Composer project - Brian Ciach

Brian Ciach, Piano 
Recorded at the Trianon Theatre, San Jose, CA, October 5, 2015 
Recording engineers: Brian Ciach and Jay DeShan 
Mastering by Jay DeShan
https://sigh-ackmusic.org/index.html

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4R6EVzWEUA

SCORE: http://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/ciach_fourth_piano_sonata_score?workerAddress=

ABOUT THE MUSIC
This work is a "screaming motley" depicting triumph over great struggle. It is in “palindromic sonata form”, in that the sections of thematic material return in reverse order. Among other extended piano techniques, I use the Stopped-String Slide (1:50), where the fingers of one hand press strings and slide down them as they are played on the keys with the other hand, producing various harmonic overtones. Like a large, heavy iron lid frantically placed onto an over-boiling cauldron, the piano’s fall board is slammed shut, ending the final flurry of notes. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach is currently the Assistant Director and Instructor of Music (Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition) at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose, California and a Music Engraver for the Subito Music Corporation. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 


Fourth Sonata, "The Great Scream" (2015)

All variations were created from recordings of a vibrator on the piano strings. I used Logic Pro, granular synthesis, and MIDI to create the sounds.

ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS I from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN (2019)

Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello
Hot Air New Music Festival
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Osher Salon
February 25, 2018

Copyright © 2008 by Brian Ciach

ABOUT THE MUSIC
In the beginning stages of writing the Chaconne for cello and electronic music, I recorded a large collection of cello excerpts, intending to use many of them for processing and synthesizing into an electronic accompaniment. I ended up making an entire 9-minute piece from just the tuning fifths that my cellist friend played to warm up, using none of the intended excerpts. You will hear the cellist play these fifths at the opening. The electronic music follows like an echo with an elongated and distant version. These fifths repeat over and over, like a chaconne, and are transposed and then stacked to make harmonic swirls. Harmonies of minor and major seventh chords predominate the progressions. These falling fifths also occur at different rates of speed--some very slow, some quite fast--creating canons of augmentation and diminution. In short, the entire electronic portion of the piece is a grand mensuration canon (a canon of different speeds) built from the tuning fifths at the opening (though this is not necessarily intended to be audible). The cello presents an antagonistic contrast to the harmonious electronic music. Gestures of aggression are subdued after a climax in the "golden section" of the work (at a point where the ratio is .618 in proportion to the whole), where both cello and electronics reach there loudest. The cello is left singing victoriously as the electronics drop out. I used the Riverrun and eVerb plug ins via ProTools to create the electronic music.

SCORE
https://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/bri...

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is a composer, new music pianist, and instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored" (New Music Box). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language.  He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is the Assistant Director and Instructor of Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition at the Hunter School of Music (San Jose, California). His compositions are published by Potenza Music and nomus21. 

WEBSITE
https://sigh-ackmusic.org

Chaconne for cello and electronic music | Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello

Electronic variations based on a chord progression from the piano variations set.

ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS II from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN

Performed by Brian Ciach, The Hunter School of Music, San Jose, CA, October 16, 2018.

The Promethean Dances / Variations on Rhythms

Variation on Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus Strangling the Vulture / Variations in Reverse

The Vulture / Variations on a Walking Bass

Prometheus Bound / Variations in Inversion

The Agriculture / Variations on a Chord Progression

The Fire / Variations on a Motive

Prometheus Unbound

Performed by Alarm Will Sound at the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival 
Missouri Theatre Centre for the Arts, Columbia Missouri

The Einstein Slide (2012)
Addendum to Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2010)

The Einstein Slide is a short chamber concerto inspired by a medical slide of Albert Einstein's brain on display at the Mütter museum, a medical oddities museum in Philadelphia. 
	Lucy Rorke-Adams, the neuropathologist who donated the slides to the museum, has found that Einstein's brain is remarkably youthful for a man aged 76. "The blood vessels are gorgeous", she says. To reflect this, the music is ever inspired and brilliant, undergoing constant shifts and a childlike exploration of material. Scientists have found that Einstein's brain was lacking a complete Sylvian fissure, a type of wall separating the parts of the brain responsible for mathematical ability, spatial reasoning and three-dimensional visualization. Some argue that the synergy of these diverse segments in Einstein's brain allowed him to think differently. The Einstein Slide evokes this, musically, by way of constant shifting between sections. 
	There is also the "musical equation" toward the middle of the score. This is a musical representation of the formula E=mc2 in the form of a puzzle canon. Overall, the key areas of the work are C and C-sharp, reflecting, in a musical way, the c squared notion of the famous equation.


Composer project - Brian Ciach

Mikaela King