Knotted Silk

Composed: 2024/09/23
recomposed: 2024/09/27 (10/5)

N. Free-Constructivity - Contemplation (to Pierre Boulez)

In the Woodlands

soubresauts

The Cask of Amontillado by Elena Doria Winell

Libretto adapted from Edgar Allan Poe by H. Cipriana and Elena Doria Winell

Recorded as part of Tony Arnold's Opera Etudes on April 11th, 2025 at Joe Byrd Hall, Peabody Institute, Baltimore, MD.

Conducted by Linus Ip
Audio & Video Recording by Yuchen Bian

CAST:
Montresor - Sophia Sorrentino
Fortunato - Abigail Sherman
"Fortunato" - Sophie Low
Conscience (Good) - Siying Chen
Conscience (Bad) - Ruoyu Li

Chorus - H. Cipriana, Olivia Carlton, Julie Knott, Analeigh Flieger, Erika Carper, Kylee Kamikawa

OLD BAY NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE:
Andrew Nguyen - Clarinet, Bass Clarinet
Michael Liu - Percussion
Haeun Lim - Piano
Heeyun Cho - Violin
Claire Russel - Double Bass

SYNOPSIS: In this short adaptation of Poe’s classic tale, the story unfolds with Montresor’s conscience taking on two tangible, disembodied forms, constantly whispering and conversing with him as he lures Fortunato deeper into the catacombs. As Montresor's dark plan unfolds, his inner guilt and turmoil begin to manifest through a haunting dialogue between him and his conscience, which taunts and questions his actions. After Montresor seals Fortunato’s fate, the opera takes a twisted turn: Fortunato’s voice transforms into a demonic, mocking echo, joined by a chorus of spectral voices. These voices, a blend of Fortunato's tortured spirit and Montresor’s fractured psyche, berate and taunt Montresor for his crime. The conscience now merges with the cacophony of demonic voices, amplifying his paranoia and guilt. The opera explores Montresor’s descent into madness, blurring the lines between his own voice, Fortunato’s ghost, and the eerie chorus, which relentlessly drives him to the brink of insanity, akin to the themes in Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The haunting sounds culminate in Montresor’s complete unraveling, as he is consumed by the very guilt he tried to bury, forever tormented by the consequences of his actions.

The Cask of Amontillado

scraps for loadbang by Elena Doria Winell, text by Emily Dickinson. Performed at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD on April 29th, 2025

Ty Bouque - baritone
Andy Kozar - Trumpet
Adrián Sandí - Bass Clarinet
William Lang - Trombone

This piece is about fragmentation. The poem is taken from Dickinson's collection of "envelope poems" which were literally scrawled in dull pencil on various scraps of papers and envelopes. Like most of her work, these poems did not see the light of day until after her death. The brief interjection comes from what began as my attempt at 'modernizing' the language of the poem, only retroactively realizing a) how pointless that is and b) how intensely I had projected my own immediate reality into this 'translation.'

scraps

This is “Shuffle”, a song from the new album “Palda”. Please listen to it.

[jp] ニューアルバム『Palda』からの一曲『Shuffle』です。どうぞよろしく。

https://tototod.bandcamp.com/album/palda

Aoki Satoru - Shuffle (Palda - 27th Album)
Prepared bass/field recording: Aoki Satoru
Tokyo, Japan - June 26, 2025
[ TOD 31０ ] 


◆ bandcamp

Shuffle

Another hypercanon piece.  

This time, from the mathematical perspective, beats get filled when their beat number equals the sum of a square, a positive cube and 6th power.  

Because the powers vary, the music keeps the counts on different instruments. 

The numbers to square get heard on the piano (with 1 the top key and then descending chromatically).

The numbers to cube get heard on pizzicato strings tuned in 19-TET, using an ascending scale that divides three octaves into 19 equal intervals which sound as nearly 10:9 rations.

The numbers to raise to the 6th power, never more than 4, map to a small gamut of tuned drums.

The complexities of the sets of sums of just two kinds of powers asserts itself as the irregular staggered entrances of the canon on the instrument associated with other power.  

If this is too much information for you, the bottom line is an intense listen which, white it has a hypersimple underlying concept, also feature a rather complex surface regardless, and because of the density of the beat numbers with a "yes" answer, intense but also unfamiliar syncopation. 

Big thank you to Peter Thoegersen, who literally wrote the book on polymicrotonal (and polytempic) music.  He's a genius and you should check out his music.  While his music and also his working methods are quite different than mine, he has opened me up to one of his great discoveries, namely that the listening mind can instinctively decouple the layers of a complex music according to the tuning systems girding each layer (at a given moment).  The effect is like passing to an experience in a higher dimension, akin to the discovery of perspective in visual art.   I'm not sure Peter would even count this as "poly" since two of the layers are 12TET and my treatment of 19TET avoids actual microintervals.  But I'd never have come to this way of projecting my ideas without his influence.

Higher Powers, for Piano, Percussion and Pizzicato Strings

The 'B' strand of the Wenninger Broadhurst 'Nebel' project - the A strand of which is now our 11th album. Wenninger Broadhurst are the collaboration of German Winds specialist and Composer  Markus Wenninger in Berlin and myself as Composer - Electronics, production and mastering at Isabel Studio UK.

Nebel B

from the sound track of "Legacy of Frida Kahlo" (Director / Tadasuke Kotani) ドキュメンタリー映画『フリーダ・カーロの遺品 石内都、織るように』 サウンドトラックより。Shin'ichi Isohata 磯端伸一 - guitar, Naoyo Yakushi 薬子尚代 - piano
https://o-musubi.blogspot.com/2015/08/cd.html

the sound track of "Legacy of Frida Kahlo" /  ドキュメンタリー映画『フリーダ・カーロの遺品 石内都、織るように』 サウンドトラック

 the sound track of "Legacy of Frida Kahlo" / ドキュメンタリー映画『フリーダ・カーロの遺品 石内都、織るように』 サウンドトラック

Diamond Dust 細氷 (from ''scene'')

White Lace

I am a Musician & Composer 
played guitar since adolescence and piano for a couple of years
In my creating I hope to challengemyself to "boldly go where no man has gone before" as it were & to explore new arts of sound.

N. Free-Constructivity - Contemplation (to Pierre Boulez)

RiMusic

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