Gate Study 05a uses samples from the following pieces commissioned by Soundstreams:
- Hatch, Peter "Time Zones" (2010)
- Hui, Melissa "Fred and John Were Having Tea (When I Dropped By)" (2004)
- Ka Nin, Chan "The Charmer" (1994)
- Staniland, Andrew "Hex" (2011)
Check out http://www.soundmakers.ca

Escher Creak (2014)

East Winging It - Ft Black Bear

Composed to celebrate what would have been the hundredth birthday of avant-garde pioneer John Cage, this work pays homage to the ideas and philosophies embodied in his music and his words. Cage was famed for integrating non-traditional instruments into his work and for coaxing unconventional sounds from traditional ones; accordingly, Lizée—herself noted for incorporating turntables and other electronic devices into the concert-music setting—here makes extensive use of various objets trouvés (including typewriters and vinyl records on portable turntables struck with mallets) as percussion instruments, regardless of their original purpose.

 The idea of “preparing” instruments, one of Cage’s most significant contributions to modern music, is reflected here in alterations made to the surfaces of vinyl records, generating new patterns and melodies by creating new paths for the stylus. Lizée has described this piece as a kind of dance party for Cage: “a re-imagining of a rave.”

This work was premiered on March 2, 2012 at the 'So Percussion' concert presented at Koerner Hall in Toronto (Canada).

For more information about Nicole Lizée and her work, please visit our SoundMakers website: http://www.SoundMakers.ca/composers/nicole-lizee


White Label Experiment by Nicole Lizée

Charms

Vorwissen
Duration: 7 minutes
Instrumentation:  Piano Trio
Performed by:  The Gryphon Trio
Commissioned by:  Roger D. Moore, for Soundstreams Canada

Dedicated to Karen, Cézanne, and Kuusta

The bedrock of Vorwissen is the retrograde/palindrome problem. In a temporal medium such as music, retrogradation is a concept or sensation, but ultimately an artificial distortion of time.  Presenting material forward and then backward creates a central fulcrum of energy around which material is outwardly distributed.  Movement is made from the beginning toward the centre point (without knowledge of its location or existence), followed by the journey away - tracing unrealistically backward through the material while time moves forward (a 1 2 3 2 1 statement of materials competing against time’s momentum of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9...).  The mercurial conflict between forward and implied backward motion is like two flints being rubbed together, their friction both complex and inflammatory, outward and inward.  

As well, the contrapuntal overlapping and superposition of normal-form and retrograded materials highlights the issue of objectivity.  Material presented simultaneously in opposite directions (as in Bach’s “crab” canons) implies a predetermination outside of the work.  Otherwise, how would one know the location of the middle and end points that are folded over one another?  Simultaneous and varying attenuations of the primary material heighten the stress of the objectivity, and the conflict with time’s forward momentum.

In a page right out of history, the plethora of retrogradation in Bach’s music is matched only by the palindromes of Olivier Messiaen.  Both are devoutly religious composers, and therein rests the problem that for years necessitated my compositional ban on retrogrades.  Are objectivity and material predetermination metaphors for the “Hand of God” in music?  Are retrogrades and palindromes artistic symbols of faith?  Such backward thinking was the inspiration for Vorwissen.



Vorwissen (excerpt), by Paul STEENHUISEN

Recording of John Kameel Farah's live performance from Roy Thompson Hall during the Toronto Symphony's New Creations Festival, March 7, 2013.
Presented by SoundStreams, as part of Farah's Residency with SoundMakers.

containing orchestral samples from the SoundMakers database; samples from pieces by Andrew Staniland, Peter Hatch, Kelly-Marie Murphy and James Rolfe

http://soundmakers.ca
http://www.soundstreams.ca



Soundscape from New Creations Festival, Mar26,2013 @ Roy Thompson Hall

Soundstreams is a Toronto-based music presenter that commissions, develops and showcases the work of contemporary Canadian composers and their international counterparts. 