The Royal

Downtown

Documentary about the work produced by Ensemble Musikfabrik (YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=_8cce8Z-Nkixqwgf&v=BFrIfk4Bl0s&feature=youtu.be

Turgut Erçetin, composer/interview
Carl Rosman, clarinet/interview
Aaron Cassidy, conductor

Hans Fahr, video/editing
Commissioned by Kunststiftung NRW and Ensemble Musikfabrik

image credit: Photograph by Félix Bonfils, 1875

"Thousand Dead Bodies Under My Bed, All Cloaked with the Breath of the Living"

Domiciliary Excerpt

Composed for Emmalie Tello, Teagan Faran, and David Friend and the 2022 Walden Creative Musicians Retreat.

Scattered

Cloud's Trail (2021)
by Naama Perel-Tzadok (b. 1984)

* World Premiere Recording *
| The Israeli Contemporary Music Project

Naama Perel-Tzadok: Cloud's Trail | Hagai Yodan, harpsichord

Free Fall (2020) נפילה חופשית
by Osnat Netzer (b. 1979)

* World Premiere Recording *
| The Israeli Contemporary Music Project

Osnat Netzer: Free Fall | Hagai Yodan, piano

World Premiere Performance
8 July 2011
Rane Moore, bass clarinet
Kate Vincent, viola
Aaron Trant, vibraphone

In the Research of Time, excerpt (2011)

(After L'Addio: 0'00 / Felt: 3' 27'') After L'Addio / Felt (2014) is a two movement piece composed in collaboration with Ben. The premiere of this work took place in a recital in which a performance of Salvatore Sciarrino's "Addio a Trachis" preceded.  After L'Addio features varying levels of referentiality and filiation with "Addio...", from literal quoting to variation, to more esoteric and personal connections. Generally speaking, After is a frantic and highly tactile piece in which different levels of friction between hands and strings become syntactically relevant. Felt appears as the textural opposite of After in that the contact between performer and instrument is reduced considerably: the right hand plays with a felt pick for the entirety of the movement and the left hand features, for the most part, harmonics.

After L'Addio / Felt (for solo harp)- Ben Melsky

BODY MATTER [2015]
for amplified bassoon
Christopher Watford, bassoon [www.chriswatford.com]
Eric Fernandez, recording engineer
Recorded at the HUSEAC Studios at Harvard University

Please listen with headphones or good speakers.

BODY MATTER presents a soundworld caught in the middle of a metamorphic shift. The piece treats sound as a substance on its way to becoming an object, but in a form yet to be specified. It is encrusted and caked with earth and dirt; it is an organ whose membrane is gradually ossifying. At times it writhes; in others it obstinately maintains an effortful, concentrated reluctance to move. It is a thing in search of a body; a space in search of containment.

More info here: www.timothy-mccormack.com/bodymatter

BODY MATTER [2015]

In this intimate conversation between Krista and one of her beloved teachers, we ponder the world and our place in it, through sacred text, with fresh eyes. We’re accompanied by the meditative and prophetic poetry of Wendell Berry, read for us from his home in Kentucky: “Stay away from anything / that obscures the place it is in. / There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places. / Accept what comes of silence."

Ellen Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at the Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. She’s the author of Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. 

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 50 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.