In April 2020, I recorded a brief sound and sent it to my musician friends. I asked them to listen to it and record a simple, spontaneous response of their own. 38 of them generously accepted my invitation. Each recorded without hearing others, most often on their phones. I made this piece using all recordings in their entirety, without any editing or manipulation.  My goal was to create a picture in sound of this crazy and sad time, made up of isolated moments from the lives and homes of friends I dearly love. 

The music begins inside Conrad Winslow’s Berlin apartment, with the close-up sound of an electric fan. After a series of jams among clarinets, strings, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, megaphones, drums, throat singing, cellophane, electronics, and water drops from a leaking ceiling in Conrad Tao’s New York apartment, the microphones move outside to the sound of bees, birds, the wind, the ocean, a fountain, sparkling water, and a little gem of a poem by Molly Bashaw. The final moment is a brief interaction between the mailman and Sudhu Tewari, who is “tunin’ the piano” (pictured on the cover) outside his home in Berkeley, California. 

CE May 2020 Berlin

Cover Image: Carly McLane

Below is a list of the musicians and their sounds, showing their time of appearance in the piece:

00:00 Conrad Winslow, electric fan
01:01 Eric Umble, clarinet
02:39 Horia Dumitrache, bass clarinet
03:05 Jay Campbell, cello
03:27 Eric Cha-Beach, scrapes
03:56 Alvin Curran, samples
04:37 Rupert Enticknap, voice
05:28 Jeff Gavett, voice
06:28 Chris Otto, voice
06:32 Jason Treuting, drums
07:08 Mariel Roberts, cello
07:35 Travis Laplante, saxophone
07:36 Patrick Crossland, trombone + megaphone
07:36 Andrew Lafkas, electronics 
07:37 Thom Blum, electronics
08:08 Arda Cabaoglu, trumpet
08:09 Alvin Curran, samples
08:17 Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum
08:18 Cenk Ergün, digital organ
08:46 Andrew Lafkas, double bass
09:19 Conrad Tao, water drops
10:45 Marcel Zaes, electronics
11:06 Kaitlin Lambert, trombone
11:37 Zoe Cutler, trombone
11:37 Patrick Crossland, electronics
11:47 Travis Laplante, saxophone
11:50 Kiko Weinroth, voice + singing bowl
12:14 Molly Bashaw, trombone
13:34 Kim Lauritsen, voice
13:34 Alvin Curran, samples
13:35 Anna White, voice
13:36 Megan Thompson, voice
13:51 Kira McGirr, wind and voice
13:54 Derya Ergün, voice
13:59 Miranda Cuckson, violin
14:03 Rupert Enticknap, voice
14:20 Margaret Lancaster, cellophane + voice
15:16 Chris Vatalaro, electronic drums
16:21 Johannes Liepold, bees
16:52 Ning Yu, water fountain
17:03 Beth Meyers, sparkling water
17:19 Joan Jeanrenaud, ocean + highway
17:29 Molly Bashaw, poem
17:47 Sudhu Tewari, mailman + piano

Amore Vieni For Isolated Ensemble

catherine lamb -- descensus trio (2020). i recorded each part by myself over the course of the pandemic.

catherine lamb -- decensus trio

Untitled (solo for accordion) was commissioned and premiered 2014 by the Swiss accordionist Jonas Kocher. The full version was released on the CD 'Jonas Kocher plays Christian Kesten and Stefan Tuth', BRUIT 2016.

Untitled (solo for accordion) Excpt

The Propagation of Light

In ’70 and ’80s Germany, a handful of Turkish labels released thousands of cassettes for the country’s ‘gastarbeiter’ or ‘guest workers’. Istanbul-based producer Grup Ses explores their psychedelic legacy.
More info: https://thevinylfactory.com/features/turkish-psych-cassettes-grup-ses/
Shouts to my partners in digging, https://soundcloud.com/cerikunda and https://soundcloud.com/djnofrost

Discovering Turkish psych cassettes with Grup Ses (Vinyl Factory Feature)

note| Primavera crown is an encounter between conflicting ethics of my work — the role of individual imagination and expressive possibility against the large canvas of chamber orchestra. The work brings into conversation aesthetic materials across different contemporary classical practices and places them within a liberatory framework, drawn from the socioeconomic realities of racialized spaces. Do these materials have the capacity to grow beyond their dominant origins?

The result opens a space for confrontation: on the one hand, its expressive sonic spaces and trajectories profoundly engage my imagination; on the other I struggle, from a philosophical perspective, with the mechanisms and aesthetics I’m invoking and their connotations. 

_______

premiered by Alarm Will Sound on July 27th, 2019 @ The Missouri Theatre during the Mizzou International Composer's Festival

flower by Ella Joklik

20190727B - 8 World Premieres

Primavera crown [2019] | Alarm Will Sound

‘Education in Remembering’ is inspired by sculptor D.R.Piqtoukun’s definition of his own artistic experience and life. As a child, Piqtoukun was sent to a boarding school where he was not allowed to speak his mother tongue. He calls this as ‘education in forgetting’. Later, he learns stone carving from his brother, and describes this as ‘ education in remembering’. 

Piqtoukun’s words , in a more personal level, made me think/question ‘what I forgot’ and ‘ how to find ways to remember’. This 9 minutes 52 seconds 'incomplete' piece is my own ‘education in remembering’, based on dozens of double bass samples and their timbral transformation.

Education in Remembering

solo drum & AM/SW transmissions (via emergency radio & transducer)

10/20/19 at 3:49pm
home (flatbush, brooklyn)

Amore Vieni For Isolated Ensemble

Cenk Ergün

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