Chamber

Wolff Tones E-Tude (2004)is for e-bowed piano, two sustaining instruments, and two to four melody instruments. It was written for the DownTown Ensemble for a concert celebrating Christian Wolff. It has six sections. Each section has a number of phrases, except for the first section, which has only one. The performers select a phrase from each section, repeat it a number of times and then choose another, until moving on to the next section. Upon successive repetitions the phrases chosen can either be the same or different than the ones chosen previously.

Wolff Tones E - Tude

My work has always been concerned with exploring sound phenomena. Initially this was done in rather direct, almost linear, ways, writing pieces for multiples of instruments, or similar instruments, that I could perform myself, taking advantage of 8-track tape machines to make the  pieces. I was able to write for other instruments with the advent of midi playback. Throughout, my approach has always been to work very carefully with the specific sound properties of the instrument I was writing for, qualities that change from instrument to instrument. Gulf War Syndrone (2004-6)is a departure, in that I'm using a variety of instruments and sound sources. I am using fragments of a field recording I made in Germany in 1990, which was an anti-war demonstration in Cologne which had a number of trombones playing long tones and a man ranting unintelligibly. It was a striking sound, and I've been dying to incorporate it into a piece ever since. The pre-recorded part also uses layered voices from politicians and manipulated voice, tambourine, and oboe that are derived from middle eastern pop music. I had hoped that this piece would be out-dated after the 2004 election. However…..

Gulf War Syndrone

Given my usual compositional concerns: polyphonic writing for at least four voices of like or similar instruments, I found Corrina Ocarina  really difficult to write: only writing for two voices (three if you want to get fussy and count both hands of the harp) and for two instruments that have a relatively thin overtone series and that produce their sounds in totally different ways. I tried to solve this by creating afterimages of sound between the two instruments, starting off sparsely and then building up to a thoroughly indulgent cascade of sound. In a way, it is almost a parody of a typical flute and harp piece. Sarah Curtiss-flute, Shelley Du-harp

Corrina Ocarina

Lake Eden is for open instrumentation and was written for Relâche, a new music group from Philadelphia. It has four sections played in a progressive quasi-rondo form. Each section has a number of phrases, except for the first section, which has only one. The performers select a phrase from each section every time they go through the rondo form. Upon successive repetitions the phrases chosen can either be the same or different than the ones chosen previously. "The title came to me on a hot, sticky day in New York when I was writing the piece, and I remembered Lake Eden, a beautiful little lake in Vermont that I used to go to every day in the summer."
Concert recording at the One Aught Festival in 2001 - Vermont Contemporary Ensemble.

Lake Eden

He Got Dictators is a piece for soprano, plucked bass, and piano. It was commissioned by Bermuda Triangle (Dora Ohrenstein, Robert Black, and Kathy Supove) as part of their Political Songbook project. The text is from Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper. This performance is by the Sonic Liberation Players.

All Together Now

He Got Dictators

Dido Remembered is for synthesizer and prerecorded sound. It is an aural visualization of Dido’s Lament.

Dido Remembered

MARY JANE LEACH is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities: “an acoustic Through the Looking Glass world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker).

Chamber

mjleach