e-experimental

Classica e... - 29 aprile 2022

2023.11.08 Performed by the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra
National Recital Hall, Taipei, Taiwan
Photo taken and the manuscript written at the Copland House

Program Notes

“Only a short distance have I gone astray, and I know today I am right, if yesterday was a complete mistake…” 
(Quoted from “Homeward Bound” by Tao, Yuanming, translated by Lin, Yutang)

In recent years, I have repeatedly meditated on the relationship between humans and time: What will my role and my perspective be after everything changed in time?  How do I perceive the time that has changed everything?  Following this, a number of my recent project focus on a meditation on humans and nature as well on humans’ impact on the environment with interpretations and re-interpretations of the symbols of rising water and receding nature.

towards drifting pines extends the poetic ideas of pines that I use in multiple of my previous works and re-interprets and re-orchestrates them into a new musical texture.  The title directly responds to my 2008 work, Under the Pines, reflecting a meditation in nature when time slowly passes.   Differing from the calmness and peacefulness when I composed Under the Pines, towards drifting pines reflects my resonance with Tao’s poem and conveys a spiritual state of endless drifting and internal isolation.

樂曲解說

「實迷途其未遠，覺今是而昨非……」

這幾年我常在思考人與時間的關連：在一切變遷之後，自身所處的當下是怎樣的視野與角色、在時間裡的感知又是怎樣的狀態。近來數首已完成與手上正在著筆的作品，也都陸續環繞著類似的課題，關於人與自然，以及人類對於環境的影響。因此我以「湧上的水」與「消逝的自然」，兩個與自身情感與生活經驗最位密切關連的題材，透過不同的視角來為關於時間的沉思著墨。
此曲延續多首前作關於「松樹」之樂念加以配器、整合為嶄新的音樂織體與面貌。標題《無歸之松》與自身2008年之另首絲竹樂作品《松下》相呼應，同樣在彷彿時間靜止的大自然間沉思，但今已非昔。比起當年寫作《松下》時秋意微涼、海風吹拂的愜意，《無歸之松》借用【歸去來辭】中詩人感嘆迷途之意象，以反映足跡與記憶皆漸行漸遠、飄泊無可依歸的心境。

towards drifting pines (2023) for di, sheng, pipa, daruan, zheng, erhu, and electronics

Junky (1996). From Traces on Empreintes DIGITALes IMED0053 www.electrocd.com

Junky

Robert McClure - Desert Miniatures, II. spiky things

Cytokinesis (bang, bang, bang!) explores intricate interactions between cells of complex and simple material using free improvisation, structured improvisations, and strict conventionally written material, and the vast colors and timbres of various percussion instruments. The piece was requested by Tom Goldstein, director of the UMBC Percussion Ensemble. (2015)

Produced by Stephen Johnson III
Percussionist: Colleen Sack, Daniel Mears, Tom Bryant

Cytokinesis

From the Radius Ensemble's Album Fresh Paint

Fresh Paint

Jonathan Bailey Holland - Synchrony

Medical text pp. 57: Age is an aggressive, virtuosic, and remarkably vulnerable piece crafted around the text found in the educational tome Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine Vol. 1 published in 1845. 
The chapter that this piece addresses is on the topic of age and its effects on the body through the multiple stages of life, beginning with nascent burgeoning growth and advancing to eventual unerring onset of decay. This piece manipulates the coherence of text and plays off of humanities want to comprehend speech in voices, often crafting phones and consonants that are similar to speech but contorting them beyond understanding. When juxtaposed with recognizable text and married with a plethora of timbral driven gestures and extended vocal techniques, smooth transitions between nonsense and meaningful text help to drive the piece through continuums of obfuscation and clarity.

Medical Text p.57 - for voice and live electronics

Stories From Home

Storm
by Judith Shatin

Laura Armstrong, tenor saxophone

Recorded September 15, 2018 at Georgetown University by Arts Laureate

Storm (Judith Shatin)

Otzi for tenor saxophone and interactive stereo playback - Alexis Bacon

BellowsLiveEdit01

A free dub techno track. Please download, share and play it!

Download link: https://archive.org/details/MartinStuertzerOhligsmuehle

Martin Stürtzer - Ohligsmühle (Dub Techno)

Taken from the album 'Deltas' released as LP / Download

Kassel Jaeger 'Deltas' (eMEGO 149)

**Winner of the 2013 Frame Dance Composition Competition**

The Integrated Elements series features solo instruments and pre-recorded sound.  The aim of this series is to use the sounds created by instruments, electronically produced sounds, and the sounds made by the human voice or mouth to create an integrated sound world.

Integrated Elements No. 3 “Divide by Five” was commissioned by Kyle Maxwell-Doherty.  Kyle has taken several trips to Ghana to study African drumming, dance, and gyil playing with the famed master xylophonist, Bernard Woma.  Knowing that there is a well established gyil tradition, I wanted to create a new context for the gyil as opposed to writing more traditional melodies with electronic accompaniment.  

The gyil is a fourteen note, pitched, wooden percussion instrument.  It is tuned to a pentatonic scale.  Thus, the instrument contains two full octaves and a partial octave.  It was this idea that lead me to the title, Divide by Five.  Underneath the wooden bars of the gyil are suspended, hollowed out gourds that act as resonators.  Each gourd contains small holes in its body that are covered with paper.  Air forced into the gourds by striking the bars is pushed through the paper which gives the instrument a buzzing sound.  This is an odd instrument, from the western perspective, because by definition, its purest sound contains distortion.  I took this idea of distortion and applied it to the  electronic elements.  

The fixed media contains five categories of sounds.  Sounds from the instrument itself (shaking the gourds, rubbing the bars, ascending and descending glissandi), electronically produced sounds, sounds from my voice, a series of notes from a prepared piano, and various sounds from the piano itself (knocking on the body, letting the lid drop, and sounding all 88 keys at once).  The prepared piano acts as a counterpart to the gyil due to both the inherent distortion in the pure form of the sound and the tuning abnormalities.  Many gyils are tuned differently because they are made by different people.  There is no such thing as equal temperament in the gyil making community.  To make sure this piece has a life beyond the premier performance I made sure not have any specific tonal references to any gyil or any specific tones for that matter.  All of the pitches heard in this piece are “out of tune” to accommodate for multiple gyils and multiple tunings.  

Lastly, I used the notational system for the gyil presented in the dissertation “Performance Practice of the Dagara-Birifor Gyil Tradition Through the Analysis of the Bewaa and Daarkpen Repertoire” by Dr. Michael Vercelli.  As in all other West African traditional music, gyil music is passed through an aural tradition which does not conform to any notational practices.  There is a shorthand notation common to Woma’s students but, I think that this notation best displays the harmonic and melodic possibilities of the instrument.

Integrated Elements No. 3 Divide by Five

Robert McClure’s music attempts to discover beauty in unconventional places using non-traditional means.  Visual art, poetry, the natural world, neurological and mathematical concepts are all elements that influence McClure’s works. His work has been featured at festivals including the New York City Electronic Music Festival, the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, ISCM, SCI, SEAMUS, and ICMC (International Computer Music Conference). 

His works may be found through ADJ·ective New Music LLC, Bachovich Music Publications, Imagine Music Publications, Innovative Percussion, Media Press, Inc., Resolute Music Publications, and Tapspace Publications as well as on the ABLAZE, Albany, and New Focus Record labels.

In addition to his composition activities, Robert is a member of the ADJ·ective New Music Composer Collective and the host/producer of the ADJ·ective New Music podcast, Lexical Tones; a weekly conversation with a guest composer, performer, and/or artist creating new works of contemporary art/music that focuses on aesthetics, technique, process, meaning, perception, and the musical origins of the featured guest. The podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud.

Robert received his doctorate from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University where his primary mentors were Shih-Hui Chen, Arthur Gottschalk, and Kurt Stallmann.Robert has previously held positions at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Soochow University in Suzhou, China. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory at Ohio University.

What’s that? 
Alfred Miersch started »Arkipel Bleü«, a soundproject,  with electronic sounds influenced from music concrete, ambient & minimalism, integrating soundfields and experimental melodies. An archipel of music with open end …
He is a publisher (www.nordpark-verlag.de) & writer from Wuppertal, Germany, now working with electronic sounds, because »writers block« has stopped his own literary creativity since a long time.

»Arkipel Bleü« ist das Soundprojekt von Alfred Miersch: Elektronische Musik, die zwischen Music concrete, Ambient & Minimalism pendelt, Klangflächen mit experimentellen Melodien erzeugt & mit Alltagsgeräuschen anreichert. 
Alfred Miersch, der in Wuppertal als Schriftsteller und Publizist lebt und den NordPark Verlag und die Krimiseite »Die Alligatorpapiere« gründete, hat sich seit einer permanenten Schreibblockade der elektronischen Musik zugewendet …




Integrated Elements No. 3 Divide by Five

Robert McClure

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