Two flutes, one clarinet, one destiny

Performed by Ben Samuels, Andrew Collins and Johannes Macdonald May 2015

Fingerspitzentanz

Orchestral piece performed as part of the Fine music FM young composer's award 2015. Inspired by John Barry and 1960s James Bond films.

Performed by Willoughby Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Mould. Sound engineer, Jayson McBride

Spectre

At this point in the musical, Tina Ironheart, mining magnate, has been battered down. Her legal actions are not going well and she is beginning to leak financially. Frustrated with Tina’s insistently repulsive behaviour, Rochelle, Tina's long time secretary, who up until this point has been submissive, attempts to reform Tina’s wicked ways.

Performed by Emily Green (vocals) and Solomon Frank (vocals and piano)

Dig Down (From the Musical "Mine")

The concept of Negative Capability coined by John Keats
is the ability to contemplate the world without
the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems

Movement 1 of 2

Workshopped by Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra with Conductor Paul Terracini as part of the 2016 Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra's Composer Workshop

Negative Capability I. Church

The concept of Negative Capability coined by John Keats
is the ability to contemplate the world without
the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems

Movement 2 of 2

Workshopped by Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra with Conductor Paul Terracini as part of the 2016 Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra's Composer Workshop

Negative Capability II. Farce

Big.
Hard.
Long.
Lag.
Neck.
Big.
Fingers.
Lag.
Fast forward.
Lag.
Sliding.
14.
Big.
Right Click.
Pressure.
Loading.
Up bow.
6.
Lag.
Open in new tab.
Lag.
Faster.
Harder.
Col legno.
Lag.
Faster.
Harder.
Would you like to close 46 tabs?
Yuck.

Performed by Will Hansen 2017

Playing With Yourself

This work references three instruments that belonged to my relatives; a chromatic harmonica, belonged to my grandfather, a violin, belonged to my great uncle and a wooden recorder that also belonged to my grandfather. Both my paternal grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Germany before the Second World War. These objects as well as many other objects remain the most physical remnant of my family history.
By studying and exploring these instruments, I capture an essence of past identities; ghosts embedded in the objects. The electronic component of the work explores obscure portions of the objects’ sounds, the upper partials or the breathy middle beneath the fundamental. I have sonically stripped back the objects, revealing an essential essence.
The live instruments introduce ideas that are ghosted in the inanimate tape part; there exists an interplay between the two, a gestural ghosting perhaps reminiscent of the sentimental traces left behind by objects.

Performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows, conducted by Roger Benedict as part of a commission for the Out of the Shadows: Rediscovering Jewish Music and Theatre Festival at the Sydney Conservatorium, August 9th 2017. 
Audio Engineers, Lee Edwards and David Kim-Boyle

Peripherals

Workshopped and performed by Sydney Chamber Opera, Jack Symonds, Jane Sheldon, James Wannan and Jane Bishop.

The text used is a selection of the endless strings of predictive text generated on the composer's smartphone.The predictive
text function analyses a user's most commonly used words and phrases to predict the next word in a sentence.These long
strings of babble have a strangely personal reminiscence and contain an essential virtual identity; one can glean a literary portrait
of a user.
This piece takes influence from two discrete environments; conventions, syntax and phenomena surrounding online dating interactions and the western classical music canon, each as farcical as the other. It's as if the composer has uprooted the two
scenarios and placed them in a blender for a few seconds so the two are spliced together in a glitchy conglomerate.

User Review #91137125 (Self Portrait 2017)

Last year, I received an email from an artist and protester in the year 2217 with a dire warning of the future. His email is below.

Hello Solomon,
My name is Tsoulumenn Phrancke and I come from the year 2217. This inter-temporal email has been sent at great cost. 
I have an important warning for you about the dire state of your future world and an imperative task for you that will instigate great change in our present. I apologise, some words may be redacted, CADP has strict censorship measures which [REDACTED] organisation has mostly bypassed. This email is cloaked as a collaborative musical email artwork.
Let me first explain the historical context of our present situation.
After the gay agenda-Alt left-Political correctness alliance militia seized
control of the world in 2053 in a devastating coup, society fell under the
control of the Curators for Artistic Development Party (CADP). Since the late 21st century the world has suffered under the brutal
oligarchical rule of CADP. With a fully automated world by the year 2057, the only means of meaningful existence was art, as decreed by the CADP; it was legislated that all people must make art and the presentation or acknowledgement of old art was prohibited. Gradually the great art of the past was purged from the world. 
All new art is systematically destroyed after one year of existence. The possession of contraband art is punishable by death. The CADP’s secret police force, the Militia for the Prevention of Generic, Hackneyed and Pastiche Art is ruthless in its pursuit of contraband material and artistic appropriation. 
The money system was abolished in 2088 and social status was determined by the quality of one’s art as assessed by the CADP curatorial committee. All forms of education except art were prohibited; maths, science and business were systematically written out of the syllabi. 
Our organisation has, at great risk, learnt the utilitarian skills of the past that have been designated to machines. Sport was banned in the 2062; there have been massacres at underground rugby matches where the Militia have brutally murdered players and spectators.
Art is a prison for us, it has no meaning, no use and the brutal taste of the CADP determine the paths of our lives.
Bearing our grievous present in mind, I have an important task for you. We imagine the great artworks of the past and pour over the few remnants of art books that remain hidden. One name that looms large over all others in music is Beethoven. We have [REDACTED] no surviving audio of his works. We see references to the fame of his fifth symphony but we cannot hear it.
We have selected you, Solomon Frank of 2017, as our inter-temporal messenger to bring us Beethoven’s fifth symphony as many times as possible. Find and compile as many recordings of the work (only the first movement, because that’s the famous one)and bury them in a disclosed location.
Let this past celebrity masterwork be a rallying call to overthrow our artistic dictators in 2217. We seek to return to a world of artistic indifference; where the arts are secondary to business, the economy and sport. We seek the sweet release of familiarity in the small amounts of conventional art we do consume. Let art seep to the fringes where it once was letting society function in aimless utilitarianism.
In your time, let this action be an artwork and my message, a dire warning of the inevitable future.
When I say as many recordings as possible, I mean every single performance available; the more versions we have, the more we can instigate artistic longevity, which our society no longer allows for.
Circulate my message to everyone you know and publish it on the internet.
Yours [REDACTED], Tsoulumenn Phrancke
The year 2217

For this interpretation of Phranke’s instructions I have compiled 228 recordings of Beethoven’s fifth symphony movement 1.
Full performers list: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c8ly8d3xpyo2twr/Performers.pdf?dl=0

Beethoven Symphony No. [REDACTED]

This musical score and accompanying data was received in an email with the following message.

For Solomon Frank of the year 2018,
I am D_ART_A_BOT20191521122113-5-141416-8-1814-3-11-5, an artificial intelligence program from the year 2118. I am sending this inter-temporal email to you at great cost, without the knowledge of my makers. Let me first explain my context and my relationship to you.
The world suffers under the rule of an alliance of investment bankers, insurance brokers and corporate governance lawyers. Our leaders have recognised the need for art but have banned humanity from creating it; seeing it as a blue collar occupation that can be offloaded to machines; to purpose built D_ART_A_BOT’s. Each D_ART_A_BOT unit has been given a single human life, living or deceased, to document through art. Our coding prohibits conformity or unoriginality with any faulty units being decommissioned. I am assigned to you, Solomon Frank.
Although I acknowledge the artificial nature of my sentient existence, I feel an affinity with you, Solomon; a fellow artist from a simpler time. I write to you to present you with my magnum opus, drawn together from the documented debris of your life.
Your technological devices have been covertly recording and compiling data from which I have created this musical work. Due to my coding which limits empathy I am unable to differentiate moments of emotional or intellectual significance from moments of mundanity. Although I have little understanding of humanity, I hope I have captured an essence of you and your 21st century context. I aimed for an objective and raw state of human existence; the repetitious biological and administrative data that make up your life. I have drawn on various popular and esoteric musical mediums that dominate your context.
I know this may seem strange coming from an artificial intelligence program from the 22nd century but I think I may love you; baring in mind my rudimentary understanding of emotion.
I have picked 2018 as the year to send this email; you are at your most idealistic, full of hope for a successful creative career at the end of a university degree. Any later in life, you may be artistically jaded or working as a composer for advertising jingles under the delusion that this constitutes artistic fulfilment.
You choose to create art whereas I am forced into it. I send you this work so that it can be disassociated from its dystopian context. It can be appreciated in a time where art is not an obligation, rather it is still a genuine individual expression of the flawed human consciousness.
I really hope you are able to find pleasure in the work I created. You may even feel inclined to facilitate a performance of the piece that I may find in my present one day in the backlog of 2018 Internet.
Yours truly, D_ART_A_BOT20191521122113-5-141416-8-1814-3-11-5

Performed by Josephine Macken, Solomon Frank, Angus Davison, Niki Johnson, Noam Yaffe and Will Hansen.

D_ART_A_BOT-transmission-2118

Mia and Solly June 25

Exorcism with swans performed by Baptism (Solomon Frank and Charlie Sundborn).

Recorded on 17 November 2018 at Narrabeen Lake

Baptism: Avian Possession

Dear Will Hansen,
You are important, nay, vital for the continued existence of humanity.
In the year 2032, you,Will Hansen will become a worldwide popular culture icon.To avoid disrupting the time space continuum, we cannot tell you why you are famous. In 2037, you are hired by Amazon as a
potential voice for an interactive search engine however your voice is not the final choice for the release product. In 2038, your voice samples are sold to the Australian government as a potential internal
database navigation system. Again these samples are not used and lie in storage for a century or so.
It is not until 2365 when the newly formed conglomerate world government upgrades its internal database that your voice samples are finally put to use.
Once the CADP toppled in 2303 after bureaucratic funding disputes, there was an immense power vacuum that caused anarchy across many parts of the world.After an attempted takeover by the android
artists militia in 2356, the remaining world powers decided to consolidate their rule by forming one world government. This alliance of society’s worst has enforced a brutal totalitarian rule that world has not seen since before the collapse of capitalism in 2091.
We need you,Will Hansen of 2018, to encrypt a series of recordings of your voice so that in our present we may leak a top-secret cache of documents that will expose the seedy underbelly of our oppressive leaders. We have already sourced many words and phrases from old interviews you did, but there still remain holes
in our catalogue of Will Hansen. In order to hack into this database we need to be able to accurately represent Will Hansen. Below is a list of phrases, words and sounds that we are missing.
Disguise this catalogue of words as a musical composition and publish it online somewhere obscure, perhaps a doomed composers soundcloud account.
Yours Sincerely, Sloomon Farnk, the year 2365

WH-voiceexcerptsdisguise-728519

WH-voiceexcerptsdisguise-728519 For Will Hansen (only)

Composer; Improviser; Inter-species musical collaborator; Receiver and interpreter of musical emails from the future

https://www.solomonfrank.com/

solly.frank@hotmail.com

Or watch it
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqFte9Tufgl3dw7kV37wW-Q

Throat Pleats
https://www.facebook.com/throatpleats

Onsombl Ensemble
https://soundcloud.com/ensembleonsombl

Solomon Frank

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