Intense stuff. Is the whole piece this heavy?

Composers Nat Evans and Ross Simonini have created a new score for dance in collaboration with Chicago-based choreographer Kate Corby. The new piece, Digging, was derived entirely from experiences in intensive meditation sessions over the summer - a direction from Corby that she and her dance troupe also followed. Since Evans and Simonini were already both daily meditators, as an alternate meditative activity they decided to create a chant to recite every day as a way to transform a phrase they found disagreeable. After deciding on the phrase, “kill two birds with one stone,” they broke the words down syllable by syllable to create a chant and began practicing daily over the course of a few weeks. Although Evans and Simonini live in Seattle and New York respectively, they were able to work on this project together remotely by recording all of their various experiments with this invented chant and experiments in ritual as related to sound and the breath. They then took this cache of recordings as source material to create a new electro-acoustic composition that builds and folds over on itself through processing and editing.

Digging will be presented by Kate Corby and Dancers along with music by composers Tim Russell and Ryan Ross Smith at the Chicago Cultural Center October 24-27th. All events are free, and the shows are at 6:30pm, with the exception of Sunday’s show, which begins at noon. 

Full info here:

http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/digging.html

Kill Two Birds with One Stone - a movement from Digging

Almost everyone agrees that you should not put yourself first in life. This seems to be a universal rule. Yet, we often violently disagree on what we should lift high up and put on that pedestal. It also seems that much of the world's strife, misery and bloodshed can be tied directly to what some people put up on their pedestal. This piece reflects my attempt to push everything extraneous off of my compositional table and see what remains. None above me was premiered by the JACK Quartet in 2014.

none above me (2014), performed by the JACK Quartet

Tina Tallon - πνευμα μηχανης (2014), for accordion and 10 instruments

Premiered by Isaac Schankler, accordion, and Talea
Oct. 24, 2014  |  Conrad Prebys Music Center  |   UCSD

Josef Kucera, recording engineer 

πνευμα μηχανης (pneuma mekhanes) (2014)

Jim Fox: The Pleasure of Being Lost

A Short Memory from a Long Drive composed by Nat Evans for Bell by Bell,  a participatory musical procession presented as part of Make Music Winter.
http://makemusicny.org/parades-2012/bell-by-bell/
http://www.icareifyoulisten.com/2013/01/tom-peyton-bell-by-bell-make-music-winter-2012/
http://natevansmusic.com/

A Short Memory from a Long Drive by Nat Evans - BxB '12

 "There house was around here, somewhere ... " (2012) by Michael Schelle.
Look at the image to your left, there is my 'inspiration': Fukushima, Japan - images like this all across NE central Japan. This was a thriving suburban neighborhood, then suddenly all the homes, schools, shops and the families were gone, swept away by the March 2011 tsunami, and never seen again  . . . 

www.schellemusic.com

A chamber ensemble piece dedicated to the victims and survivors of the March 2011 Japan earthquakes and tsunami. Performed by musicians of the Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, March 15, 2013 at Symphony Space, New York City. The tune for the closing section (after the 'clouds part'  at c. 6:40) is completely original (and sincere), but intended to sound as if you might have heard it before on a J-Pop album - or in a Hayao Miyazaki / Joe Hisaishi film ("Spirited Away", "Castle in the Sky", "Princess Mononoke", "Howl's Moving Castle", etc.) but you can't quite put your finger on it . . . 

"Their house was around here, somewhere ... " (2012) for chamber ensemble

live at Hollow Earth Radio, March 17, 2013

Tom Baker, theremin, fretless guitar, and electronics
Rachel Nesvig, violin
Jessie Polin, flute
Maria Scherer Wilson, violoncello

Space Weather Listening Booth is an immersive acoustic and electronic performance piece based on the aurora borealis, by Seattle composers Nat Evans and John Teske. Listeners hear the collision of the different space weather events that cause the aurora borealis, realized through an electronic track in surround sound and live performers encircling the audience. Premiered as a sound installation with miniature private performances at Seattle's ONN/OF Festival, Space Weather Listening Booth has since been adapted for live performance. 

Teske and Evans used geomagnetic data, information about solar wind and other phenomenon, and interpreted this data through a series of sounds that interact and slowly change over time. Additionally, to represent the auroral band that rotates around the poles of the earth, the composers plotted a course for the sound to migrate and turn slowly around the listeners. Combined with live performers, Space Weather Listening Booth is a unique sound experience that allows one to hear and feel the movement of these great forces, and experience time and physical space through a new lens.

//

Space Weather Listening Booth is now available to download as a DIY 4-channel sound experience, along two remixes by Nat Evans and John Teske. spaceweatherlisteningbooth.bandcamp.com/

Space Weather Listening Booth (live excerpt) - Nat Evans/John Teske

Impressions of Ancient Earth is a musical tableaux depicting "pivotal" moments in the evolution of earthly consciousness.

The sparse nature of the first movement "Primordial Sunrise" echoes the tenuous realization of light, the first sunrise, and the first day.

Prepared Piano - Elizabeth A. Baker
Percussion - John Macdonald
Compositions - Elizabeth A. Baker
Engineering - John Macdonald & Elizabeth A. Baker

Impressions of Ancient Earth - I. Primordial Sunrise

2013.05.01

A field recording I made of three flagpoles found at The Lodge in Santa Fe, NM.

Flagpole Music

Nat Evans - natevansmusic.com

Seattle Composer Nat Evans writes concert music for various mixed chamber ensembles, distinctive electro-acoustic music, and site-specific music events that fuse nature, community and subjectivity of experience. His music is regularly presented across the United States and has also been performed in Europe, South America, Australia and China. Evans has received numerous commissions including the Seattle Percussion Collective, the Harrison Center for the Arts, ODEONQUARTET, Seattle Pacific University Men's Choir and Percussion Ensemble, Beta Test Ensemble, The Box Is Empty, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others. His music has been featured on a number of radio stations in the United States, as well as BBC3, and in the 2011 Music Issue of The Believer. He studied music at Butler University with Michael Schelle and Frank Felice.

Kill Two Birds with One Stone - a movement from Digging

NatEvans

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