Lyre, Lyre
Composed and performed/realised by James Beattie

Category: fixed media (two physically modelled pianos)
Duration: 8'09”

Prompted by the devastation of the habitat of the southern superb lyrebird by Australia's 2019-20 Black Summer megafires, Lyre, Lyre (2021) is a duet between two imaginary lyrebirds: one whose song repertoire mostly reflects the Australian bush, the other whose habitat has been encroached upon by the often destructive effects of human activity and neglect, and whose song mostly embodies the non-tonal language of a culture in distress. 

The first piano (right channel) mimics a lyrebird in the wild, which is in turn mimicking several Australian native birds. The second piano (left channel) tries to mimic the first bird, but is only able to manage a feeble rhythmic canon of the first bird's song; its disjointed attempt at a melody is no longer able to reflect the exuberant lyricism of its sibling. While the birds most often sing quite independently of each other, there are occasional moments where their kinship seems to shine through, in a synchronicity that seems to embody a promissory note of optimism. 

Lyre, Lyre was one of six works selected in Australia's official submission to the 2021 International Society of Contemporary Music's World New Music Days.

Lyre, Lyre

Lyre, Lyre (2021)

Note:
This piece explores extremes of both dynamics and frequency, at times verging on distortion. Listen with great care, preferably on high-fidelity stereo headphones. 

Engolfado seeks to evoke a sense of the overwhelming threat to our planet by natural forces that have been corrupted by human action or inaction: drought and flood, extreme heat and cold, rising sea levels. 

It opens with a solo Portuguese guitar, which soon finds itself in a losing battle with pre-recorded electronics that evoke the sometimes beguiling but potentially devastating elements of the natural world. After initially conceding defeat, the guitar makes valiant but increasingly frantic efforts to reassert itself, before finally realising the futility of its attempts. The piece ends ambiguously: calm has returned, but matters are certainly not resolved. 

The electronics include wordless choir, piano, tubular bells, and an unrecognisably processed piano that explores extremes of both dynamics and frequency, including occasional low-frequency beating effects. 

All the melodic materials used in the piece are based on ‘Audivi vocem de cælo’, a motet by the late Renaissance Portuguese composer, Duarte Lobo. The processed piano comes from a longer electroacoustic work by James Beattie, Challenger Deep (2021).

James BEATTIE - Engolfado 1.8

"Steely Resolve" is a piece inspired by a movement from one of Shostakovich's string quartets (Quartet No. 3 in F major, op. 73, first movement).

The instrument I'm playing is a modelled electric piano by Pianoteq (the MKII Wurhds preset of the Vintage Tines MKII instrument; see https://www.pianoteq.com).

Steely Resolve is the first in a projected series of pieces called "The Transfigured Piano," which I'll be uploading progressively as I put the finishing touches to them. Hope you enjoy it! 

Tablabroke

Steely Resolve

An improvisation originally played on the piano, but realised here via an instrument I created within Pianoteq (https://www.pianoteq.com/). If you'd like more information about the piece, the instrument, or Pianoteq, please drop me a line. Hope you enjoy it!

122 Pulse Vortex

Imagine that you've retuned a piano with the keyboard reversed top to bottom, but you've preserved some of the features of the original keyboard arrangement (e.g., the highest notes now have the string length, tension, voicing, number of strings, etc. usually applied to the lowest notes, and vice versa). Next, you've hired the Taj Mahal for a recording session, and used this transfigured piano for a performance of a piece that can also be played on a regular piano. This is the end result...

"Tablabroke extracts sounds from his piano that almost defy analysis. His emerging 'transfigured piano' series comes from a parallel universe where the piano has been reinvented to tell a story of the darker regions of the human psyche. Listen, for example, to his 2.6.0 Abstract Landscape #1, from Music for an Exhibition, January 2019, and be transported into an inner landscape that simultaneously disturbs and calms, creates and destroys."