commissioned & premiered by the JACK Quartet during TIME:SPANS 2021

note| mayu: the great river is inspired by Andean (South American Indigenous) cosmology & iconography through the lens of queerness, diaspora, and separation. The score works as an ecosystem for connecting living constellations, musical materials, and the individual/collective experience of time. The piece is a reflection on the multiple temporalities experienced and harnessed by displaced, erased, and structurally excluded peoples. These layers of time, the material and immaterial, are sources of joy | resilience | survival, and perhaps, future.

mayu: the great river [2021] | JACK Quartet

Program Notes:
Listen for the subtle,  short, interrupted sine waves within electronics that cause the speakers themselves to emit ‘pops’ and
crackles, interrupting the acoustic instruments and tape playback. We’re not hearing the sine wave but rather the effect of the sine wave on the speaker’s mechanics turning the speaker itself into an acoustic element; thus giving these objects an active role rather than accepting them as a passive (playback) tool. Usually this treatment is avoided and seen as a mistake but in this piece it functions to address the physical mechanics of the speaker, of its own body, and demanding it to become more. To add to this, the percussionists are playing custom made “speaker-instruments:” subwoofer speaker cones transformed into an open air (and in a sense, large contact) microphone. This configuration allows the percussionist to physically perform low resonant tones and high washes of live filtered noise not possible outside this setup, with the hope to merge electronic and acoustic instruments into one composite organism, dependent on this merging to become more than just an extension of itself. The live processing portion of the work is that of rapid panning of the live acoustic instruments between two stereo speakers. This panning reaches audio rates and thus from this rapid oscillation causes its own square wave-like tone: the electronics sounds blooming from the acoustic in a symbiotic, intertwined creature like lichen.
This piece engulfs two prior pieces of mine that I’ve been working on for the past few years, “Harbinger” and “Speaker Spit.”

Instrumentation: Amplified vln, vc, piccolo, trumpet, e. gtr, midikeys, b-flat clarinet and live processing

Premiered and Performed by Nadar Ensemble
Mastered by Murat Colak
Mixed by Kelley Sheehan

Creature Like Lichen (2022)for chamber ensemble

Premiered by Riot Ensemble and Tyler Bouque. Conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum.
Commissioned by the Gaudeamus Foundation.

For Baritone, Soprano, Bass Clarinet, Trombone, Double Bass, and Percussion
no processing or fixed media (in the traditional sense)

consumed; teeth shut (2022)for Baritone, Soprano, Bass Clarinet, Trombone, Double Bass, & Percussion

Written for Wild Up as part of the LA Phil National Composers Intensive and premiered on the Walt Disney Concert Hall Main Stage as part of the 2022 Noon to Midnight Festival on April 9th 2022.

Conductor: Christopher Rountree
Instrumentation: Flute (Rachel Beetz), Bass Clarinet (Pat Posey), Contrabassoon (Archie Carey), Trumpet in C (Jonah Levy), Trombone (Mattie Barbier), Percussion 1 (Dustin Donohue), Percussion 2 (Jordan Curcuruto), Piano (Aron Kallay), Electric Guitar (Alex Noice), Violin 1 (Adrianne Pope) Violin 2 (Rachel Iba) , Viola (Linnea Powell),  Cello (Mia Barcia Colombo), Double Bass (Marlon Martinez)

Spate III (2022): Wild Up - LA Phil Noon to Midnight - Live Premiere - Walt Disney Concert Hall

Nathaniel Haering | to facilitate friction — ASCAP / SEAMUS 1st Prize Commission, 2019

Violin: Ilana Waniuk

Program Notes:

While working on a recent piece for chamber ensemble and electronics, I was immersed in its erratic, panicked atmosphere. I became obsessed with the idea of frantic, futile solos lashing out violently from silence with such constant intensity and fervor that they resulted in a kind of horrified stasis, a unit of grotesque and vicious sustain, striving endlessly but going nowhere, grasping desperately at nothing in the pursuit of a distant unseen hope. to facilitate friction elicits this sense of urgent driving desperation even more potently as it is condensed, focused, and amplified by being embodied by a single performer. Acting as the sole conduit for the rapid, jarring yet intricately intertwined shifts in materials, sonic worlds, and dire emotional stakes of the piece the soloist wields, reinforces, and rallies against the electronics as an extension of themselves.

to facilitate friction - Violin and Live Electronics (2020)

𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔥𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔞 𝔫𝔢𝔴 𝔥𝔶𝔭𝔢𝔯-𝔪𝔢𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔶 is about hyperreality manifest in the form of digital memory, and the ways in which memory is distributed, transformed, and modified through virtual space. It seeks to imagine the sounds of a cybernetically mutated digital fragment of the past that has taken on a ghost-like life of its own. ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ (1940) by Ruth Lowe is a song about memory itself. It functions in this piece as a sort of metaphor for the way the past shapeshifts through different electronic media and is deconstructed, decontextualized and distributed through virtual spheres.

Ilana Waniuk - violin
Michael Jones - percussions
Robbie Bui - cello 
Matthew Henson - double bass 
Nikolas Vudu - mastering engineer

𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔥𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔞 𝔫𝔢𝔴 𝔥𝔶𝔭𝔢𝔯-𝔪𝔢𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔶 (2022) for amplified ensemble and electronics

Brutally intense and emotional new mix by underground prodigy @bloodofaza

SF.MIX.39 Tracklist

Nathaniel Haering - to facilitate friction
Richie Culver, Blackhaine - DID U CUM YET
Blood of Aza - CUSP DEMO
Ship Sket - Far Away
Result - Pilot
SOPHIE - HARD
Nero - Crush on You (Silva Flip)
detah trash - merzbow
Skrillex, 12th Planet, Kill The Noise - Right On Time
KAVARI - Hymns
Arca - Mutant
Ivorian Doll - Body Bag
SOPHIE - Infatuation (Lichtbogen Dreamin’ Remix)
Ice Spice - BB (S280F Remix)
Phinka, Unknown T - Badooms
Alparr - NIGHTRACERR
Blood of Aza - ID
Jakob Böttcher - seziertisch
jhl - ID
Astrosuka - Nudos (S280F Remix)
Burial - Endorphin
Frank Ocean - Chanel
TTristana - Reboot (Interlude)
Yves Tumor - Limerence
Citytronix - WAP
yuurusu - it won’t be long, i’ll see you soon.
nninety - petty
MEGA PRAS ELAS SENTAR A MIL = DJ'S LEO LG, RAY LAIS, YAN DO FLAMENGO TDG
Thys, Two Fingers - Hodo (Little Snake Edit)
Neir - ID
JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown - Kingdom Hearts Key (ft. redveil)
münki - WAR (ft. Blood of Aza)
Blood of Aza - ID
death’s dynamic shroud.wmv - DO U LIKE ME
LUCKI - Unlimited
Martin Stig Andersen - Gravity Jump
Hav Lyfe - 05 she started off bashful
Leon Vynehall - From The Sea/It Looms (Chapter I & II)
KOAN Sound & Asa - Fuego
KOPI O - AR1A
Ted Moore - triangle
Blood of Aza - ID
Alparr, Blood of Aza, jhl, SUB ENCODER, Ghozt - YEARNN
Blood of Aza - ID (Acapella)

SF.MIX.39 – Blood of Aza

UC San Diego Palimpsest Ensemble:
Steven Schick, Conductor 
Teresa Diaz de Cossio, flute 
Grace Talaski, bass clarinet 
Varun Rangaswamy, contrabassoon
Rachel Allen, trumpet 
Berk Schneider, trombone 
Mitchell Carlstrom, percussion 1 
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion 2
Ashley Zhang, piano 
James Ernest Moore, electric guitar
Ilana Waniuk, violin 1 
Myra Hinrichs, violin 2 
Alexander Taylor, viola 
Peter Ko, cello 
Matthew Kline, double bass

Program Notes:

While seeking to expand on the concepts and material found in the original iteration of Spate, I was immersed in its erratic, panicked atmosphere. I became obsessed with the idea of frantic, futile solos lashing out violently from silence with such constant intensity and fervor that they resulted in a kind of horrified stasis, a unit of grotesque and vicious sustain, striving endlessly but going nowhere, grasping desperately at nothing in the pursuit of a distant unseen hope. Spate III furthers this obsession and explores the coalescing of individual "popping" grains, collectively evolving and progressing from individual, ultra-sparse grains/”pops”, to sporadic clusters, and eventually uniting into powerful composite crescendos and undulating masses while celebrating their unpredictable and unstable nature. Often resulting from high pressure friction, these grains evoke a sense of extreme tension, tremendous pressure, and the tempting of a vulnerable threshold, as if an immense force is on the brink of erupting forth.

This piece is for amplified chamber ensemble (no fixed media/live processing/electronics are involved) and was commissioned as part of the LA Phil National Composers Intensive for Wild Up

Spate III (2022) - UC San Diego Palimpsest Ensemble

Rage Thormbones (Matt Barbier + Weston Olencki): modified euphoniums, reclining trombones, motorized mute, electronics

Live recording: December 12, 2018 at Arete Venue and Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

(stay for the end...)

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Cimmerian Isolation by Nathaniel Haering

Nathaniel Haering is deeply interested in the use of live electronics to expand the artistic capabilities of traditional instruments and augment their timbral horizons while enriching their expressive and improvisational possibilities. This perspective is also highly influential and represented in the gestural power and extended sound worlds of his purely acoustic work. He has collaborated with and had works performed by Grammy Award-winning Vietnamese performer and composer Vân Ánh Võ, Trio Accanto, Ensemble Mise-En, Mivos string quartet, and members of WasteLAnd and Ensemble Dal Niente. A winner of the Ensemble Mise-En call for scores and official runner up for the Tribeca New Music Award, Nathaniel’s work can also be found on Volume 27 of Music from SEAMUS. Nathaniel’s pieces have recently been featured at the International Computer Music Conference in Shanghai, China, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium in Toronto Canada, Noisefloor Festival at Staffordshire University UK, VIPA in Valencia Spain, CMSS Festival in Seoul, South Korea and SEAMUS 2018 Conference at the University of Oregon. Nathaniel is pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of California San Diego and recently completed his Masters degree at Bowling Green State University where he studied with Dr. Elainie Lillios and Dr. Mikel Kuehn. Previously, he received his undergraduate degree in composition from Western Michigan University where he studied with Dr. Christopher Biggs and Dr. Lisa R. Coons.

Spate III (2022) - UC San Diego Palimpsest Ensemble

Nathaniel Haering

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