Listening Sky Stones (2023) is a meditation on intimacy, interiority, ritual, engagement, and release. In particular, it is a reflection on the loss of a loved one. For much of the piece, the musicians focus on coloring and shaping individual sounds, disrupted by intermittent interjections of more complex gestures. The piece is scored for clarinet, piano, violin, cello, and computer sounds. Multiphonic notes played by the clarinet act as a symbolic respiration, and other pitch content is largely derived from the frequencies contained in the multiphonics. The electronic part of the piece consists of software that allows the pianist to capture performed notes and extend them in time, giving the piano the ability to sustain notes roughly akin to how the clarinet and strings do so. The pianist sustains and colors these extended notes by performing with a foot controller and wireless handheld sensor. This recording is a live performance by Collide-O-Scope Music, May 2023.
Video of live performance: https://youtu.be/oX-G5TSvR-o

Listening Sky Stones

MUSIC FOR FISH is the only extant recording of Sønreel, an improvisatory experimental electronica band comprised of violinist Maja Cerar and laptop performers Doug Geers and Liubo Borissov.  Sønreel was active 2004-2008, mostly in the USA.

The album is a selection of works compiled from several live studio performances made by the band in late 2004 at the Columbia University Computer Music Center. All performances on this recording were improvised live to two-track digital files.

Original release 2005, EMColl.

Music For Fish

Scylla

The text to these seven songs is from The Book of Nightmares by American poet Galway Kinnell (b. 1927), published in 1971.  The book is a series of ten poems about his children and his sense of their, and his, mortality.  Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight is one of these poems, which itself is divided into seven sections.  Mr. Kinnell has said that he models many of his poetic forms on musical forms, and this poem is essentially a suite of related poems in contrasting moods, similar in some ways to a musical suite. The poem is printed without music at the end of this score, to help one study and interpret the text as a whole.

This song cycle has been written to include computer music "segues" between the songs.  These short segments of 10-30 seconds can be cued from a CD player and include environmental sounds--for instance: wind and rain, crowds of people--and some other tones which are derived from recorded guitar notes.  The idea is that the computer music serve as a setting for the songs, creating mood and context.  These segues also help connect the individual songs into a whole unit, as the poet originally conceived his work (see below).  Moreover, each computer music segment fades out as the subsequent song begins, so that the performers do not have to worry about synchronizing with it.  Though they are not necessary for a performance, the composer encourages the use of the computer music for performances of this work.

Scylla

Sønreel

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