l'Ensemble der/gelbe/klang, avec le soutien du Ministère de la Culture - DRAC Bretagne. 

Julie Brunet-Jailly - alto flute
Hugo Clédat - bass clarinet
Jean-Baptiste Bonnard - vibraphone

Recorded by engineer Alexandre Chaigne at Music Unit Studios (Montreuil, France)

In Low-fi Delirium, most of the electronics consist of sounds that come from real "vintage" keyboard instruments such as the mellotron, the optigan and the Rhodes electric piano. In some ways this piece pays homage to the psychedelic music and delirious times of the sixties. 

The sounds of these analog instruments have always inspired me since I was a teenager and I have always thought of using them outside of their usual musical context (that of rock, pop or jazz). Although nowadays there are very powerful digital keyboards and softwares created to simulate these instruments, there is nothing, in my opinion, like the real machines – with their charming flaws and their analog sound qualities. The mellotron is an instrument in which each key triggers the playback of a magnetic tape which contains a real pre-recorded instrumental sound. It is in a way the analog ancestor of the digital sampler. The mellotron's pre-recorded sounds have a rudimentary "cheap" and almost “kitsch” sound quality. It is precisely this characteristic which, in my opinion, gives the mellotron its charm and potential! I wanted to use these sounds in order to establish an interaction, a dialog with the three acoustic instruments. This is how each instrument of the ensemble will be enlarged by its mirror or by its "low-fi" electronic alter ego. The pre-recorded mellotron sounds will be the electronic doubles of the wind instruments, while the bell or celesta type sounds of the Rhodes will weave a link with the vibraphone. Alongside these electronic instrumental sounds there are other “vintage” and “concrete” vinyl crackle noises, old clocks ticking, radio interferences...

Low-fi delirium

 "Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy" written in 2012, electronics completed May 7, 2014. The version with electronics was premiered by the [Switch~ Ensemble] on June 2 at the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival.

A recording session from Nov. 2013 will be released with the completed electronics soon!

**The complete score can be viewed at the following link: jasonthorpebuchanan.com/asymptoticflux/page1.html

“Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy” was written over a three month period while traveling and hitchhiking throughout Europe, surrounding time spent attending at the IRCAM Manifeste Festival in Paris and the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt. As one might imagine, composing with pencil and paper while constantly on the move can be rather cumbersome, having only short periods of time available to focus, and often taking place in awkward workspaces like cafes, restaurants, hostels, and the apartments of my various hosts. Most of these environments were quite busy and chaotic spaces. This situation presented a challenge after having spent most of my compositional activity to date in an academic setting with a piano or other musical equipment readily available.

My original intent when I set out was to explore the timbral possibilities of the bass clarinet, utilizing a variety of techniques to produce complex soundscapes and microtonal sonorities that would provide germinal material for the work while unifying the ensemble. In addition to the sonorities that are worked out through sampling and spectral analysis of multiphonics, additional pitch content is generated through an acoustic analogue to a process known in electronic music as “single-sideband modulation,” resulting in a series of combination tones made by adding two frequencies (for instance, a bass clarinet tone and an open scordatura string of the cello), to one another, producing a series that grows exponentially (i.e. 100Hz+200Hz=300Hz, 200Hz+300Hz=500Hz, etc.).

The title comes from an arguably conceptual device: the low E-flat that simultaneously pervades the work and is non-existent. I imagine that the ensemble is always reaching towards this E-flat as a point of centricity, but never quite arrive; analogous to an asymptote, as it approaches infinity. Entropy can be described as the “measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system,” or the “tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.” (source: American Heritage Dictionary). Taking some poetic liberties in reducing the scientific definition of “entropy” to simply a unit of measurement for chaos, one might say that this work conveys a state of high entropy in music, in stark contrast both to my previous work and to the classical tradition itself. This is a characteristic that I feel reflects not only specific elements of the compositional process, but also the result of the technical demands made on the performers, as well as my state of mind throughout the creation of this work.

- Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Video (without electronics): www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMel9NUt30s&feature=plcp

OSSIA New Music Concert, Eastman School of Music - Oct. 4, 2012
Madison Greenstone, amplified bass clarinet
Lauren Cauley, amplified violin
Kelsey Farr, amplified viola
Julia Nilsen, amplified cello

For more information, please visit: www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com

Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy (with electronics)

Los Senderos se Bifurcan pour violoncelle et grand ensemble
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla - 2016

Cameron Crozman - Violoncelle
David Reiland - Direction
Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire
Enregistrement Live / CNSMDP Salle d'Art Lyrique - 4 Octobre 2016

Dans Los Senderos se Bifurcan, la forme concertante m'a permis de travailler pour la première fois sur l'interaction, l'opposition et la convergence entre le soliste et l'ensemble instrumental. La structure de l'œuvre s'articule autour de quatre mouvements qui s'enchaînent. L'ensemble anticipe le matériau exposé par la ligne du soliste ou crée une sorte de réponse/conséquence à celui-ci. L'univers sonore du violoncelle est alors élargi, voire multiplié par le groupe instrumental. De même, l'ensemble peut établir une situation d'opposition, prenant un sentier différent et contrastant. En dehors de ces idées strictement formelles, il y a eu d'autres éléments qui m'ont accompagné pendant le processus (labyrinthique) de la composition de l'œuvre : la lecture de Borges, le chant d'oiseaux de la colline de Montjuïc à Barcelone, ainsi que le souvenir de mon grand-père, Ricardo Alvarado Pantoja (1928 – 2016), à qui cette pièce est dédiée.

Los Senderos se Bifurcan

European premiere by Insomnio
Ulrich Pöhl, conductor
Recorded live at TivoliVredenburg (Hertz)
Utrecht, September 12, 2015

Video here: https://vimeo.com/204631263

*2014 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award
*2014 Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize awarded by the Eastman School of Music
*2015 Nomination for Gaudeamus Prize, Netherlands

"Asymptotic Flux: Second Study in Entropy (Static Foxy Lump: [II] Second Nudist Tyre Pony)" was written between February and April of 2013 for Alarm Will Sound as the second work in a cycle utilizing shared musical objects and compositional devices. The first, for amplified bass clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, was composed over a three-month period while hitchhiking throughout Europe, surrounding time spent in Paris and Darmstadt. The experience of frantically seeking opportunities to compose while on the move proved challenging, due to the awkward workspaces available to me such as cafes, restaurants, hostels, and apartments of various hosts. These were noisy and chaotic spaces, influencing the character of the music, as well as the title.

"Asymptotic Flux" describes an arguably conceptual device: the low E-flat that simultaneously pervades the work and is non-existent. In the quartet, I imagined that the ensemble is always reaching towards this E-flat as a point of centricity, but never quite arriving, analogous to an asymptote as it approaches infinity. In "Second Study", the low E-flat is finally provided by a contrabass subharmonic that both initiates and concludes the work, scarcely audible as a definite pitch, unstable, and on the lower threshold of human hearing. The parenthetical subtitle, an anagram of the title proper, alludes to the structural design, borrowing musical snapshots from the quartet while fragmenting and re-contextualizing them throughout stages proportionally related to the 19.6 Hz E-flat in both temporal and harmonic centricity.

I had set out to explore the timbral possibilities of the bass clarinet, utilizing a variety of techniques to produce rich, complex soundscapes and microtonal sonorities providing germinal material for the work while unifying the ensemble. In addition to spectral analysis of bass clarinet multiphonics in various states, pitch content is generated by a process known in electronic music as "single-sideband modulation," resulting in a series of combination tones with intervals that grow exponentially. Instrumental techniques in this work are employed explicitly to destabilize or distort the timbral qualities of each instrument, coloring the sound to modulate or destabilize the written pitch material.
The last element regarding organization of pitch material revolves around the tuning of the cello to the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 11th partials of a virtual low E-flat fundamental (19.6 Hz, slightly sharp), which is now extended to the contrabass by halving the 3rd and 7th partials. This allows the execution of unique sonorities very rapidly and with precision through the use of natural harmonics. These three verticality types are often superimposed upon one another, with resultant voicings sometimes similar to an "E-type" symmetrical hexachord possessing interval content that I've become partial to (no pun intended).
Entropy can be described as the "measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system," the "loss of information in a transmitted message," the "tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity," or the "inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society" -- taking poetic liberties in reducing the thermodynamic property of "entropy" to simply a unit of measurement for chaos, one might say that this work conveys a state of high entropy in music, thus reflecting the compositional process, the result of the technical demands made on the performers, as well as my state of mind throughout the creation of these works.

For more information, please visit: jasonthorpebuchanan.com

Asymptotic Flux: Second Study in Entropy - Insomnio, Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2015

Totem
pour contrebasse et électronique
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla - 2018

Louis Siracusa - Contrebasse
Enregistrement Live / Centquatre Paris - Festival Manifeste
16 juin 2018

Evocation d’une cérémonie tribale, presque onirique. 
La contrebasse est l’objet rituel. De celui-ci émanent les incantations, des éclats d’énergie et de lumière qui éclairent la nuit ; des rythmes lancinants et des sonorités percussives qui cherchent à nous conduire au paroxysme hallucinatoire.

Totem

World premiere by the Talea Ensemble, Aug. 1 2017 at the TIME SPANS Festival in NYC. Jeffrey Means, conductor.

Recorded by Caley Monahon-Ward
Mixed by Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Remastered by Jason Thorpe Buchanan May 30, 2021

Video recording: https://vimeo.com/245320082
more at jasonthorpebuchanan.com

PSYCHASTHENIA B: PANIC ARCHITECTURE 
Psychasthenia is defined as “a group of neuroses characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety”, imagining a new cycle of works for ensemble and various immersive media environments. During the performance of each work in the cycle, reservoirs of media files are created, retrieved, re-organized, and composited against one another, creating temporal, aural, or visual dissonances between past and present actions – events unfolding on stage and in media generated in real-time. The commingling of fluctuating chronologies creates temporal instability, challenges the mutability of memory, and proposes an alternative, speculative engagement with bodily-lived time. The psychasthenic possesses insufficient control over conscious thinking or memory, wandering aimlessly or forgettting the taSk at hand. Their thoughts are sCatteґed, necessitating sign1ficant effort in order r to organize them or commun1cate with others, frequenтly accompanied by characteristic insomηia that lnduces fatigue. Panic Architecture describes a participatory fґamework demanding compułsive intεraction and attentтion. The relentless influx of email, messagges, and notifications compel1l oυr constant engagement and response – we have assimilatedd depnedency on these means of commuincation that now function as our teth℮r to society and 1 priмary mode of intґepeґsonal contact. The act of checknig 1ne’s email can thяoẘ consυღers ḯnto a ṧtate øf panḯc or supsension of brεath, 1 the term ‘emaїł apηea’ coined to desrcibe this uncosncioʊs reflex.,, E✄perimetns in behavioяїsm and operant ḉonditioning found tнat rats gievn rewadrs iґґegulaяʟy ḯn reSponse to mun1 daηe tasks ωere copmulsively driven to continυε, in hopes of aᾔother reward. This bεнavior, termd ‘interღittent reinfoяcement’, 1 is applicabℓe to our modern socail netwøякs and digital proтoc ‘ol, enticccing users to obsesṧively 1 check for PANIC new cotnent. Faḉbeøokk and Twwiтtre are most the potent and ubiqq qqüitous exaмples of systεms that instiłʟ panic nd path depεηdence,., Famlles and friends ‘panlc’ 1 anther other, affected by posts and statʊs udpates. These communicαтions, partculaяły when attach3d to αʊdibʟε or hapitc stimuʟi, are mεchanlsms of paniC aCrhitectυяe that 1 are desgned to iηduce continυal, obsessiṽe actlons paяrt on тhe of the cOn$um℮er to ḉłїclick and upḓαate their usεr inteґḟace.,,’ Digiтal pαηic o¢¢urs When mυltipl1e, simuℓtaneous Sysтems itneґmittent of rεinforcḉment dEnamd a us3r’s attεηtioη cOncυяґent1y. Ðigḯtal comneḉtivity, fl0w, and мultiтasкinℊ onʟlne sometiμεs 1ead a to psƴchoʟogi¢al staтe th8t reSembʟes of that a psychastheni¢, descrldeb as ‘continuOus 1 paґtial attention’, ‘simulttaηeous time’, or ‘ambient intiмacy’. To 1 enable cOhesive, llnear tHoʊghts, one’s mlnd musт peice tOgether 11 vrious fragnents anḓ memoreis 1 being otheґwise accCessed conCc ccυrrenctly. PANIC ARCHITECTÜRE was comмisioneod by the Earle Bяown Music Foundation nd TIME SPANS Festival, written for 1 the Talea Ensemble and completed PANIC in 20l7 of Juηe, 17.
– JaSon ThOrpe BuChanan

PANIC ARCHITECTURE (2017, with intro) Talea Ensemble, TIME SPANS Festival

soliloquios del viento (2016; rev. 2017) by Jason Thorpe Buchanan
version for sextet and electronics
October 19, 2019, TRANSIT Festival 20-21, Leuven, Belgium

Ensemble Interface
Bettina Danielle Berger, bass flute
Hugo Queirós, bass clarinet
William Overcash, violin
Christophe Mathias, cello
Anna D'Errico, piano
Joao Carlos Pacheco, percussion
Maurice Donnet-Monay, conductor

Electronics: Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Audio Engineer: Simon Vander Beken
Mix: Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Video: Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Remastered by Jason Thorpe Buchanan June 1, 2021

Many thanks to the contributors of source material for the electronics: Matt Evans (tenor saxophone), Victor Lowrie (viola), Kirsten Ashley Wiest, Cindy Giron, Jake Bellissimo, Javier Rodriguez, Jason Thorpe Buchanan, Diego Jiménez Tamame, Miggy Torres

soliloquios del viento was commissioned by Royaumont Académie Voix Nouvelles, written in August of 2016 and premiered by the Talea Ensemble & EXAUDI on September 9, 2016, conducted by James Baker. This fourteen-minute work is a meditation on eight poems of Pablo Neruda, reflecting love, distance, and despair. Six singers are set against eight instrumentalists whose fragile and often voiceless sonorities gently color and obscure the murmuring of the text and pointillistic vocal material. The Spanish text is predominantly unintelligible, with the content of Neruda's words instead conjured by the composite texture. He writes of two lovers, their romance characterized by abrasion – a rendezvous between two scorched, ascetic souls, who consume and destroy one another, entangled yet divided by both sublime transfiguration and inexorable chaos. This revised version for sextet and electronics was completed in May 2017 for Ensemble Interface’s premiere at the 2017 VIPA Festival.
Neruda’s texts evoke not only the conflict between darkness and light in both persons, but through this lens, the experience of being confronted with the subjectivity of another’s consciousness. That otherness is manifest in lurid, destructive passions, revealing mutual incoherence, frailty, and sophism beyond endurance. Each poem seems to present discrete, parallel scenarios, some in which each is awoken by their confrontation rather than destroyed – in others suffering to the point of intolerable anguish and desolation. Eroticism and sunderance run throughout Neruda’s powerful imagery, his lover depicted as an enemy with whom he pleads for voice – who has disgraced their love. For the poet, love is the sole means with which two people may “weather” one another. A source of both euphoria and utter devastation, there is a vastness that is evoked in his texts, an attempt to span immeasurable time and distance. Each braves the other, an intimacy and corrosive embrace that both breaks and absolves each person.

Original Version commissioned by the Royaumont Académie Voix Nouvelles for six singers (s, ms, ct, t, bar, bs) and eight instrumentalists (b.fl, b.cl, t.sx, pno, perc, vln, vla, vc).

More information at jasonthorpebuchanan.com

soliloquios del viento (2016; rev. 2017) - Ensemble Interface, TRANSIT Festival

2019-20 annual Columbia Composers concert series.
TAK ensemble performs works by COLUMBIA COMPOSERS.

Saturday, February 29, 2020
8:00 PM  10:00 PM
TENRI Cultural Institute
43A West 13th Street New York, NY, 10011 United States

"dû à l'usure" v.2 (2019-20)
for female voice and small chamber ensemble

“dû à l'usure” v.2, is a piece that projects a canvas of phonetic noises and percussive rhythmic models in large repetitive, phrasal units. The female voice along with the percussionist formulate a noise-based phonetic construct that establishes the rhythmical and timbral archetypes of the piece. Repetitiveness and minimalistic mechanisms forge large structural shapes in a process of inevitable decay. This second and final version of the piece is dedicated to the TAK ensemble.

"dû à l'usure" • v.2 (2019-20), for female voice and small chamber ensemble

Jason Thorpe Buchanan is an American composer of operatic, orchestral, chamber, electroacoustic, and intermedia works which explore fragmentation, multiplicity, intelligibility, behavior, and the integration of live performance with technology. He is Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble] and Artistic Associate/Lecturer in New Media and Digital Technologies for Music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, Germany in the Hybrid Music Lab. He served from 2018-2022 as Department Chair/Lecturer in Composition, Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at the College of Music, Mahidol University in Thailand, 2022 Interim Managing Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative at the University of Missouri, and 2020 Visiting Lecturer in Composition/Interim Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin. His works have been described as “an unearthly collage of sounds”, “sharply-edged”, and “free jazz gone wrong—in a good way.”
        Jason is the recipient of a 2010-11 Fulbright Fellowship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, Germany as a visiting scholar, commissions from the Mizzou International Composers Festival for Alarm Will Sound (2013), Iktus Percussion (2013), the International Horn Society for the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, soloists Jeff Nelsen, Michael Walker, and conductor Brad Lubman (2014), Ensemble Nikel/Tzlil Meudcan (Israel, 2014), the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra as winner of Iron Composer (2014), the NY Virtuoso Singers (2015), the Earle Brown Music Foundation for the Talea Ensemble and TIME SPANS Festival (NYC, 2017), the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium for the TACETi Ensemble and augmented conductor (2019), and for TACETi and extended no-input mixer (2020), a fellowship and commissions from Royaumont for the Talea Ensemble+EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (2016), and the Académie Voix Nouvelles Ensemble (2017), a German/American Fulbright Commission (2011), the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014), two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2014 & 2015), an American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant (2015), 2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), and 2015 Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet/City Council of Bergen, Norway.
        As a nominee for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, three works were presented by Insomnio, the New European Ensemble, and Slagwerk Den Haag at Gaudeamus Muziekweek (NL). His works walkside, lost and gimme shelter (2015), commissioned by Gaudeamus for Slagwerk Den Haag and by Eklekto Percussion Geneva, both explore the structural intersection of precise physical gestures, fragile sounds, and speech alongside live audio and video processing. As 2018 Artist-In-Residence at the Embassy of Foreign Artists in Geneva, Switzerland, he developed a new, interactive processing environment for surface, tension (2018), responding directly to the discrete physical gestures of performers and governing the behavior of both signal processing and triggering through wearable technology, sensors, and gestural tracking. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at Darmstadt (2014) with Ensemble Interface, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE in L.A. (2015) with wild Up, and the MATA Interval Series in New York City (2015) with the [Switch~ Ensemble]. “Hunger is a kind of training session in mental disintegration… An ungodly opera needs ugly music, singers who produce primal sounds, an electric guitar that sounds scraped raw, a wailing orchestra effects, cuts the ear like a knife. Buchanan delivers.” – L.A. Times
        Mentors have included Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Steven Takasugi, Pierluigi Billone, Chaya Czernowin, Raphaël Cendo, Peter Michael Hamel, and Georges Aperghis. Jason served for three years as Executive Director of the Valencia International Performance Academy & Festival (Spain), for two years as a Curator for the San Francisco Center for New Music, as founding Director of the TICF International Academy for Young Composers, and as a Faculty Artist at the International Composition Institute of Thailand. As a doctoral student, he served as course instructor in electronic music and composition, board member of OSSIA, and assistant conductor for the Musica Nova Ensemble with conductor Brad Lubman at the Eastman School of Music. 
        As a guest composer, conductor, and lecturer, he is widely sought internationally at institutions such as the University of Chicago, Stanford University, TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), TIME SPANS Festival (NYC), Chamber Music Campania (Italy), the Eastman School of Music, University of Miami Frost School of Music, Music Science Share Educators Conference (Shanghai), Queens New Music Festival, MATA, the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst (BEK, Norway), and dozens of Universities throughout the United States. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, and degrees in Composition and Music Technology from San José State University (BM & BA, 2008) and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (MM, 2010), where he taught courses in composition and theory as a graduate student. Current projects include "Ecology of Disruption" for Line Upon Line, a percussion trio with generative electronics, lights, and video, an immersive collaborative work for the [Switch~ Ensemble] at EMPAC, and development of new systems for gestural tracking and interactivity within the Hybrid Music Lab, Dresden. 
www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com