Screeching Violins and Raspy Cellos: Some Alternative Favorites

Study Score: http://www.editiongravis.de/verlag/product_info.php?info=p1918_Tramespace-I.html

Asko|Schönberg Ensemble
Clark Rundell, cond.

Geertekerk, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2013, Opening Concert
September 2, 2013

Live recording made by Richard de Gruyl for Concertzender/VPRO during Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2013

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Tramespace is a hybrid word composed of two French words, “trame” (woof, or weft in English), meaning the crosswise threads on a loom over and under which other threads (the warp) are passed to make cloth, and “espace” (meaning space). The metaphorical loom is a context from which the musical materials are woven. Just as each thread is carefully placed and integrated to create a textile, each sound gesture, each musical impulse is threaded with precise intention. As the musical filaments are carefully interlaced – heterogenous, yet collaborating to become one – the surface becomes rich with patterns while depth is made by the multitude of interacting strands. At times, the weave is loosened and a thread becomes entangled, exposing the threads as merely threads just momentarily and no longer as fabric, shifting perspective and seeing things anew, even altered once the yarn becomes rejoined.

In tandem, the concept of space and its elusive quality is something Onishi became interested in during conversations with close friend, composer Mahir Cetiz, most notably regarding the “compositional space” in his work, Départ dans… As space is inexorably tied with time, with an elapsing sense of immediacy and memory, the awareness of physical and metaphysical space is fluid. As music passes with time, it fills a space, interacts with it and leaves it. It makes you aware of the room you are sitting in, yet your sense of inner space has expanded limitlessly. For Onishi, “…it lingers to the territory of the unknown…” and for him, this piece “is, in a sense, an attempt to circumscribe this metaphysical space using the sound that is developed over time.” His work is also informed in part from the philosophical discussion of “self” that is put in the context of the world as a space by Japanese philosopher Shizuteru Ueda in his “Two-Fold Being-in-the-World.”

Tramespace I was commissioned by Gaudeamus Muziekweek as a result of receiving the Gaudeamus Prize in 2011. Tramespace II, still a work in progress, is commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris.

Tramespace I and II can be played separately, although playing them together forms a coherent whole as a diptych.

- Program notes by Michelle Lou

Tramespace I (2012-13)

for Contrabass-Clarinet, Cello, Prepared piano and Percussion
Carol McGonnell, Contrabass Clarinet
John Popham, cello
Russel Greenberg, percussion
Chris Goddard, piano

Inhibited Momentum

"Apturtuduci" submission track for AmbientOnline.org One Sample Dare Challenge 9.

Challenge thread on AmbientOnline.org forum: http://tinyurl.com/pk9qd52

Track description on AmbientOnline.org forum: http://tinyurl.com/q8ylnlw


Apturtuduci

ConnectiveTissue - Marina Kifferstein, violin

Kemençe/Voice: Nermin Kaygusuz. Microtonal Guitar: Tolgahan Çoğulu

Havuz

Akşam yine toplandı derinde…
Canan gülüyor eski yerinde.
Canan ki gündüzleri gelmez,
Akşam görünür havz üzerinde.
Mehtab kemer taze belinde,
Üstünde sema gizli bir örtü,
Yıldızlar onun güldür elinde…

Ahmet Haşim, Piyale, 1926

POOL 

Deep down, the night has massed again 
My darling smiles in her wonted place 
My darling who doesn't come by day 
Appears at night by the pool.

The moonlight a sash for her waist 
The heavens her secret veil 
The stars roses in her hand. 

Translation: Bernard Lewis

Havuz

Note: video footage of this performance can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/89395213

Nieuw Ensemble
Yoshiaki Onishi, cond.

An Evening of Today II
January 16, 2014
Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Départ dans... (2010, rev. 2013)

Score: http://www.editiongravis.de/verlag/product_info.php?language=en&info=p1903_Tr--epilogue-.html

Recording of the new, definitive version

Kevin McFarland, violoncello
Ryan Streber, recording engineer

Columbia Composers Concert
Cary Hall, DiMenna Center (New York)
April 14, 2014
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When I wrote my Culs-de-sac (en passacaille) for string quartet in 2009, it was evident to me that I should develop the sonic soundscape that I have created in that piece. I have decided that I write a cycle of compositions for string quartet and its subsets.

Tr (épilogue) marks the second piece that I completed in this cycle. Its title has a precursor; Tr for violoncello and piano, of which I took the formal scheme as a point of reference for the solo piece. I took the duo piece, stripped away the piano part, and enlarged the piece by adding musical commentaries.

As the title may suggest, I intend that this piece conclude the cycle. In the spirit of concluding the cycle, my focus in this piece was to illuminate the gestures and situations of ‘farewell,’ in the sense that the envelope of the phrases has the conscious trajectory of fade-out.

Many thanks to Patrick McGuire who, in the symposium Creative Dialogue V, premièred the work-in-progress version as a part of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Also thanks are due to Anssi Karttunen and Magnus Lindberg, whose commentaries and feedbacks were crucial to the development of the piece. For the revised version, a rather extended coda (Coda (à Séverine)) was added. I am indebted to Séverine Ballon, who kindly demonstrated a technique utilized in this coda.

Tr (épilogue) is dedicated to Pierre Morlet and Mark Andre.

- Yoshiaki Onishi

Tr (épilogue) - for violoncello solo (2012, rev. 2014)

This piece was inspired by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi's quotation; create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave." Brancusi's modern and minimalist sculptural style was also a source of inspiration for me. However, I did not intend to create a minimalist expression but aimed to convey Brancusi's style from my perspective.

In general, the piece consists of an extended crescendo and diminuendo respectively. As Iannis Xenakis notes, the terms crescendo and diminuendo do not simply refer to dynamics; they are applicable to increases and decreases in any parameter. In this piece, in addition to the prelude and postlude, we perceive a crescendo and diminuendo in the intensity of the instrumental build-up. The piece is constructed with transitional sections connected to each other through "injections" of gradual transitions of various parameters.

Brancusi (for string orchestra)

dedicated to my professor, Onur Türkmen

Hezarfen Ensemble
conductor : Orhun Orhon

Bilkent University Concert Hall- 2017

Encounters

performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Domaine Forget, 2012) - Lorraine Vaillancourt, conductor

Burrowed Time (2012) - for chamber ensemble

Igor Santos, composer
Performed by Alarm Will Sound

Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 28, 2018

"...what does it mean when some tune follows you, occurs to you [...] in the middle of thoughts of a quite different kind?" - Theodor Reik (1960)

through thoughts of a different kind

Mombacho
for harp, guitar, cimbalom, double bass and electronics
by Gabriel Bolaños Chamorro
réalisation informatique musicale: Monica Gil Giraldo
2019

commissioned by CIRM, National Center for Creation of Music (Nice, France) 
for the 2019 MANCA festival 
work done in the studios of CIRM
premiered by Ensemble C. Barré

Located in Granada, Nicaragua, the Mombacho is an active volcano with a tropical rainforest on its summit. When I lived near the volcano, I would frequently hike in the rainforest, and became fascinated by the volcano’s rich sonic ecosystem. Thousands of different species of insects, birds, reptiles, and other animals that inhabit the rainforest create complex overlapping sounds that mix with the natural soundscape of the weather, the trees, and even the human inhabitants of the Mombacho.

This piece was inspired by this beautiful sound world. It is an exploration of the cyclical, diurnal, and seasonal changes of the rainforest’s sonic ecosystem. The quartet plays a variety of textures that continuously evolve through a slow microtonal harmonic progression, while each instrument is amplified and spatialized around the audience using a surround-sound ambisonic speaker setup. The audience is immersed in the ensemble’s sound while it constantly moves, evolves and interacts in the space around them. 

To complement the instrumental sound of the quartet, and to add an additional element of unfamiliarity, an electronic tape part is synchronized with the instrumentalists and also spatialized around the audience. Most of the tape part was produced by recording household objects, and processing them with various studio techniques, and occasionally with a Buchla modular synthesizer. The goal was to create en electronic part that sounds as natural and organic as possible, that blends with the plucked strings of the ensemble, while complementing the quartet’s timbral palette.

Inhibited Momentum

Mahir Cetiz

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