Piano - Małgorzata Walentynowicz
Live Electronics - Krzysztof Wołek
Live performance
KODY Festival of Traditional and Avantgarde Music
The Centre for Culture in Lublin
May 15 2021

The title refers to the way the musical material is used in the piece. Instead of a more typical musical transformation the material is presented as a series of static frames featuring individual acoustic events. The sound of the piano is transformed by the computer and distributed to four speakers placed under the instrument and facing outward as well as to the transducer that resonates inside of the piano. This unusual placement of the speakers facilitates the interaction of the instrument with the acoustic space, whose walls have an active role in the movement of the sound and the transducer interferes with the sound of the piano strings. Flat Surfaces was written for Małgorzata Walentynowicz, with special thanks to the KODY Festival in Lublin for making the premiere performance possible in May 2021.

Flat Surfaces for piano and live electronics

for Piano and Max/MSP
By Allison Ogden, 2022
Performed by:
Gabe Evens, Piano
Allison Ogden, Max/MSP

Could You Please Explain the Gap in Your Resume?

Night, for computer generated sound, with or without female dancer, was written using Max/MSP and was premiered at Stanford University. It has since been choreographed by Alycia Scott of Columbia College Chicago and later by Korina Kordova, of the Silesian Dance Theater, where it was later incorporated into the contemporary dance show, Karolina.

Night

For live Bb Clarinet and Max/MSP. Live processing. The word tabby comes from the Arabic Attabiyya, from a district of Baghdad known for patterned silks. This work was inspired by the peculiar sounds made by one very much loved tabby.

Attabi, for Bb Clarinet and Max/MSP

Live Max/MSP computer improv: Dr. Allison Ogden with Dr. Krzysztof Wołek.

2x2, Max/MSP live improvisation

Pale Blue Dot is a fixed media work for 8 or 8.1 channels, and is presented here in stereo.
On February 14, 1990, the space probe Voyager 1, from a distance of 6 billion kilometers, took one last photo of Earth before it exited our solar system. Three of the frames sent back to Earth that showed our planet were taken using blue, green and violet filters and recombined to form the now famous photo known as Pale Blue Dot. This composition's sounds were created similarly, utilizing filters and mapping light spectra onto sound spectra. The work’s 4-part structure is also derived from the creation of the photograph, with the three filtered photographs combining to form the full “picture” in the final portion of the work. 
On a personal level, I have always found this photo inspiring for many different reasons. Whenever I see this photo, I find myself contemplating life's "big questions”.  Whether the photo, or this work, provides any answers to those “big questions" is something everyone can decide for themselves.

PaleBlueDot DownMix

Mobile Variations explores space as a composition element. I decided to avoid using prerecorded material in this piece and to create all the sounds from scratch, employing various synthesis techniques. This allowed me to study the very nature of sound, its various shapes and colors as well as the almost endless possibilities of technology. Mobile Variations received Prix at Concours Internationaux de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques-Bourges (2007) and the Golden Euphony prize from the MISAME association and the Bourge Competition in 2010.
Krzysztof Wolek

Mobile Variations (2005) for 6 Channel Surround Tape

Krzysztof Wolek (b. 1976, Bytom, Poland) is a composer, improviser, and installation artist. He is a passionate advocate of contemporary acoustic and electronic music and multimedia art. His interdisciplinary/collaboration interests resulted in annual concerts organized under his supervision and in collaborative works with dancers and visual artists.  He is currently an Associate Professor of Music Composition and working as a Director of Digital Composition Studies at the University of Louisville. Krzysztof serves on the jury of the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, is a Programming Committee Member of the Warsaw Autumn Festival and serves as a Director of the University of Louisville New Music Festival. He studied music composition at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Royal Conservatory in the Hague. In 2007 he completed his Ph.D. in music composition and computer music at the University of Chicago. He received commissions from the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Siemens Foundation, SCI/ASCAP, among others, as well as awards, grants and stipends from the University of Chicago, University of Louisville, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. His works received various awards such as the Prix for Mobile Variations at the Concours Internationaux de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques- Bourges – 2007.  Krzysztof’s works span a broad spectrum of works from purely acoustic, improvisational and electronic to various forms of multidisciplinary collaborations. His works have been presented at various festivals of contemporary music and art in Europe, North America and Asia. 

Mobile Variations (2005) for 6 Channel Surround Tape

Krzysztof Wolek

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