A recording from the rehearsal of 'death and desire' (2022-23) for large ensemble.

performers, Studio Musikfabrik
conductor, Peter Veale

Kompositionsauftrag des Studio Musikfabrik, gefördert vom Landesmusikrat NRW

death and desire (2022-23) - for large ensemble

premiere of 'let it pass, let it pass...' (2023-24) for cello and ensemble.

Performed by,
Urban Megušar (violoncello)
.abeceda contemporary music ensemble
Tilen Draksler (conductor)

Bled Festival Hall, June 28 2024
commissioned by Urban Megušar and .abeceda

let it pass, let it pass... (2023-24) - for cello and ensemble

performed by .abeceda [contemporary music ensemble]

I have been holding on to the term ‘copse’ for quite a while as a potential title. It refers to a particular type of small forest; not so densely populated and often quite isolated. 

Upon further research into its etymology, I discovered a poem by Charles Granville - a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe - titled ‘The Copse’, which elicited a darker, more sinister imago of such a type of wood; transliterated mainly as a kind of human, in this case full of inner turmoil. 

'copse' (2024) is a caption to this poem, exploring the string quartet as its own kind of coppice - instigating a multidimensional interplay of the various players across sweeping, scintillating trilling, morbid husk of lower melodies and the gradual entangling of ‘brambling’ improvisation palettes; wild and tumultuous, free yet trapped. 


Oskar Longyka, violin 1
Anja Kralj, violin 2
Domen Kužnac, viola
Urban Megušar, violoncello

premiere - June 24th 2024, Bled Festival Hall (SL)

copse (2024) - for string quartet

An interactive performance piece, built from a graphic score of 10 separate systems. The duet of percussionists interpret the score together, focusing on the relationships between player and score, player and instruments, instruments and score and the duet with each other.  A meditative and somewhat other-worldly feeling of connection between the performers and the audience is felt, with naturalistic sounds of birds, rocks, bamboo and water flow throughout the soundscape that is 'Unity'; a soundscape that reminds us of balance, of connection, and of equality.
This work was first performed on the 26th of July 2019 by Eugene Ughetti and Robyn Schulkowsky at Monash University, Melbourne Australia, as part of the international TENOR conference.

Unity - For Percussion Duet

An electro-acoustic synthesis of a Rainforest - recorded, mixed and mastered at the University of Melbourne's 'Ian Potter Southbank Centre - Electronic Music Studios'. No field recording here, just sit back and listen to the soundscape while you study/meditate

Rainforest-Scape

A recording of Liza Lim's work 'bioluminescence' [2018/19]. Recorded at the Ian Potter Southbank Centre, University of Melbourne - Melbourne Conservatorium, March 2020.

Performer: Sean Quinn - www.seanquinncomposer.com

Bioluminescence - Liza Lim

The prototype recording of my interpretation of Cat Hope's work 'Her Pockets Full of Inertia'. This was made using a video score that I embedded - the score comes with an electronics track, made up by Cat herself and flautist Lamorna Nightingale. I am planning to make a second recording of the work, made up of my own recordings of the backing track. But for now, this is what we have. This is the second installment of the 'Living Lights' project [2020-]

This was recorded at the Ian Potter Southbank Centre, University of Melbourne - Melbourne Conservatorium, March 2020.

Cat Hope - Her Pockets Full Of Inertia

An ambient adventure into the dark minds of isolation, evoking sounds of an ambulance and unnerved sounds of objects dropping - all taken from a single sample of a guitar prepared with blu-tack and manipulated. 'LifeLine' is a mysterious and observational work that employs use of a variety of soundscape themes and circulating pulsations and feedback loops to represent the vicariously observed sounds and thoughts I - and many others - may be having during the times of quarantine in our homes. As mentioned, ambulances, cars, pots, glasses and other sounds are simulated through the use of the muted guitar. 
No harm was done to any instrument in the process; all processes were done in a way that would not harm the guitar. 
The work is not a call for help, but a bid to those to reach out, and feel that their disconcertion is not unmatched by those around them - we are all in this together and shall emerge from it.
- S. X. Q (c) 2020

LifeLine

Based on a former electro-acoustic work 'Electric Mouth' (2019), a reworking of it, 'mindplay' (2020) forms the basis for an ensemble work I'm writing as part of my 'interior' cycle. The work was somewhat inspired by Pierre Soulage's 'Lithography' series, as the contradictions of opacity and translucence within these works is evident. The colour scheme, being mostly black, inspired the distortion of reality in creating the re-work of this track.
The original 'Electric Mouth' track is the main line in this with 5 other channels of warped versions being thrust around in vigorous, violent and volatile manners. The concept of reality in this work is almost non-existent, and further plays upon the ideas of true distortion that 'Electric Mouth' possessed; that nothing we say and do is in fact truly heard as it should be. How we feel can be misconstrued by tone of voice, situation and eventually the meaning is drowned out - all concepts that are discussed in this work. Be warned, it is loud, it is arresting, and it is ruthlessly unforgiving. 

This was recorded at my home in May 2019 and reformed in April 2020.
Depicted: 'Lithographie I' P. Soulage (1957)

mindplay - electroacoustic

This short piece for solo piccolo, starling sandbox, presents the performer momentous fragments and scatters them into four lettered groupings. Performers are invited, though loosely, to use the scaffold of how to interpret the work; such as dynamics, tone colours and open structure. Each gesture is based on hearing and transcribing – loosely – the birdsongs of starlings that live on my estate, and by using various extended-techniques and their microscopic variations, I was able to create a sparse yet playful texture; enhanced by the unpredictable format of “sandbox” mode, where the performer engages with the score using a fluid scaffold to engage with the fragments – finding parameters within the freedoms of proximity and dimensional interplay.

starling sandbox

'chorus of the apocalypse' (2020), a multi-channeled work of around 4 minutes is a retelling of its precursory work 'voice of the apocalypse', which features as the initial foundation of how the work came to be. Using a variety of bottles, pots, and wooden objects, the work envisages a post-apocalyptic soundwalk through 3 locations, each of which are dreamily bled into one another. The 8-channels of sound intertwine to form a barrage of collapsing, reverberating echoes of vocal quality, with a distant and sinister humming, as well as swirling sounds of “intruders” overhead. This term “intruders” is left to the listener to imagine – are these intruders fictional or something of human means? Further exploration in the second “tableaux” is the semantic of the term “concrète” relative to the drain-pipe but also in relation to the concept of 'musique concrète' and how it is constructed.
This is a 2-channel edition of the work - if you have interest in presenting a multi-channeled version (up to 8 channels) please contact me directly.
Image: 'Retina: Obscured City' (2020) Sean X. QUINN (c)

chorus of the apocalypse - stereophonic fixed media

Built upon the acts of exterior elements of preparation and objects, 'the interference of forces from the beyond' is a work for solo prepared guitar that deals with issues surrounding the augmentation and diminution of an instrument based on preparing it. Using blu-tack, a ceramic bowl and a scourer/sponge, I was able to unlock a vast array of sonic translucencies in the guitar's body, and by disintegrating the instrument down into an extended tablature, I was able to provide gestural graphics as notation means, as well as using time-space notations to indicate use of "rhythm" throughout. The work depicts a vast canyon, a sort of shrine or massed grave. Within, the corpses begin to sing this chorus of screeching and howling. A 'koto'-esque variety of sounds emerges, taking in the acoustics of the space and embodying the canyon as a mysterious entity within itself, with a final echo and 'requiem' for the corpses. 
A degree of improvisation came into the creation of the work, both in the discovery of sounds, but also within the means of creating it. None of the notation is particularly defined, it merely provides a scaffold of some possible results. The use of the preparations both limited and unhinged the traditions of the guitar sound and made it accessible for players of any ability to engage with the music with very little practice.
This recording is of my rendition of the work, made in my home in Melbourne, Australia - June 2020.

the interference of forces from the beyond - solo prepared guitar

The third work of the Living Lights project, entitled 'Floating in Space', is by wonderful composer Keyna Wilkins. Known for her uniquely modal and illustrious improvisation work as a flautist herself, I was able to take a leaf out of the composer's book in interpreting this work. 
Mainly driven from the nebulae soundscape, I was able to use Keyna's notated music to form a improvised interpretation - at the composer's discretion - of the work, respecting in turn the trajectory of the work. The work progresses through a variety of octaves and with ornamental multiphonics and embellishments, the work came to life in a suspended, arresting collage of these envisaged nebulae - clouds of stars that give off an iridescent river of hues.

Link to buy the score: https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/workversion/wilkins-keyna-floating-in-space/33119
Image: Large Magellenic Cloud, a smaller galaxy about 163,000 light-years from our Milky Way(https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/24/21234351/hubble-telescope-30-birthday-cosmic-reef-nebula-stars)
Nebula Track: Dr Paul Francis (http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/pfrancis/Music/index.html)
More about Keyna and her work: https://www.keynawilkins.com/

Keyna Wilkins - Floating in Space - Flute and Nebula

The work entitled 'Forest Floor' has been synthesised in lieu of both my fascination with space, but also with forests and their natural and supernatural qualities. Using text from the poem 'Forest and Field' by Madison Julius Cawein, the atmosphere is evoked from suspended, granulated waves of debris and simulated footsteps that walk 'through the rippling foliage'. This work's illustrative quality emphasises a mysterious quality in nature, with murkiness brought through aerated sounds and occasional choruses of flutes, implying a luring feeling, with the emergence of the stream and the echoing rock faces. These footsteps trace a path of the listener, as though they are indeed walking through this imagined space. The voice draws further into the textures of the exterior sounds, breathing and hissing overtakes the mind with tidal-wave of granulated sonic confetti. The work ends quite suddenly - implying night has fallen, and sleep is being reached.

Forest Floor - electroacoustic

This is the world premiere of the new work for double-bell horn, developed during the Virtual Brass Academy with Christine Chapman and Ensemble MusikFabrik, July 2020. This performance took place on July 30th, 2020 - in Cologne.
I am indebted to Ensemble MusikFabrik and the fantastic work they did with us in introducing us to the worlds of double-bell instruments, and to the ever-expanding repertoire of new music for these instruments they are bringing to the world.

The work explores a sense of dual forces that act and react upon each other, and how the relative mediator (the performer) indeed interacts with the score, the instrument and it's two bells, and finally how the theatre of the piece - both through actions and the position of the instrument - is transmitted to the audience. In the four sections of the piece that each explore a different facet of the manipulation of the horn - first through the use of a contra-bassoon reed to produce aggressive yet fulfilling multiphonics; then in the second and third exploring the two bells and their range of possibilities. The final section condenses the instrument down to only it's single-bell form and the mute and interacts briefly with it to express a settling within the performance. Gasping, grunting, growling and grandeur are all some of the ideas explored in this short miniature.

Image: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/1/15721268/gravitational-waves-ligo-future)

Understated Matter - for solo double-bell horn [premiere]

First performed in August, 2019.
'paper-boat-compass' was an exploration of the string quartet medium. Using a highly gestural graphic score, the quartet gradually enter and weave fragile, tentative sounds around an ever evolving climax of means. The material - graphic and time-wise - was mapped using the movement of a paper boat in a small trough of water - with the title literally being a description of the activity of the boat in relation to the points of the trough it went towards; mapping the each direction as a member of the quartet.
As a result, various members do not play during reasonably large portions of the piece - with the exception of the final section which evokes the surrounding tides with subtle scrubbing sounds on various areas of the instrument.
Haunting, Crumb-Esque soundworlds were evoked by the Allotropy! String Quartet in 2019, where they helped celebrate my birthday on the 18th of August. The work is dedicated to them, and this recording - made, mixed, and mastered by me - is given to you all with the humblest gratitude to them for helping put me on the map.

paper-boat-compass

A rendition of my improvisation work ‘manufacturers - things that are made to be broken’. Deals with the concepts of constructing sounds worlds that are bound to break and separate due to the fragility but importance of constant ensemble performance. This work is an ode to Richard Barrett’s ‘Codex’ series, from which I have enjoyed codifying my own source of instructions. 
This was performed and curated by Kris Carlisle and the Berry College music department, January - February 2021.

Manufacturers - things that are made to be broken

For more info, check out www.seanquinncomposer.com

Sean Quinn - Composer

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