other

Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, Part I
For piano with electromagnets

Performed by Chryssie Nanou.

Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, Part I is the first installment of a longer piece inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. In the novel, over the course of discussions between the emperor Kublai Kahn and the explorer Marco Polo, a host of fantastic cities are described. Each of these cities serves both to convey a specific mood and to reflect the evolving views of reality expressed by the two characters. For the composition, I attempted to utilize Calvino’s wide-ranging philosophical explorations as well as the structure of the novel itself. Part I follows the first section of the book, in which four types of cities are introduced and revisited, in a pattern that recycles city types with increasing rapidity. The performer’s material is constrained by these sections.

In addition to the performer playing the piano, a rack of 12 electromagnets is placed over the piano frame, each electromagnet positioned over a string. These are controlled by a Max/MSP patch, each magnet serving to resonate its respective string at variable frequencies. The dampers for the strings being resonated are held up with the sostenuto pedal, thus forcing the performer to move with care around these resonating pitches. The electromagnets are responsible for the performance of a “supertheme”, which falls outside the careful structure mentioned above, while the performer’s material acts a reflection of each section as conveyed by the supertheme.

Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, Part I was commissioned by ASCAP/SEAMUS and premiered by Chryssie Nanou.

Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror

Chronoclasm - in science fiction is one of the possible consequences of travels in time. As a result of meeting people from different eras, ideas and information are transferred from the future to the past. This causes some events and actions in the past, but all their consequences are already reflected in the future. Thus, the reality does not change, all the rings of chronoclasms ever created are already included in the course of history. On the contrary, the abolition of one of the chronoclasms will lead to a change in the future.
In this piece the idea of “broken time” is reflected in “broken” musical continuum and “broken sound”, since some of musical instruments are detuned.
The piece “Chronoclasm II” was written especially for the ensemble “C Barre” and was premiered at the festival on May 31, 2021.

Natalia Prokopenko - Chronoclasm II    for ensemble (2021)

Generative Music from the Untitled Microtonal Gardening Game.

37 EDO 16 DEG 0 3 4 11 12 15 16 18 19 22 23 30 31 34 35 36

19 EDO 3233323 secundal pentads

JACK Quartet

Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik
Remise Bludenz

recorded by Chris Swithinbank
October 6, 2022

Moveable Feast

Voided Cross (for Michael Heizer)
written for and commissioned by HYPERCUBE
total dur.: 45'

live recording, DiMenna Center, NYC, 5/7/2019

performed by HYPERCUBE

Erin Rogers, tenor saxophone
Jay Sorce, electric guitar
Andrea Lodge, synth / accordion
Chris Graham, percussion

live sound and mixing by Weston Olencki

Voided Cross (for Michael Heizer), Part III

zoom live recording at Arboretum Festival, August 19th 2017

arranged for 11 strings
Forest Strings Ensemble

Carissa Klopoushak
Marc Djokic
Andrea Armijo Fortin
Heather Schnarr
Hilda Cowie
Marjolaine Lambert
Marlena Pellegrino
Thaddeus Morden
Raphael Weinroth-Browne
Sonya Probst
Paul Casey

ERE [ 11 string arrangement ] (2017)

Per Bloland is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music whose works have been praised by the New York Times as “lush, caustic,” and “irresistible.” His compositions range from intimate solo pieces to works for large orchestra, and incorporate video, dance, and custom-built electronics. He has received awards and recognition from organizations including IRCAM, ICMA, SEAMUS/ASCAP, the Ohio Arts Council, Digital Art Awards of Tokyo, ISCM, the Martirano Competition, and SCI/ASCAP. His first opera, Pedr Solis, commissioned and premiered by Guerilla Opera in 2015, received rave reviews from the Boston Globe and the Boston Classical Review. He has received commissions from loadbang, Keith Kirchoff, Wild Rumpus, the Ecce Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, the Callithumpian Consort, Stanford’s CCRMA, SEAMUS/ASCAP, the Kenners, Michael Straus and Patti Cudd. His music can be heard on the TauKay (Italy), Capstone, Spektral, and SEAMUS labels, and through the MIT Press. A portrait CD of his work, performed by Ecce Ensemble, was recently released on Tzadik.

Bloland is the co-creator of the Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano, about which he has given numerous lecture/demonstrations and published a paper. He is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Technology at Miami University, Ohio, and in 2013 completed a five-month Musical Research Residency at IRCAM in Paris. He received his D.M.A. in composition from Stanford University and his M.M. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Scores may be purchased at www.babelscores.com/perbloland
For more information visit: www.perbloland.com


I like messing with tuning and rhythm, occasionally I might even make actual music.

Bandcamp, which has a lot of my older stuff: https://guessw3rk.bandcamp.com/

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLHHDTjGCsETTIrbGTrL6Mw

got a freesound page, where I upload glitchy sound textures and such : https://freesound.org/people/dudebroman2/

Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror

Per Bloland

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