Catching The Fireworks' Tail | 捕捉烟花的尾巴 (2021)

The Sound Of Blood

For Simon H. Fell

Criseyde is my feminist revenge opera in which I re-wrote Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.

I used Chaucer's own Middle English and twisted it around to give the female character Criseyde a way out of the control and abuse.  

A chamber opera for 5 solo singers, ensemble of 3 singers, and 14 instruments, Criseyde was performed in concert by the New York City Opera VOX festival of contemporary American operas, and recorded by The American Virtuosi in 2008.  On this recording soprano Kerri Marcinko is the heroine Criseyde, baritone Richard Byrne is Troilus and bass Larry Long is Pandar, with conductor Kenneth Hamrick and the musicians of The American Virtuosi.  

They are singing in Middle English.  

The action: Troilus is in bed pretending to be sick.  Pandar tricks Criseyde into coming to see him. The Ladies watch.  Criseyde maintains her composure, but finds herself trapped into accepting Troilus as her lover.  

Published by The American Composers Alliance, Inc. (BMI)
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© copyright 2006 Alice Shields All Rights Reserved

Engagement Scene from the opera Criseyde

On this episode, Charlotte and Laura speak with Bryan Jacobs in advance of TAK’s premiere of his piece ‘Organic Synthesis Volume 2’ on Thursday Dec. 7, 2023.  

To hear more of Bryan’s music, go to https://soundcloud.com/bryanjacobs-1

Please contribute to TAK’s year-end fundraiser at http://takensemble.com/support

Our upcoming concert, Machine Tongue, featuring ‘Organic Synthesis Volume 2’,  ‘In a Forest’ by Michelle Lou and ‘la quemadura es el lenguaje con que juro…’ by Andres Guadarrama will be on Thurs. Dec. 7 at 8pm, at 580 Sackett St. Brooklyn NY, tickets are pay-what-you-can.

038. Bryan Jacobs

Droneo 1.4 can randomly weave timbral changes into a continuous stream.  This is just four voices, blending harmonics from 16-32 of a C2 (130.8 or so Hz)Run through Droneo's native chorus and Vandelay. Sorry it's not in stereo!

Vandelic Yeah

This is the Koch International Classics recording with Dora Ohrenstein, soprano; Judith Pearce, alto flute and Masayo Ishigure, koto.  The photo by Seth Tillett is from the Dec.1, 2015 performance at Opera America with Martha Cluver, soprano; Sarah Carrier, alto flute and Mayuko Matsuda, koto.  You can see the video of this performance by the Aviva Ensemble on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkke6F6lis&list=PLYEPrmRM36Vtubr5ibqwOucPm5ycZGToo

Komachi at Sekidera is a mini-opera for soprano, alto flute and koto based on the Japanese Noh play "Sekidera Komachi" by Kanze Motokiyo Zeame (1363-1443).  

The protagonist of the play, Ono no Komachi, was a woman of great literary gifts and beauty who lived at the Heian court in ninth-century Japan.  She became a legend after her death, and many apocryphal stories surround the few known biographical facts concerning her life.  In the present piece Komachi has lived into old age, beyond her beauty and her literary fame, and has been forgotten.  Confronted with age and mortality, she alternates between crying out for the days that are gone, and quieter sections in which she contemplates the bittersweet delight of still being alive.  

The structure of this little opera was influenced by the dramatic monologues of Monteverdi’s operas and 18th-century Japanese Kumiuta songs. The modal character of the melody, which often returns to the unstable interval of the tritone, mirrors Komachi’s existential state, as does the alto flute, which shadows her feelings with sounds reminiscent of the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute.  The koto reflects Komachi's passionate nature.

-- Alice Shields

Komachi at Sekidera (monodrama)

Excerpts from ACRONYM's fourth studio recording: Wunderkammer!



Wunderkammer

Samuel Capricornus:  Sonata a8 in A Minor

Piccolo and electronics
Robin Meiksins, Piccolo

Frog and saucepan photo by James Lee

Drishti - Robin Meiksins, Piccolo

Some Aspect of Water

Skin

By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination.

But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country music, a descendant of the blues, folk, Tejano, and other genres, with connections to labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and social-justice movements, has historically attracted musicians spanning the political spectrum, and didn’t necessarily emerge from such a staunchly right-wing political tradition.

Rather, popular conceptions of country music have long been deliberately shaped by a series of broader ideological projects. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, conservative politicians and other right-wing forces have exploited the genre to promote illiberalism, racism, revanchist politics, and runaway anti-intellectualism where not giving a shit about the world beyond one’s own cold beer, pickup truck, old lady is not only acceptable, but actively encouraged and flaunted. 

On this episode, we examine how the genre of country music has been wielded as a tool of reactionary politicking in the US, from the machinations of Henry Ford in the 1920s to the Nixon administration’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s and ‘70s to the heady Shock and Y’all days of the Bush years, and how a once working-class tradition became a cultural cul de sac of worn-out tropes and middle-class, white grievance politics.  

Our guest is writer, editor and artist Alexander Billet.

Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music

Online Maya device (move the pitch wheel)
https://ryanhpratt.github.io/maya/

Drishti - Robin Meiksins, Piccolo

Ryan Pratt

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⭕️Ernesto Schmied⭕️

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