soft

Concert Recordings

Live performance of Kyle Hovatter's "En Los Bosques" for bassoon and pre-recorded track. Double Reed Society Convention, June 2013, Redlands, CA

Kyle Hovatter- En Los Bosques

field recording, music box, piano, guitalele, feedback, cassette tapes

01.25.2014

Recorded live at Seventh Avenue Performances in San Francisco on December 13th, 2014 by recording engineer Nick Benavides
Jeff Dittmer, horn; Gabe Cruz, trombone; Jess Rodda, tuba

'Strength, my failing heart' by Kyle Hovatter

Program Note:
In E. L. Doctorow’s novel “Homer and Langley”, based on Manhattan’s notorious Fifth Avenue compulsively hoarding Collyer brothers, Doctorow first introduces his character Homer as he is losing his sight. Homer is keen to notice the gradual fade out. Individual details are lost, then whole images are distorted, and finally he is completely blind. In the darkness he can hear a sound made by an ice skater that was always present but never noticed: “a soft sound though full of intention, a deeper tone than you’d expect made by the skate blades, perhaps for having sounded the resonant basso under the ice, scoot scut, scoot scut.”
My deepest thanks to Lara Mitofsky Neuss and Justin Cummings for commissioning this three movement work.

Homer Collyer Blind, Mvt. 2

“Entrance” was written as an opener for the Twin Cities Trio and their regular tours in elementary schools. Wishing for a short piece that could act as a bridge between contemporary and classical music, Handel’s “Entree” from the Aylesford Pieces comes in and out of focus. This work is now published with Imagine Music Publishing. 

Entrance (2014) oboe, clarinet + bassoon - From Lara Mitofsky Neuss's  May 16, 2015 concert

"wake" by Danny Clay.
piano, voice and cassette tape
after a poem by Roy Doughty
written for and performed by Anne Rainwater, 11.19.14
Center for New Music, San Francisco

wake

Lacrimosa for solo piano was recorded in April of 2013.  I believe it is one of the most beautiful works Kirk has ever written and I love playing it. 

07 Kirk O'Riordan: Lacrimosa

oct2, 2016 - theorbo + processing

Live recording from the September 14, 2016 Noontime concert at UC Berkeley

Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum http://arts.ucdavis.edu/event/soo-yeon-lyuh-haegeum
Ellen Ruth Rose, viola http://music.berkeley.edu/people/ellen-ruth-rose/

tugs at a single thing (2016) feat. Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum and Ellen Ruth Rose, viola

MY GRAVE 
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox 

If, when I die, I must be buried, let 
No cemetery engulph me — no lone grot, 
Where the great palpitating world comes not, 
Save when, with heart bowed down and eyelids wet, 
It pays its last sad melancholy debt 
To some outjourneying pilgrim. May my lot 
Be rather to lie in some much-used spot, 
Where human life, with all its noise and fret, 
Throbs on about me. Let the roll of wheels, 
With all earth’s sounds of pleasure, commerce, love, 
And rush of hurrying feet surge o’er my head. 
Even in my grave I shall be one who feels 
Close kinship with the pulsing world above; 
And too deep silence would distress me, dead.

My Grave (2012) based on the poetry of Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Based on the poem by Pablo Neruda, "En Los Bosques" is a dialogue between a bassoon and prerecorded audio. The track to "En Los Bosques" is a mix of personally made recordings. Congos, djembe, ukelele, pipe organ, and field recordings made in Mt. Tamalpais California are mixed with the voice of my good friend and fellow composer Kevin Villalta. My deepest thanks go to Susan Nelson and the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at the College of Musical Arts of Bowling Green State University for commissioning this work now published by Imagine Music Publishing.

tugs at a single thing (2016) feat. Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum and Ellen Ruth Rose, viola

KyleHovatter