This is a piece I wrote when I lived in Vienna.  It is for Harp, Guitar, Cello, and Tenor Saxophone.  The inspiration for the piece was my difficulty with the German language.  

Deutsche Grammatik

Live performance recording of the East Coast premiere on June 4, 2015 at the New Music on the Point Festival, Leicester VT.

(N.B. All sounds in the piece are acoustic and produced manually by playing very precise harmonic nodes on the bass strings of a grand piano, along with a few normally played notes on the keyboard.)

Wolfgang von Schweinitz | Plainsound Lullaby, Op. 59 [2014] (live)

“barrier – bend/erect,” is based on motion void of direction or destination. the four instruments are posited as a circuit of unique and precise states, and given a score through which they may become music(al). their emergence as music(al) serves to make explicate the role and position of the observer/listener. the phenomenon/pattern/model, whether assumed or explicit, can be considered in two ways. on one hand it can be considered external - meaning that the observer hears and compares it with a pre-existent model/experience. the listener/observer can alternately be inside the system, one of its subprocesses, and see it become through the interaction of local elements/notes/sounds that seem to gain a logic/refrain without any centralized or external control. since the musicians are not given access to each others music and are granted a large amount of autonomy, the players fall into the second category along with the audience members: listening as the sounds take place around them, discovering patterns/refrains/flows of becomings that may serve as music(al).

played by the amazing:
Jonathan Tang – violin
Yvette Holtzwarth – violin
Joy Yi – viola
Thea Mesirow – cello

barrier - bend/erect

Transcription on the Dede Efendi's famous piece Gülnihal.
flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola, violoncello
Performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik, under the direction of Enno Poppe

Program Notları:

Âdem babamızdan günümüze değin insan denilen mahlûkat başımıza türlü dertler açmışdır. (Adına savaş denilen velvele, küfür, fitne, yalan, binbir çeşit fesat, gıbta, dedikodu ve gıybet gibi.) Amma ve lâkin bu mahlûkatın yapdığı hayırlı işler de yok değildir. Bahsi geçen konuya vâkıf olabilmek için evvelâ eski çağlardan beri yüce Allah'ın yaratdığı envâyi çeşit mahlûkatın en ilkel iletişim şekillerini irdelememiz gerekmekdedir. Evet, bu garip mahlûkat, ana rahmînden çıkdığı ilk andan itibaren rabbimizin emriyle ağlamış, izzet-i nefsine hakim olamayan insanlara dünya ahiret zulm ederek ciğerlerindeki acıyı tüm galaksîye haykırmışdır. (Şüphesiz ki Allah'ın yaratdığı sesin cehennemde bizleri ne denli azâblara gark edebileceği, ana rahmînden çıkan savunmasız bir bebeğin ağzından çıkan sesden dahî anlaşılmaktadır.) Hayvanlar âlemindeki mahlûkatın da insan kulağının duyduğu veyahut duymadığı seslerle iletişim kurduğu günümüzde elhamdûlillâh tasdik edilmiştir.

Gördüğümüz üzere, ses denen şey alemlerin rabbi tarafından bizlere bir nîmet olarak sunulmuş ve onu hayırlı şekillerde kullanmamız; âdeta çiftçinin toprağı işlediği gibi işlememiz salık verilmişdir. Fakat ne yazık ki günümüz bağdarlarının sese olan temâyülü, tıpkı atom felsefesindeki farazî yaklaşımlara benziyor. Atomcu feylesoflar, atomun maddenin bölünmez bir parçası olmadığını, kendisinin de daha küçük parçalardan yaratılmış minicik bir âlem olduğunu göremiyorlar. Hatrı sayılır ilm insanları bize göstermişdir ki; dünyada, kâinatta ve atom âleminde hep aynı nizam hâkimdir. Bugün, dün olduğu gibi maddeci felsefe, maddenin mahîyetini ve içinde barındırdığı sırları anlamaktan âcizdir. O halde, günümüz bağdarları, kesin ve mutlak sûrette, yazdıkları eserlerde kullandıkları genişletilmiş sâz tekniklerinin ne mânada kullanılması gerekdiğini ve bu garip seslerin doğasını anlamaya özen göstermeli, besteyi dinlemeye gelen insanlara zulm etmemelidir.

Bu tehzîb (düzenleme) ve tezyînin (süsleme) amacı, tam da yukarıda parmak basdığımız konuya dikkat çekmektedir. Usta Hammâmîzâdê İsmâil Dede Efendî'nin yazmış bulunduğu Yine Bir Gül Nihal Aldı Bu Gönlümü eserinin yeni sosyete dünyasında meşhûr olan "çağdaş mûsîki" akımında kullanılan envayi çeşit garip ses ile düzenlenmesinin de mümkün olabileceği, yüce Allah'ın yaratdığı tüm seslerin, harmonik dünyası baz alınarak ortaya çıkarılan ve adına "armoni" denen büyük çoklu sesli sistem bağlamında kullanılabileceği müziği dinlemeye gelen birbirinden değerli misâfîrlerimizin gözleri önüne serilmişdir. 

Hâmzâ oğlu Mithatcan Ôcal
Hîcri 1437, Milâdi 2015, Konstantînîyye

Yine Bir Gülnihal Aldı Bu Gönlümü (2015)

Market collage

inocciduous (adj): of a star, never setting // -ion: suffix, denoting action or condition

Tosiya Suzuki - recorder
Jessica Meyer - viola
Serafim Smegelskiy - cello
Lazlo Hudacsek - percussion
Junko Yamamoto - piano

inoccidion

A live recording of Michael Pisaro's "asleep, desert, choir, agnes" (2016) for 22 musicians and 2-channel electronics, written for the University of South Carolina Experimental Music Workshop. The concert took place on September 20, 2016 at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, SC.

asleep, desert, choir, agnes (2016)
Michael Pisaro

University of South Carolina Experimental Music Workshop
Greg Stuart, director

Adam Bailey, Amanda Ferguson,Colby Hesseltine, 
Anna Kulangara, Kelsey Lantz, David Long, Jeremy Martinez, 
Clayton Mims, David Munn Carstensen, Belvin Olasov, Neema Patel, 
Jessica Rotheiser, Bailey Seabury, Justin Stombler, 
Joelle Strom, Nathan Wichmann; percussion/voice

Michelle Beck, horn
Brian Bethea, saxophone
Michael Pisaro, electronics/electric guitar
Philip Snyder, flute
Greg Stuart, percussion/melodica
Emily Stumpf, flute

Recording: Jeff Francis

Program Note:
Agnes Martin called a significant series of paintings from 1997 With My Back to the World.  By “the World” I think she meant what we sometimes call the “real world” – of commerce and the art market, of social life and family, of media and entertainment. But there are multiple worlds, and those paintings are emissaries from another world: of solitude and quiet, of nature and light, and of an emptiness so austere that it becomes radiantly full. This is a world that, unlike the day-to-day life in cities, requires full engagement to perceive at all. 

Martin abandoned New York and her painting career in 1967 (at the age of 55), and resettled in the New Mexico desert. When she began painting again in 1973 her work was markedly different: both lighter in color and mood and deeper in affect. This impression is nearly impossible get from photographs of the paintings, as it seems to lie as much in the manner in which the painting asks us to engage with it as it does with shape or color.

What I hope to do with asleep, desert, choir, agnes is to call up a series of sonic fragments of that world, not as they might actually have been if we’d recorded them, but as if their sonic traces had placed themselves onto one of her canvases. 
–Michael Pisaro

asleep, desert, choir, agnes

Video: https://youtu.be/ljHjxOqxWlY

This improvisation was for a fall semester final, and was completely off the cuff - I had no prior knowledge of their prepared dance.

I had been toying with preparing the piano that day, and as this piece unfolded I found that I really liked the contrast between the key that buzzed like a hammer dulcimer, and another key that was very dissonant and gave a metal tweaking sound. 

The image I conjured up in my head was something of a post-conflict relaxation - a walk.

Recorded at The Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center

Prepared Piano Improvisation for Dance

Life is Hard

Minus 40

Max Wanderman is a composer, instrumentalist, sound artist, and list-maker.  He holds a BM in Music Composition from Butler University and an MFA in Composition from the California Institute of the Arts.  He currently lives in Minneapolis  

Deutsche Grammatik

Max Wanderman

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