Program Note:

"Re-heard" is a work for fixed media on loop written to accompany visual artist Tiffany Hokanson’s M.F.A. Thesis Show, "Re-seen," exhibited at Indiana University’s Grunwald Gallery of Art in the spring of 2021. In "Re-seen," Hokanson uses salvaged materials from forests fires in southern Oregon and a demolition site in Bloomington, Indiana to create sculptures and prints that, as Hokanson writes in her thesis statement, “[reject] the stigma of ‘ruination,’” and instead present “an alternative method for appreciating matter in its present state of being.” "Re-heard" is my sonic and thematic response to Hokanson’s art.

Over the course of twenty-two minutes, "Re-heard" ebbs and flows between the real and the abstract. For long stretches, the piece presents minimally edited field recordings captured by Hokanson at the demolition site in Bloomington. These recordings place the listener in the site—among hulking constructions of gnarled rebar and splintered concrete, within earshot of jackhammers punching through rock and excavators sifting through rubble. Then, gradually, these recordings metamorphose into softer, harmonious, incandescent sounds, gesturing at a wholeness that radiates from within the rough-hewn and “ruined” objects. The quieter sections then give way to the raw field recordings and the cycle starts over again. 

To give the sense that these sound worlds emanate directly from the materials used in "Re-seen," during the debut exhibition "Re-heard" was played back on speakers hidden within one of the show’s sculptures, "Pile," an assemblage of steel, concrete, gravel and dirt on the gallery floor.

Performances:

03/22/21-04/02/21 (Premiere)
Tiffany Hokanson M.F.A. Thesis Show, “Re-seen”
Grunwald Gallery of Art, Indiana University Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design, Bloomington IN.

Re-heard

Program Note:

"Dreams of Flight" was inspired by Nancy Rubins’ colossal sculpture "Chas’ Stainless Steel, Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts, about 1,000 lbs. of Stainless Steel Wire & Gagosian’s Beverly Hills Space." From a small metal plinth erupts an assemblage of scrapped airplane parts, chaotically billowing out in all directions—an explosion, frozen milliseconds after it has occurred. Every inch of the work contains its own maelstrom of metal objects and wires, poised as if slicing and striking blows against one another.

Up close, the sculpture is visually overstimulating, hard to fully comprehend. From farther away, the disjunct parts seem to form a whole: a confused spaceship, a madman’s flying machine, a strange, ungainly bird attempting to take flight. As much as Rubins’ sculpture is boisterous, it is also melancholic. It stretches upwards, yearning to fly but, tamped down by about one-thousand pounds of stainless steel, it never will. The sculpture is eternally stuck mid- takeoff.

"Dreams of Flight" plays out this struggle in ways both fanciful and sincere. The piece is comprised of three continuous sections. The first pictures the sculpture-plane-bird bolting down a runway. Just as it leaves the tarmac, however, it crashes back to Earth. The second section delves into the sculpture’s night-time dreams in which, if only in fantasy, it soars. The final section sees the sculpture make another attempt at flight, barreling down the runway with even more power—perhaps enough power this time...

Performances:

11/14/21 (Premiere)
New Voices for Orchestra Concert
Musical Arts Center, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington, IN. 
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Concert Orchestra
David Dzubay, conductor

Dreams Of Flight

A passionate musical storyteller, composer-performer Oliver Kwapis (b. 1997) draws inspiration from a variety of music, visual art, and literature in order to create works that are narratively rich and sonically adventurous. Equally inspired by avant-garde opera and Renaissance polyphony, plunderphonics, pop, and musical theater, Kwapis endeavors to find a unique and fresh musical pallet for each of his works.

Kwapis has composed orchestral, chamber, vocal and electronic pieces which have been performed and recorded by a diverse range of ensembles and artists, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic (through the LA Phil’s Composer Fellowship Program), National Children’s Chorus, Wet Ink Ensemble, Calder Quartet, Atlantic Brass Quintet, Jacobs School of Music Concert Orchestra, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and pianist Eric Huebner. His work has been heard at venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and The Broad Stage (Santa Monica, CA), and has been featured at NSEME, Fresh Inc Festival, June in Buffalo, the Mostly Modern Festival Institute, and the soundSCAPE Composition and Performer Exchange.

Recently, his master’s thesis, Dreams of Flight, was selected as a winner of the IU Jacobs School of Music’s New Voices for Orchestra Competition, his solo piano work, Approach to Zion, was selected as a finalist for the 2021 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and his string sextet, My Mad Dances, was named as a finalist for Delirium Musicum’s 2019 Call for Scores and received an Honorable Mention from the Boston New Music Initiative’s Fifth Annual Young Composers Competition.

From 2015-2017, Kwapis was a fellow with Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry Sanders Composer Fellowship Program during which he studied with Sarah Gibson, James Matheson, and A.J. McCaffrey and wrote works for the LA Phil, members of the LA Phil and LA Master Chorale, and the Calder Quartet.

He holds a B.Mus. in Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones and Elizabeth Ogonek and where he was awarded the Walter E. Aschaffenburg Prize, given to a graduating Oberlin Conservatory senior for outstanding music composition. He also holds an M.Mus. in Composition with a Minor in Electronic Music from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where he studied with P. Q. Phan, David Dzubay, Chi Wang, and John Gibson. He is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in the Performance of Data-driven Instruments at the University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance under the tutelage of Jeffrey Stolet where he is also a Graduate Employee in the Department of Intermedia Music Technology.

Dreams Of Flight

Oliver Kwapis

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