Performed by the Amernet String Quartet:
Misha Vitenson and Avi Nagin, violin
Michael Klotz: viola
Jason Calloway: cello

Jacob Sudol: programing and electronics

Performed live at the FIU-Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach, FL.  September 29, 2021

Program Note:

I came up with the title “Time and After” in 2014 when dreaming about a new work for the Amernet String Quartet and live electronics. Similar to the logic in many dreams, the title seemed to made sense at first but became increasingly confusing and complex on closer examination.  While composing the work, I frequently treated this title as a provocation for how I thought about the composition’s sonic materials, form or structure, as well as its treatment of time.

As in many of my recent works, in this quartet I regularly obscure or ignore many conventional aspects of music such as melodic or motific development, clear phrase structure, gestural phrasing, contrapuntal imitation, or clear rhythmic materials.  Instead, I use simple materials to explore inner sonic regions of the string quartet.  I also treat the quartet almost like a single complex organism that alternatively develops, encounters traumatic events, and decays.

“Time and After” was written for and is dedicated to my dear friends of the Amernet String Quartet.  The original version was premiered on October 17th at the 2015 Taipei International New Music Festival and the revised version was presented on September 29, 2021 as part of the 2021 New Music Miami Festival.

Jacob David Sudol October, 5 2015 淡水, 台灣 and October 12, 2021 Miami, Florida

Time and After

"Time and After" (2015 – 2021)for string quartet and live electronics

across an ocean, across the land... was composed in the Fall and early Winter of 2011 for the Florida International University Laptop and Electronic Arts (FLEA) Ensemble. The composition uses a collection of 30 short recordings from two Tibetan singing bowls, one pair of tingsha (Tibetan prayer cymbals), and the giant Mikrophonie tam-tam to progressively build a texture filled with over a thousand different sounds per minute. The title and form of the work, like virtual wind chimes, reflect on the challenges and emotions I faced spending most of the summer, fall, and winter across the Pacific Ocean and/or the United States from my wife.

Jacob David Sudol 
January 20, 2012 
San Diego, CA

across an ocean, across the land… (2011-12)

The composition ...after a mountain stream rain draws its inspiration from a trip I took with my wife, Chen-Hui Jen, and some of her family to Xitou, Taiwan in July 2010. The composition represents a sonic retelling and the process of remembering the first walk we took after arriving at our destination.

The first part, approximately one half of the composition, evokes the high mountain forest in Xitou. This begins with rubbing and breath sounds that represent both literal and metaphorical or nostalgic mists that are similar to the rubbing sounds featured in the classical guqin composition Mists over Xiao and Xiang Rivers (. In ...after a mountain stream rain these rubbing mist-like sounds occasionally go along with pitch bends in the same way they would on the guqin. However, as the music progresses, these mist-like sounds begin to develop new identities such as the winds that precede an afternoon Summer monsoon rain and the scratching of forest locusts. At the same time as these sonic transformations, pitches begin to arrive and gradually begin to descend like the moisture of a gentle pre-sunset rain shower.

The second half of the composition evokes a grand view of clouds evaporating and lifting from the edges of the mountains near Xitou. In this passage, the plucking strings play long rising lines to represent the majestic rising mountains; the sheng constantly plays a series of large chords to represent the size of these mountains; and a bandi and gaohu play high glistening lines to represent the quickly moving clouds lifting above and hovering over the mountains. As this section moves on, gradually the some of pitch sounds return to mist-like sounds. This represents the gradual darkening and incoming fog that accompanies a setting sun. Finally in the end, in front of a subtler and rarified twilight version of the musical material from the beginning of the second half, the strings play a few harmonies and multiphonics that represent both stars coming out and the sounds of rare religious bells ringing from distant mountain temples.

I composed ...after a mountain stream rain for the Chai Found Music Workshop Formosa Landscape/2011 Sizhu Music Composition Contest in the Spring and Summer of 2011 in La Jolla, California and Miami, Florida. The work is dedicated to my lovely wife, Chen-Hui Jen.
-Jacob David Sudol
September 13, 2011 (Miami, Florida)

…after a mountain stream rain (谿山遇雨) (2011)

This is a tropical cover of a mix of Doja Cat songs:

Need to Know
Love To Dream
Kiss Me More
Ain't Sh*t
Say So

Doja Gata

–McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble with the McGill Digital Composition Studio (Jacob David Sudol, electronics); April 2006 at McGill University, Montréal

*   *   *   *   *

Program Note

“I am Time, the waster of  the peoples,
Ready for the hour that ripens to their ruin.”

-Bhagavad-Gita

“Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.  There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”

-Meister Eckhart

“Of course in music too the problem of time is central.  Here, however, its solution is quite different: the life force of music is materialized on the brink of its own total disappearance.”

-Andrey Tarkovsky

Time Fixtures was composed as part of the first-ever composer-in-residence position for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble in collaboration with the McGill Digital Composition Studio.  The acoustic material was written in 2005, and the electronics were constructed in early 2006.  The work is dedicated to Denys Bouliane (director of the CME), Sean Ferguson (director of the DCS), and John Rea (my mentor during the realization of this project).

-Jacob David Sudol
Montréal, Québec 18/2/2006

Time Fixtures (2005-07)

– Nathan Davis (percussion) and Jacob David Sudol (electronics); Recorded January 2011 at the University of California, San Diego

(Score and electronics available upon request)

*   *   *   *   *

Program Note

Would that the sound of the bell might go beyond our earth,
And be heard even by all in the darkness outside the Cakravala;
Would that, their organ of hearing become pure, beings might  attain perfect infusion of the senses,
So that every one of them might come finally to the realization  of supreme enlightenment.

-bell gatha enchanted after reading the Samantamukha-Parivarta

The 2010-2011 version of Resonances for metallic percussion and live electronics was recorded by percussionist Nathan Davis at the University of California in January 2011.  The recording was engineered by Martin Hiendl.  I mixed, edited, and mastered the recording from January to April 2011.  The first versions of the piece, composed from 2005 to 2007, were performed by the Brazilian percussionist Fernando Rocha.  This would piece would not be possible without the invaluable help from Fernando Rocha and Nathan Davis.

–Jacob David Sudol
Spring 2011
La Jolla, CA

Resonances (new version 2010-11)

Whats The Word Ft SkippLive

Big thanks to @halberd-3000 for mixing 7 tracks in 2 hours for this tape
Thanks also to @chrosky for this N O I C E art
Thanks to allll the producers who have a credit on this tape and BIG THANKS to @geo_1022 for producing two tracks a day before release
Producer credits
@byrook1e
@55199
@oofoe
@musicbymochi
@hakaisu

Download here!

Speak With You (prod. Garrett)

Chen-Hui Jen: Piano
Recorded at the Misty Shore Duo, May 16, 2020

Program Notes:

The source materials for stone bells and long reeds spinning in the wind... consist of recordings I made in Cambodia during a trip there with my mentor Chinary Ung and Susan Ung in February 2015. The first source materials consist of recordings of two prehistoric Cambodian stone bells. Although these bells have been owned by the National Museum of Cambodia since its opening, very little is known about their origin or intended function. Field recordings I made of multiple Kleng-Ek (Cambodian singing kites) are the second source material used in this piece. Kleng-Ek make sound by spinning a long stiff reed that is contained within a bamboo blade that is attached to a kite. In this work, I use different spectral analyses of the stone bells as well as approximate transcriptions of the melodies that the long reeds spun in my field recordings.

stone bells and long reeds spinning in the wind... is dedicated to Sarah Cahill, for whom the piece was written, as well as Lok Kru Chinary Ung, who had dreamt of recording these sounds for decades. This work would also not be possible without the help of Yos Chandara, Advisor for the Cambodian Ministry of the Arts; Kong Vireak, director of the National Museum of Cambodia; Bertrand Porte, head of the École française d’Extrême-Orient in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Bong Sovath, Rector of the Royal University of Fine Arts; Dek Sarin, director of the Cambodian National Kite Museum; as well as everybody else who assisted with flying the kites and helping with the many logistics needed to make the source recordings possible.

Jacob David Sudol 
March 11, 2018 
Miami, FL

stone bells and long reeds spinning in the wind… for solo piano (2018)

Chen-Hui Jen: Piano
Recording at the Misty Shore Studio on May 30, 2020

Program Notes:

While writing threads unraveling... for piano and live electronics I realized that I could adapt the piano part and arrange the electronics for piano to create a solo piano work. With this in mind, I made some modifications to the finished piano part and transcribed some of the electronics in threads unraveling... to create an unraveling...

The piano writing in unraveling... is primarily based on spectral analyses of two Tibetan singing bowls and one tingsha that I have used in over half a dozen works. As a whole unraveling... focuses less on melody, harmony, or even timbre than it acts as a meditation on how material and memory can progressively unravel and rewrite themselves.

This piece was written for my frequent collaborator and lovely wife, Chen-Hui Jen.

Jacob David Sudol January 2, 2018 Tucson, AZ

unraveling…  for solo piano (2014. rev. 2018)

Ammie Brod: viola; Amanda DeBoer Bartlett: soprano; Alejandro Acierto: clarinets; Jacob David Sudol: electronics

Live Performance at the FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios, as part of the New Music Miami Festival (January 23, 2019)

Program Note:

after parting – 在離去之後 was composed for violist Ammie Brod to be included on her Dal Niente Ensemble concert program titled – Momento Mori.  The composition uses a poem written in Chinese by my dear wife, Chen-Hui Jen.  Relating to the concert’s theme both the poem and composition focus on personal loss and the season of autumn, which in Chinese classical poetry and thought represents the moment in the cycle of time when life approaches death or when presence/being (有) transforms into absence/non-being (無).

-Jacob David Sudol
November 30, 2018	
Miami, FL

Poem: (English translation below)

《在離去之後》

「秋之水兮，其色幽幽。」—唐．韓愈【將歸操】

時間彷彿停滯了
在日記書寫的
關於盛夏的那一頁
之後都是空白的─—

或許過了無數個冬天
早已遺忘楓樹與
白楊樹的顏色
也遺忘季後
心凋零似雪的溫度
渡口一片水色荒忽

臨別的場景不斷
以雨後
松針散落一地的姿態
回歸，在醒睡之間
在巨大的空寂敲響之前

或是我將辭行
此去便是明日
霧卻擱淺在昨日
或是我們共處的前夜
對坐共飲，俯瞰無聲的海灣
蟬噪鼓動山林
月光自山巒後爬升 

霧自海上來，又往海上散去
我們的島嶼
始終是昨日與明日的距離

巨大的空寂敲響長夜
我聽見雨聲細數著時間
的碎片
在離去之後
晚秋，水色依稀

 
after parting

As if time stops
on the page we wrote in our diary
about the eternal summer,
all is empty after – 

I might have spent several winters
while all are forgotten:
the colors of maple and aspen trees,
and the cold after a season
when the mind falls like snow.
Across the harbor, only haze.

The scene of parting recurs
like pine needles
scattered after the rain
and recurs, in between thoughts and dreams,
before awoken by the empty ringing silence.

As though I was parting
towards tomorrow
while the fog remains in the day before.
Or as though in our last night
we sat and drank together, gazing at the silent seashore.
The cicadas echo the forest
as the moon rose over the mountain ridge.

The fog rose from the sea, and vanished into the sea.
Our islands are always
the distance between the day before and the day after.

The empty ringing silence woke the long night.
I heard the rain gathering
flakes of time.
After parting –  
late autumn – the water, only haze.

Doja Gata

RainingWings

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