Concert and Installations

Concert: Sound and Space

Beth Griffith, soprano
Chris Chafe, electronic cello

Featuring multi-channel electroacoustic, instrumental and vocal works by Chris Chafe, Paulo C. Chagas, John McGuire, Pedro Rebelo and Barry Truax.

May 11, 8 pm
ARTS Building Performance Lab, ARTS 166
Free Admission: Limited seating, no latecomers - arrive early to ensure admission.
Parking: $5 in Lot 1

The Shaman Ascending (2004-05)
Barry Truax
electronic music (8 channels)
16:00

Resonant Air (2000)
Michael Alcorn
electronic music (stereo)
12:00

Migration (1995-97)
Paulo C. Chagas
electronic music (8 channels)
24:19

INTERMISSION

Carbon Path (2002)
Chris Chafe
for electronic cello and DVD
12:00

A Cappella (1995-1997)
John McGuire
for soprano and playback
26:54

 

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Concert Program Notes

The Shaman Ascending (2004-05)
Barry Truax

Premiered, Karlsruhe, February 2005

The Shaman Ascending evokes the imagery of a traditional shaman figure chanting in the quest for spiritual ecstasy. However, in this case, the listener is placed inside of a circle of loudspeakers with the vocal utterances swirling around at high rates of speed and timbral development. The work proceeds in increasing stages of complexity as the shaman ascends towards a higher spiritual state.

The work and its title are inspired by a pair of Canadian Inuit sculptures by John Terriak with collectively the same name, as well as Inuit throat singing. All of the vocal material heard in the piece is derived from recording of the Vancouver bass singer Derrick Christian.

The Shaman Ascending was commissioned by the ZKM (Center for Arts and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany.

Resonant Air (2000)
Michael Alcorn

This piece explores the concept of ‘containers’ as resonators of sound. The wooden body of a violin or any other stringed instrument, the metal or wooden tube of a woodwind or brass instrument and the shell of a percussion instrument or drum are all specially tuned ‘containers’ designed to amplify and enhance the timbral qualities of the sounds produced when the instruments are played.

In this piece I have used very simple containers such as jam jars, metal tins, wooden boxes and other objects to act as resonators for the source sounds that are used in the piece. The resultant sounds are subjected to further transformation using a computer to act as a ‘virtual resonator’ (for example adding reverberation, filtering and time-stretching).

This work was commissioned by 2000 Galway Arts Festival with funds provided by the Arts Council of Ireland.

Migration (1995-97)
Paulo C. Chagas

Premiered, Cologne, June 1998

The piece reflects on the idea of migration as a positive process of reconstruction and re-organization of the physical and social environment. Migration stands simultaneously for diversity and transformation of the genetic and cultural heritage.

The music is inspired by the novel The Library of Babel (1941) by the Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges. It describes an infinite and totalitarian library representing both order and chaos in the universe. The basic material of the piece consists on the recording of the text in four languages (German, Spanish, English and French) with both a female and a male speaker, and also piano sounds played both by the keyboard and inside the instrument.

The composition develops a multi-layered structure of sound migrations at the level of both individual sound objects and sound structures. Speech and piano sounds are processed through different kinds of spectral techniques such as temporal compression/expansion, filtering, cross-synthesis, etc. The processes of spectral transformation generate sound families, hybrid sounds, sound mutations and metamorphoses which are quite different from their primary sources.

Migration was conceived for a circle of 12 speakers surrounding the audience. The composition is organized as a circular, polyphonic 12 channels sound space, for instance, by correlating the spectral transformations with the de-composition of the sound in the space or by developing movement of rotations as thematic elements. Geometric figures, such as hexagons or quadrilaterals, open up sound spaces in various sizes and qualities for the migrations.

Beside the original 12-channel version, the electronic music Migration has been produced in version of 8 and 5.1 channels. In this concert, we are listening to the 8 channels version.

Carbon Path for electronic cello and DVD (2002)
Chris Chafe

Premiered, Kyoto, August, 2002

The quality of the air we breath depends on a balance of plant and
animal life. Oxygen Flute is an interactive computer music environment
that makes the exchange of gases audible. Carbon Path is a concert
version that explores this interplay, and some of its extremes, through
image and performance.

The Oxygen Flute installation has been on exhibit twice. Visitors enter
a chamber with bamboo and four continuously performing
(digitally-modeled) flutes. Patterns in levels of carbon dioxide
measured inside the chamber create the music. The computer flutes are
played both in real time and from the accumulated history of
fluctuations recorded in the space. Visitors to the flute gain a
qualitative feeling for the interdependence of respiration between
plants and animals and the carbon / oxygen exchange that takes place.

The same real-time digital music synthesis algorithm provides an
on-stage version of Oxygen Flute. Video clips of bamboo inside the
installation and from bamboo forests are sources of motion and musical
gesture. In a complementary fashion, musical material generated by the
algorithm and played on the celletto become a source of imagery.

A Cappella for soprano and Playback (1995-97)
John McGuire

Premiered, Cologne, June, 1997

A Cappella was commissioned by the West German Radio, Cologne, and realized in the Studio for Electronic Music at the radio from 1995 to 1997.  It was written for and first performed by Beth Griffith at the Cologne Triennale in July, 1997. The production of A Cappella was begun in January 1995 in the Studio for Electronic Music, West German Radio, with a series of digital recordings ("samples") of single tones sung by the soprano Beth Griffith.  Each tone was recorded three times, for each of three vowels e, ah and u.  The recordings were combined into three digital "instruments", each with its own vowel color and with a range identical to that of the singer.  Sets of sounds were taken from this material and woven into strands of changing vowel colors.  The strands were then overlaid and synchronized to form the polyphonic sequences of two artificial choruses.  In performance the sequences are played back over loudspeakers and mixed with the live voice of the singer.

The relationship of the soloist to her own playback or "choruses" takes the form of a series of calls and responses in which the soloist exchanges first with one chorus, then with the other, in alternation.  During an exchange between the soloist and one of the choruses the other chorus continues a rhythmic process initiated by the soloist in the previous exchange, and vice-versa.

The two choruses are different and variable with respect to speed, register and position.  One chorus is by turns either faster or slower, higher or lower than the other chorus, and moving away from or toward the soloist.  The soloist's role is chameleonic, taking on the characteristics of whichever chorus she is exchanging with: high and fast, high and slow, low and fast, low and slow, while acting as a point of orientation for the choruses’ motion.  The chorus exchanging with the singer is closer to her than the other chorus; when the choruses switch roles they also switch positions, passing through one another in space over harmonic bridges.  To this extent the music is choreographed.

--John McGuire, July 1997

 

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Video Installation

Ut Coelum
Video installation by Marsia Alexander-Clarke

May 11, 12-11pm & May 12, 12- 6pm
ARTS Building, Room 215

Parking: Permits available at Information Kiosks

Formed from a recording of an a cappella women’s choir singing Ut Coelum, composed by Ethan Nasreddin-Longo, twelve monitors display fragments of video and sound, layered and repeated, set in fields of color which constantly shift and change.

In Ut Coelum, Alexander-Clarke brings together different elements of state-of-the-art technology (digital imaging, high-speed information processing), as well as the markers of that technology, monitors, computes, video projections, stereophonic sound to create something that seems profoundly old. While reminiscent of feminist and women-centered art work of the late twentieth century, Ut Coelum's complex repetitions and variations on image, music and text, its arrangement of physical space and its collaborations between visual artist, composer and performers embrace and exceed such categorization.

More than anything, Ut Coelum is a place for contemplation and marvel. Like those ancient oracles who spoke in riddles, Ut Coelum refuses to grant clear and definite meaning, instead the viewer must embrace it as experience felt across the senses. Alexander-Clarke's installation brings together modern technologies and schools of expression to remind us of the transformative powers of the visual and the aural, of architecture and time.

 

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Sound Installation

The Voice of the Planet is the Muse

May 11 & 12, 12-6pm
ARTS Building Outdoor Stage
Free Admission
Parking: Permits available at Information Kiosks

A compilation of soundscape art compositions, including “straight” field recordings of particularly intense or subtle sonic interest, layered and transformed mixes of field recordings, and music informed by nature.  “Wild,” urban, village, and ambiguous soundscapes will all be part of this repeating 90-minute installation; the common theme is listening, and responding to the sounding world with diverse creative impulses.

Featuring compositions and excerpts from many soundscape artists.  Edited by Jim Cummings, founder of EarthEar, a soundscape art catalog and label.

http://www.EarthEar.com

 

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