Madison Greenstone, clarinet
Members of the MIVOS Quartet
Recorded live at VIPA, Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival, July 2015

Latitudes for clarinet and string trio - Revised(2014)

karst survey [2016]
for 7 instruments & electronics 
commissioned by the [Switch~ Ensemble] [www.switchensemble.com]
Live performance at VIPA Festival (Valencia, Spain)
Mixed/mastered by Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Studio recording available on my portrait disc released by Kairos: www.kairos-music.com/cds/0018003kai

An on-the-ground traversal through a weathered and disconnected terrain; a crawl way suddenly opening up into a cavern; a disappearing river; a compulsive urge for movement; a pushing forward, even if that leads straight down the dark maw of a sinkhole.

More info here: www.timothy-mccormack.com/karstsurvey

karst survey [2016] - the [Switch~ Ensemble]

When We Speak (2016) by Lisa Cheney (Australia, 1987)
for cello and electroacoustic track
Commissioned by the VIPA Festival for Ensemble Interface
Premiered June 30, 2017 in Valencia, Spain
Recording Engineer/Mixed by Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Ensemble Interface
Christophe Mathias, violoncello

PROGRAM NOTES & BIO:
When We Speak for solo cello and electroacoustic track seeks to comment on broader issues surrounding gender inequality and these considerations on my compositional practice. Throughout the work the interweaving of many ‘voices’ is present in: my own musical language, the music and speech of respected Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho, the expression of the live cellist and their own literal voice.  This, at times semi-improvised cello part, weaves its way through an atmospheric soundscape challenging and questioning the role of the live musician to blend in, fight against or rise above the sound world. The accompanying recorded musical sounds are extracted from Saariaho’s own compositions, with special weight placed upon manipulated excerpts from Saariaho’s own solo cello work Sept Papillons.

Lisa Cheney is based in Melbourne. Her music communicates through varied styles which often explore notions of connection and authenticity through fascinations with the ‘edge’ of beauty; expression, poeticism, fragility, delicacy, resonant space, pacing, light and dark and atmospheric soundscapes. Cheney’s work has been described as ‘atmospheres of unfathomable spaciousness’ (Partial Durations), ‘melodic slivers with plaintive intensity’ (The Australian) and ‘fantastic and frightening in its detail and colour’ (Resonate). Her body of work incorporates orchestra, chamber, voice, acousmatic collaborations and works for theatre and ballet. Her music has been commissioned and performed by The Southern Cross Soloists, The Australian Voices, the Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, Plexus, Syzygy Ensemble, Sydney Antiphony, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Ballet amongst others. She is a Director and Curator of Making Waves: an online listening/podcast space dedicated to Australian composition and is currently completing her PhD in Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (MCM), supervised by Elliott Gyger.

When We Speak (2016) by Lisa Cheney - Ensemble Interface

Torso of Air | Stapled Flesh (2017)
written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea & Jean-Philippe Wurtz
commissioned by Festival Musica
Auditorium de France 3 Alsace
October 10, 2017

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4TxcpRNqw4

Keiko Murakami, flutes; Jean-Marc Foltz, clarinets; Philippe Koerper, tenor sax; Deepa Goonetilleke, horn; Thierry Spiesser, trombone; Rémi Durupt & Victor Hocquet, percussion; Marco Fusi & Winnie Huang, violin; Elodie Gaudet, viola; Elsa Dorbath, cello; Sven Kestel, double bass

Desire, though often fleeting, is wrought with substance – a heavy feeling which sits at the pit of your stomach, an obsession that weighs on your mind and which refuses to leave until it does. Desire, though a feeling, is rooted deep in the body, in the flesh of a human being. The erotics of performance, the movement of body, the energy and friction between objects is something that I feel is at the foundation of music-making. After all, is it not this friction that causes vibration to coalesce into what we hear and experience? 

The title of the piece comes from the work of two artists of Asian origin – the young queer Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong and the surrealist, mid-Twentieth century Japanese photographer Kansuke Yamamoto.  Each artists deals with desire and the body by drawing forth the corporeal through the abstract and vice versa. Yamamoto’s piece Stapled Flesh is a photograph of a woman’s back, she is seated, her skin illuminated, her hair falling over her shoulders while a line of fifteen large, rigid staples cut down her spine, creating a visual tension between the ethereal and the somatic. In his piece “Into the Breach,” a poem prefaced by an epigraph by the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, Ocean Vuong opines, “To love another man — is to leave no one behind to forgive me. I want to leave no one behind. To keep & to be kept. The way a field turns its secrets in peonies. The way a light keeps its shadow by swallowing it.” In these final lines, Ocean literally transforms the most ethereal substance – light – into something that possesses a very physical trait – the ability to swallow, which is a behavior that has any number of biological and sexual connotations. In my work, then, I seek to find the narrative tension between substance and non-substance, sound and silence, sheer force and simple ease.  This piece for Ensemble Linea, like my previous piece for the group, is an exercise in musical dramaturgy, except the characters are the performers and the instrument and the drama is the point of contact between them and the sound that results.

Torso of Air | Stapled Flesh

2015: The debut of the Composition Program at the Valencia International Performance Academy will showcase the music of emerging and established composers and offer qualified composition program participants the opportunity to work with VIPA Composition Program faculty members and featured guest composers Stefano Gervasoni and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez in lessons, workshops and masterclasses. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to work with and have one piece performed by our resident performers at one of the VIPA concerts. Resident ensembles include critically-acclaimed NOMOS Ensemble, Eastman BROADBAND Ensemble, NASduo (clarinet+percussion), Alxarq Percussion Trio. VIPA Comp will also offer workshops on contemporary instrumental techniques and notation, orchestration, and career orientation. The program will take place within the state-of-the-art facilities of the Conservatorio Superior de Música Joaquín Rodrigo in the beautiful city of Valencia, Spain. Boasting a breathtaking coastline, a vibrant cultural life and world-class cuisine, Valencia is one of the most sought-after summer destinations in Europe.

When We Speak (2016) by Lisa Cheney - Ensemble Interface

VIPA Festival - Valencia

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