Text with Accompaniment

David M. Gordon's 2021 "Fabular Arcana," for retuned piano and orchestra, performed live by Paul Sánchez and the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Delta David Gier. The four movements, which are performed without pause, are:

I. Hexefriri's Grand Parallactic Clockwork
II. The Coal-Bog Giantesses (starting at 8:15)
III. Concerning the Great Bøyg's Various Reconstructions of Solveig's Song from the Degraded Memories of Malevolent Woodland Spirits (starting at 18:23)
IV. Insecta ex Machina (starting at 30:36)

For further details, go to www.davidmgordon.com.

Fabular Arcana

"Barack Hussein Obama at Selma: The Bridge of Transformation” is the fourth movement from Wadada Leo Smith’s Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents and Their Vision for America. Sapphire Symphony No. 4 is the fourth in his 4-CD box set The Chicago Symphonies featuring Smith's Great Lakes Quartet.

This track features Wadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet:
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet
Jonathon Haffner - alto and soprano saxophones
John Lindberg - double bass
Jack DeJohnette - drums


The Chicago Symphonies represents another magnificent four-disc collection of extended compositions by composer, musician, artist and educator Smith leading his Great Lakes Quartet in a celebration of Chicago and the rich contributions of the Midwestern artistic, musical and political culture to the United States of America. The first three symphonies, “Gold,” “Diamond” and “Pearl” are performed by Smith with three other contemporary masters of creative music, saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The fourth, “Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents and Their Vision for America,” features saxophonist Jonathon Haffner with Smith, Lindberg and DeJohnette.

“The idea of a symphony composed for a sextet was first presented by composer/ performer Don Cherry in his classic recording Symphony For Improvisers in 1966,” says Smith. “I have broadened this idea to include the social, political and psychological dynamic into the creative space. My Chicago Symphonies are intended to illustrate and preserve the powerfully unique cultural contribution that the Midwesterners made in helping to shape the American society.”

THE CHICAGO SYMPHONIES

Wadada Leo Smith - Movement 4: Barack Hussein Obama at Selma: the Bridge of Transformation

The compositions on this CD span the fifty years of my career (?) as a composer, from the early 1970s to the present. -David B. Doty

Doty - Eight and Seven Is (In'it_)

Doty - Incidents Out of Context

Doty - Parthenion

しか (v1)

Discover:  https://soundcloud.com/kapyo |  https://soundcloud.com/artikko | https://soundcloud.com/destinuna | https://discord.gg/FAAmuza

what's better in life than creating new friendships? it allows you to share these moments where we'd otherwise be along for. our moments on this plane can be ethereal if we so intend to do ; so why not escape into the world of pasionaria?


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kapyo x artikko - pasionaria

Dance track where I sing about how much I love microtones. This was performed at my senior composition recital, too. I also played some fake instruments for comic effect during the little interludes of the song.

The lyrics:

(Intro)

I dance and sing to the beat of a drum
Ignoring its sum
With the throng

No time to find the deeper meaning
I’m busy feeling
Hyped for each song

Nothing’s new, tonality’s dead,
Or is it alive? I haven’t checked, for
I don’t hum any serial tunes, 
And theory class abandons its roots.

Only one sound provides that rush
Tuning! Gives me tools, too much 
Resurrecting the new in music here!
Tradition broken, true final frontier!

Its spectrum causes the ear to flinch!
It actually emancipates dissonance and pitch!
Nothing else does that quite like this!

(Interlude in 11-EDO)

Xenharmonics are aplenty
Tuning! Gives me tools many  
Finding the keys to music theory’s youth!
Eclectic, yet it holds to the crucial…
Tonic.

Its beauty causes the ear to stand!
Starving on this dissonance now seems bold and grand!
Nothing else does this throughout the land!

I dance and sing to the beat of a drum
Ignoring its sum
With the throng

No time to find the deeper meaning
I’m busy feeling
Hyped for each song

(Interlude in porcupine scale)

(Spoken)
Chords speak
The ear is piqued.
The voyage into new tunings has begun!
Unlimited sounds, and compositional fun!
And the best part is, it only strengthens the familiar knowledge!

Thank you, thank you!

Emancipate Pitch! (22-EDO)

Art song for tenor and piano. This was meant to be part of a musical, that was never completed. This recording is taken from Sursa Performance Hall (Ball State University) and was performed at my composition recital.

I played the piano, and Sonny LoCascio sung the tenor part (thank you Sonny!)

The character singing the song is fantasizing about his future love.

Lyrics:
Oh, that I might love again,
Oh, that I might look upon,
Your shining face,
so marvelous, 
soft and kind to behold.

Oh, that I might serve you hence,
for that would be my greatest joy,
Oh, that I might value penance,
To be a better man deployed.

If only I were with you now,
Singing sorrow into your ear,
If only you beckoned to me,
Bringing furrow into my sphere,
If only I was in the know.

Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?

But when my sight is clouded,
And you rest so far away,
My mind begins to sin and doubt,
Sleeplessly crawling through day.

Oh, that I might pray for you,
Oh, that I might stay forever, 
Oh, that I might give up splendor for you.

Prayer Of Desperation

This piece is designed to evoke aesthetic similarities to Kafka’s work (and uses some of his texts freely). Many of his texts describe something strikingly ordinary, but with hidden, unhappy meaning. Intentional ambiguities in this musical work are: the placement of a tonic, the feeling of hovering between life and death in imaginary matters, and lexical ambiguity in the title. 7-tone equal temperament is well suited for this task because of its simplicity and symmetry (which echo the feeling of a blank, motionless thing existing in a context of isolation). Rhythms are made simple, but strange, and the pentatonic subset of 7-equal is purposely avoided; the entire scale is used for heptatonic implications (this is also idiomatic for the dulcimer, which plays a 7-note scale). Extended techniques are used for expressive effect and contrast between storytelling sections.

Performance and composition by Stephen Weigel. First performed at the BSU Student Composers' Forum, April 6, 2017.

Death Giving Monolith (7-EDO) (premiere)

OM 52 GATES AND VARIATIONS LP OUT NOW

Open Mouth
http://openmouthrecords.blogspot.com

US distro
http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/meginsky-jake-gates-and-variations-lp/OM.052LP.html

EU
http://www.metamkine.com/?monnouveaute=1



Jake Meginsky
Gates and Variations
Open Mouth LP
OM52

Gates and Variations rounds out a loose trilogy of records by Jake Meginsky for Open Mouth. Not an intended trilogy on Jakes part but it has become one to my mind. It has come to be how I listen to them and experience them, all informing each other, echoing and challenging each other and growing into each others space and light like a garden of plants that would never actually coexist anywhere in reality. Jake is always tirelessly reaching for something new yet I'd avoid using the word progression here. It instead feels to me like the last piece of a puzzle, or of a world created by some Jack Kirby demigod. Something has been completed and now all the pieces are interchangeable. The first can go last. The middle can be first. The whole thing becoming a universe looping in on itself with a multitude of entry points and not a lot of exits. These are dense environments where sections can move from microscopic to macroscopic, day to night and back again,  so effortlessly that its hard to tell if its intended or if something imperceptible within  you shifted the locus of yr perception. But it is all very intentional, something carefully carved to give the feeling of something, though unfamiliar and strange, organic and grown. Theres a sense of danger here like warning transmissions, concussive roiling rhythms and jagged disturbances. Yet also clear straight lines giving way to enveloping curve and staggering beauty. Supplant the beginning with the end with the beginning 

Bill Nace
Philadelphia, PA
September 2017

Gates and Variations OM 52 LP - Third Gate _ Track 4 Side A

I'm terrified and sad because of global warming and the future it's going to force most of us to face. To me, there's almost nothing sadder than witnessing the world die, in all of its innocence and beauty.

When I look at nature 
I see so many lovely things
The singing of Earth’s
Bio-diversities 

Nature is the last remaining
thing we haven’t ruined, and
I…
weep for what I think will be the 
last age of history
Where we will even get to see it
Doo, doo doo, doo...

Nature is the last remaining 
thing that we can kill, and 
I…
weep for the innocent death
Of billions of animals 
And people too
Too, too too... 

I…
weep for all us poor souls that will 
lose the race

When I stand in nature
I relish the solitude
I hope it won’t rot
Because of our mistakes
It can be prevented

And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away

Featuring Dr. Jody Nagel of Ball State University, talking about the pond cycle. The pond cycle causes cycles of mass extinction in ponds, and could be considered a microcosm of what's happening to humans now.

Warning About The Pond Cycle (19 - EDO)

Xenharmonic art-song. Several other art-songs are quoted either indirectly, melodically, or both (for example, the opening line is a sound-alike to Caro mio ben, and the steps in the same ratio to each other... which end up landing in very different spots in this scale). See how many you can find. The singer is addressing another person who exists in his/her life who has a capacity for joy and fascination, but who cannot face it for other reasons. Hopefully some of the same emotional content transmits.

These lyrics of mine capture the unique emotions that 6:7:11 chords give me, namely, that of a realization. The "realization" I get from these entities are best manifested as... disappointment in joylessness. It's a very specific, multi-meaning, gloomy, non-12-edo feeling, that isn't JUST xenharmonic. You know how when you were a kid, adults would be worried about everything, and you never knew why, but it made you sad? That would be a helpful association. This song has been performed at multiple venues in Indiana and Chicago.

The 11-note mode used is 6L 5s - wickedly difficult for beginners to sing, but wildly interesting-sounding, giving abundant 6:7:11 chords. The song modulates a 23edo step (1\23) higher about halfway through, and all 23 pitches are used at least once; the 11-note 6L 5s twice, plus an extra chromatic note. Other chromatic notes to 6L 5s exist in the main passages anyway, acting like borrowed chords or secondary dominants in a very complex modal language.

Far o’er low bend,
Crazy, all spent
Sits, me-a detained
Languishing hoper
I reach, always too far 
But never far enough
I put myself out just 
To be ignored,
Ignored, when I love optimism more than you, 

My smile, always in vain,
Mirrored through your face:
Showing you what they want
Without a trace of hate 
Only a glare, 
And before you turn away,

I give a prompt,
Hoping your mind will dance,
Though you are always swamped
And you won’t take a chance,
To be enthusiastic about life with (chromatic) me,
“Why have you interest in things? Why not accept that we’re bored?” You say,
 
And you turn away, 
As unemotional
As a half,
Forgotten song,
Like a ship at sea my heart sank,
Knowing that your sense of fun was bleak.

Many years later, I acquired a new voice 
giving me choice of finally finding yourself
    
I reach, always too far 
But never far enough
I put myself out just 
To be ignored,
When I love optimism more than you, 
More so than you,
When I first met you I couldn’t see
Clearly, and that was exciting,
It was a time where we enjoyed 
Life,
Then we found out 
Our ideas of adventure
Were contradictory,  

I changed for you and I
Wouldn’t have changed for me
If I had known that joy
For you cannot arrive at the right time,

And before you turn away,
I give a prompt,
Hoping your mind will dance,
Though you are always swamped
And you won’t take a chance,
To be enthusiastic about life with (chromatic) me

Oh my beloved, 
Find me at last,
Your eyes, your mein, declare complacency everywhere!

Curiosity Finds A Frown (23 - EDO)

I would like my dreams to mean something, something…
Inspiring timeless art within my wasting head, the perfect scene…
But without my conscious will, my brain is truly fickle
Yielding no constructive weight in this deterministic tickle
I don’t want to go to sleep! I don’t wanna!

I will be mature enough to leave the comfortable bath
My eternity of make-believe training gives light to my path
To put on clothes without closed eyes!

Why make mountains out of molehills,
When we are all ants,
And the universe is billions of lights,
And billions of light years,
And trillions of years will defeat all fears.
Dissipating into the void, equalized in death!
I don’t want to go to sleep! I don’t wanna go!

Oh, but I’ll have to go to sleep…
Every day is 24 hours and that’s the way it keeps!
I don’t want to go to sleep! Not right now, not right now!

How long would you have to be awake
before the world would make no sense
Your joys and hopes and urge to dwell
Why, Wormwood, this would all be quelled
Dulled, dead, doornail, polished stars of night!
Night, Night, Night, Night, Night, Night... 

(Interlude)

All shower songs I sing are wasted breath and water,
Made a heathen anthem sinking and lowered into the drain,
Pain is relative but I am real,
I do not believe in me anymore...

Dreams have told me I may live
Through the portal of death’s door
Mortal as we may seem
Seizing according scream
Freezing our thinking love in a sunbeam

(Small instrumental)

I would like my dreams to mean something, something…
something… something… something… something… something…
My last, my last dreamscape rolling on
always nonsense, distant watchman
Nightmare spirits vanishing
Smoke and mirrors ‘flect forgetting!

November 17, 1998:
"My story begins when it was nighttime, I had a dream. It was not a happy dream but it was a nightmare. My pillow changed its picture. My sheet's colors looked new. And the eating gorilla came out of my pillow. It was very, very, very, very, very, very, very scary. It started to eat my head while I was laying on it. I felt so scared that I am frightened. Um, and he cooled my head down and then his mouth ate it. But it was just a quick pretend dream. Then I said, 'Nightmare!' and then my mom ran upstairs and I woke her up in the middle of the night. Um, when the dream was over, it wasn't scary anymore. I was very scared last time. And then I promised next time I wouldn't wake her up. And that's all of my story."

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Weigel, 
July 5th, 2018.

Fiat Circadia (10 - EDO)

Anne-F Jacques, Ryoko Akama, Takamitsu Ohta
The Magic City
C42 (XIX-I)

Release date: April 2019
www.hasanaeditions.org

The Magic City

XIX-I - Anne-F Jacques, Ryoko Akama, Takamitsu Ohta - Chris in the magic city (excerpt)

Excerpt from the B-side of the 'Albatross' cassette, to be released in September.

Prayer Of Desperation

Stephen Weigel

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