As the tools to create, distribute, and reproduce audio recordings have evolved over the last century, an increasingly large percentage of our listening time has been dedicated to recorded music. Tonight’s program explores the ways in which these sound and media recording and reproduction technologies can be transformed, subverted, and incorporated into live concert performance.
Joshua Fried’s work turns headphones, a technology we typically use to facilitate a private listening experience, into a catalyst for a visceral theatrical performance, while John Cage’s Credo in Us uses common household radios and phonographs as performance instruments. Vermont Counterpoint by Steve Reich brings multi-track recording techniques into the concert hall, combining pre-recorded studio material with live performance to create layers of instrumental textures and gradual changes in the compositional process, an interest stemming from his early experiments with tape loops. evanescence by Gordon Fitzell also brings elements of the recording studio into live performance, inviting an electronic artist to add digital effects and electronic processing to the sounds of an amplified sextet. And following the tradition of accompanying silent films with live music, filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon combine live performance, electronic sound, and a decaying silent film reel to create a haunting reflection on an earlier, analog media era.
These works also demonstrate the ways in which recording technology has influenced how composers approach time in their works. The musical abstractions of rhythmic layering in the Reich, Makan and Fitzell suggest the cut-and-paste splicing techniques of analog tape manipulation and digital audio editing, while Cage’s reliance on radio invites modern sounds on the airwaves to combine with the music he composed in the 1940s. And in Morrison and Gordon’s work, we watch the decaying remnants of an old film as it is recorded onto digital media, a simultaneous act of erosion and preservation.
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John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He left Pomona College early to travel in Europe (1930-31), then studied with Cowell in New York (1933-4) and Schoenberg in Los Angeles (1934): his first published compositions, in a rigorous atonal system of his own, date from this period. In 1937 he moved to Seattle to work as a dance accompanist, and there in 1938 he founded a percussion orchestra. He also began to use electronic devices (variable-speed turntables in lmaginary Landscape no.1, 1939) and invented the 'prepared piano', placing diverse objects between the strings of a grand piano in order to create a percussion orchestra under the control of two hands. He wrote music for dance companies (notably for Merce Cunningham), nearly always for prepared piano or percussion ensemble.
During this period Cage became interested in Eastern philosophies, especially in Zen. Working to remove creative choice from composition, he used coin tosses to determine events (Music of Changes for piano, 1951), wrote for 12 radios (Imaginary Landscape no.4, also 1951) and introduced other indeterminate techniques. His 4'33" (1952) has no sound added to that of the environment in which it is performed; other works show his growing interest in the theatre of musical performance (Water Music, 1952, for pianist with a variety of non-standard equipment) and in electronics (Imaginary Landscape no.5 for randomly mixed recordings, 1952). Cage also appeared widely in Europe and the USA as a lecturer and performer, having an enormous influence on younger musicians and artists; he wrote several books. He delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University in 1988-89.
Styled as “a dramatic playlet for Two Characters,” Cage described Credo in Us (1942) as “a suite with a satirical character.” It was composed to accompany a piece of contemporary dance choreographed by his partner and collaborator Merce Cunningham and choreographer Jean Erdman, who performed the piece at its premiere at Bennington College, Vermont in August 1942. The instrumentation for the original performance included 4 performers: a pianist; two percussionists playing muted gongs, tin cans, electric buzzer and tom-toms; and a performer operating the radio or phonograph (for which Cage suggested Dvorak, Beethoven, Sibelius or Shostakovich). The pianist is also called upon to play the soundbox of the instrument as a percussionist.
Born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1968, Gordon Fitzell is an independent composer and guitarist. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University and a Master of Music degree from the University of Alberta. He did his Doctoral studies in composition and theory at the University of British Columbia, where he studied with Keith Hamel and John Roeder. In addition to these studies, he has participated in a number of workshops, including the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Music, June in Buffalo, the Yale Summer School, the Arraymusic Young Composers Workshop, and a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Ensembles and individuals who have performed Fitzell’s music include eighth blackbird, Roger Admiral, Arraymusic, ECM, Ensemble Symposium, Pro Coro Canada, and the UBC Percussion Ensemble, among others. He currently serves on the faculty of the University of Manitoba.
evanescence (2004) was originally conceived as a live electronics version of violence, an acoustic sextet written in 2001 for eighth blackbird. According to Fitzell: "I was interested in exploring the concept of aesthetic violence. My concern was not with artistic representation of violence, but with violence inherent to the very structure of the art object. What elements conspire to wage aesthetic war in a work of art? How do issues of syntax, perspective, temporality, ideology, morality, politics, and technology foster such a conflict? Is aesthetic violence chaotic or organised? Is it destructive or constructive? Is it repulsive or alluring? How is conflict sublimated?" evanescence was premiered at the 2004 Third Practice Electronic Festival in Virginia. For tonight’s performance, Georgia Tech music technology student Alex Rae has designed software to perform real-time signal processing on the sounds created by the live musicians and to combine these effects with pre-recorded sounds created by the composer.
From his early taped speech pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to his and video artist Beryl Korot's digital video opera Three Tales (2002), Steve Reich's path has embraced not only aspects of Western Classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. Born in New York and raised there and in California, Reich graduated with honors in philosophy from Cornell University in 1957. For the next two years, he studied composition with Hall Overton, and from 1958 to 1961 he studied at the Juilliard School of Music with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Mr. Reich received his M.A. in Music from Mills College in 1963, where he worked with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud. In 1994 Steve Reich was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, and, in 1999, awarded Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et Lettres. The year 2000 brought five additional honors: the Schuman Prize from Columbia University, the Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College, the Regent's Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley, an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts and Musical America's Composer of the Year.
Steve Reich writes: "Vermont Counterpoint (1982) was commissioned by flutist Ransom Wilson and is dedicated to Betty Freeman. It is scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos and one solo part all pre-record on tape, plus a live solo part. The live soloist plays alto flute, flute and piccolo and participates in the ongoing counterpoint as well as more extended melodies. The duration is approximately ten minutes. In that comparatively short time four sections in four different keys, with the third in a slower tempo, are presented. The compositional techniques used are primarily building up canons between short repeating melodic patterns by substituting notes for rests and then playing melodies that result from their combination. These resulting melodies or melodic patterns then become the basis for the following section as the other surrounding parts in the contrapuntal web fade out. Though the techniques used include several that I discovered as early as 1967 the relatively fast rate of change (there are rarely more than three repeats of any bar), metric modulation into and out of a slower tempo, and relatively rapid changes of key may well create a more concentrated and concise impression." Tonight’s performance features a recording created by Jessica Sherwood in collaboration with music technology students and faculty at Georgia Tech, and a video animation designed by Georgia Tech Human-Computer Interaction masters student Matt Gilbert.
Joshua Fried emerged from New York's downtown experimental music and East Village performance art scenes of the 1980s. Fried is known for turning technology on its head, challenging its assumptions, while using machines to accentuate the raw human qualities of live events that are unique to the moment. His work partakes equally of minimalism and the rhythmic experimentation of Nancarrow and his followers, as well as contemporary performance art, dance rhythm and sound processing techniques. Fried's 1986 recording "Jimmy Because," with guest guitarist Fred Frith, was released by Atlantic Records. He is re-mix producer on dance records by They Might Be Giants, Chaka Khan and Ofra Haza. Fried is a recipient of numerous awards including a 1994 NEA Composer's Fellowship, two NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowships, a 1996 Artist Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy, and MacDowell, Yaddo and Djerassi Colony Fellowships. His work has been presented at the Bang On A Can Festival, Music Now Prague, New Music America, Lincoln Center, The Israel Festival (Jerusalem), ICC (Tokyo), John Schaefer's "New Sounds Live" (syndicated on NPR), ISCM's World Music Days Warsaw, plus New York City venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, Knitting Factory, and La MaMa Experimental Theater.
Headset Sextet (1995-2001) is a headphone driven piece. Fried writes, “In a headphone driven performance, performers try to imitate vocal sounds that are played over headphones. The performers have never heard these sounds before, and yet they are asked to reproduce the input as it happens — with every word, pitch and expression accurate and no lag time whatsoever. This last requirement makes the task quite impossible and the result resembles a strange, dramatic and mostly indecipherable new language — even though the source material is, for the most part, plain English. To preserve the necessary element of surprise, each performer can execute a given role only once, or, alternatively, the headphone input must be different from night to night. Mock-up tapes are used for auditions, training and rehearsal. Headphone-driven performance is not an improvisation. The compositions are highly structured; and yet there is not — and cannot be — a written score. Most of the input material is speech, not song, and much of it is highly dramatic. It also focuses attention on the present moment— no one knows what will happen next, and the performers can't afford to look back. The audience shares in the very real sense of tension and danger. Raw emotions become abstracted and aestheticized; vocal behaviors happen that would otherwise simply be unobtainable. This work is part of a continuing interrogation of the basic functions and assumptions of existing equipment. Headphone-driven performance exposes the technology of the recording studio by turning it inside out: recording equipment is normally used to translate what is live and ephemeral into something static (for the purpose of mass production). Here this application is reversed, and machines become the catalyst for a one-time-only live event, exposing raw human qualities in the performer.”
Michael Gordon grew up in the jungle on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. His family moved to Miami Beach when he was 8 years old. In addition to performing on keyboards with the Michael Gordon Band, he writes music for large orchestras and has been performed in Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall in London, and by the Lucerne Symphony, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Oper Aachen, Concerto Koln, The Lithuanian State Symphony, and the American Composers Orchestra, among others. Gordon's work includes Weather with video by Elliot Caplan, Decasia with film by Bill Morrison, and the opera Aquanetta with text by Deborah Artman; Trance for the Icebreaker Ensemble, Potassium for the Kronos Quartet, Love Bead for Ensemble Modern; and with collaborating composers Julia Wolfe and David Lang, Shelter and Lost Objects. Recent and upcoming works include The Sad Park for Kronos, All Vows for cellist Maya Beiser, an evening with choreographers Emio Greco/PC and Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony for the Bamberger Symphony Orchestra. Gordon is a founding member of Bang on a Can. His music is available on Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, and Teldec.
Award winning filmmaker Bill Morrison has eight titles in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, including Outerborough (2005), Light Is Calling (2004), Decasia (2002), and The Film of Her (1996). A member of New York's Ridge Theater since 1990, Morrison's projected set work with the company has been recognized with two Dance Theater Workshop Bessie awards for excellence in theatrical design (1993, 2003), a Village Voice Obie Award for collaborative design (2001), and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art (2003). Morrison's films have been screened in conjunction with live musical performances by The American Composers Orchestra, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bill Frisell Trio, London Sinfonietta, Michael Gordon Band, Mirror, MusikFabrik, Tactus Modern Ensemble, and Wilco. Morrison has received support from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The 2004 NEA Creativity Grant, NYSCA, NYFA and Creative Capital.
Light is Calling (2004) is a collaboration between composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. In the short film, a scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon¹s seven-minute composition. We watch a decomposing black and white film reel of a mysterious encounter between a soldier and a woman. Gordon juxtaposes the romantic solo cello line against a tapestry of studio-based electronic sounds. The beauty of decay is explored through both sonic and visual mediums, a meditation on life and love captured for a fleeting moment, to be eroded by time.
Keeril Makan’s music draws from diverse sources such as Indian classical music, American minimalism, and the European avant-garde. Makan has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, and ODC Theater via a Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA award for a project with choreographer Benjamin Levy. His music has been performed by the New York New Music Ensemble, California EAR Unit, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and Continuum. Makan has participated in the International Gaudeamus New Music Week in Amsterdam, the Aspen Music Festival, and the MATA Festival in New York, among others. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, Berkeley and is presently Assistant Professor of Music at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Managing Editor of Computer Music Journal.
Originally written in 2001, the alternate version of bleed through, performed tonight, was premiered by California EAR Unit in 2004 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The composer describes the work as “…constructed of different types of cyclical processes, with cycles and eddies that expand and contract, break, and more importantly, fold over upon themselves in perpetual varied recurrences. The title bleed through is a metaphorical reference to a type of memory, the way in which experience is shaped by a complex, asymmetrical layering of past and present. Certain musical elements do indeed bleed through, offering an interpretation of everything surrounding them as necessarily unique as individual experience.”
About the Musicians:
Jason Freeman’s (executive director) works break down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. His music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, the So Percussion Group, the Nieuw Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Evan Ziporyn; and his interactive installations and software art have been exhibited at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Boston CyberArt Festival, and the Transmediale Festival and featured in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) (2003), a commission from Turbulence.org, was described by Billboard as “…an example of the web’s mind-expanding possibilities.” Freeman received his B.A. in music from Yale University and his M.A. and D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University. He is currently an assistant professor in the music department at Georgia Tech.
Matt Gilbert (video) studied graphic design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He is currently working towards his masters in Human Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech. He is interested in sound visualization and control, and more recently in augmented craft.
Ted Gurch (clarinet) is Associate Principal/E-flat Clarinetist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1989. Prior to coming to Atlanta, he served for three seasons as Principal Clarinetist with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. He attended the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Stanley Hasty and Charles Neidich, earning a Bachelor's Degree and the Performer's Certificate. While at Eastman he was active as a saxophonist in the school's jazz program, and was a member of the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble. He continues to play saxophone on jazz, pop and classical programs, and has appeared as a concerto soloist with the ASO on saxophone as well as clarinet. An active chamber musician, he is a member of the contemporary music ensembles Thamyris and Bent Frequency in Atlanta, and is a member of Luna Nova, the contemporary music ensemble of the NITLE college association. He is an Artist in Residence at Kennesaw State University, an Artist Affiliate at Emory University and coaches the clarinet section of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Helen Hwaya Kim (violin) made her orchestral debut with the Calgary Philharmonic at the age of six, and has gone on to become a respected and sought-after artist. She recently appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops at Boston's Symphony Hall, as well as with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Kim earned her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Cho-Liang Lin and Dorothy DeLay. She is the recipient of more than one hundred national and international awards. In 1992, she won the prestigious Artists International Competition in New York and, as a result, gave debut recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall and the Aspen Summer Music Festival. A native of Canada, Ms. Kim has been engaged by many of Canada's leading orchestras, including the National Arts Center Orchestra, Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, McGill Chamber Orchestra, and the Windsor, Regina, Victoria and Prince George Symphonies. She has also appeared with the Dekalb, New Orleans, Aspen and Banff Festival Orchestras, and with orchestras in the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. Ms. Kim has toured extensively throughout Canada and the United States, including performances at Alice Tully Hall and the Sante Fe and La Jolla International Music Festivals, where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin, Gary Hoffman, Andre Previn, and the Orion String Quartet. She performed Bach’s Double violin concerto with Hilary Hahn at the 2002 Amelia Island Chamber music festival. Ms. Kim has been profiled on national and international television and has appeared on CBC, PBS and CBS networks. Her performances have been aired on NPR and CBC radio networks. Ms. Kim currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia where she served as assistant and associate concertmaster for the Atlanta Symphony for three seasons. She is currently the assistant concertmaster of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and teaches violin and chamber music at Kennesaw State University.
Lisa Leong (piano) has worked with composers such as John Cage, Mario Davidovsky, Steven Stucky, Gunther Schuller, Alvin Singleton and Chen Yi. Her interest in new music has led to performances with the Auros Group for New Music and Underground Composers in Boston, Ensemble X, Mother Mallard’s Portable masterpiece, Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players, Milwaukee Symphony clarinetist William Helmers, Thamyris, and Soli. As a winner of the Schubert Club’s Young Artist of the Year, she appeared as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In June 2004, she appeared at the Institute and Festival of Contemporary Performance at Mannes College in New York, alongside members of Speculum Musicae. Her performances have been broadcast on Radio France, WGBH in Boston, Georgia Public Radio’s “Atlanta Music Scene,” and recorded by National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”. Ms. Leong is Artist Affiliate at Emory University and adjunct faculty at Clayton State University. She graduated with an MM in Piano Performance at New England Conservatory where she studied with Veronica Jochum and Stephen Drury. She is also the pianist and artistic board member of Atlanta-based ensemble Bent Frequency.
Alex Rae (live electronics) is a masters student in music technology at Georgia Tech.
Brad Ritchie (cello) is from Portland, Oregon and is in his eighth season with the Atlanta Chamber Players and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University, where he studied with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Janos Starker. His graduate degree was earned at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, where he studied with Adriana Contino. As a member of the Felici String Quartet, Mr. Ritchie was a winner of the Kuttner String Quartet scholarship at Indiana University and subsequently played in Japan, France and Germany. Prior to coming to Atlanta, he was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. He has twice performed chamber music on Japanese TV and recorded a CD in Tokyo, Chocolate Fashion. In the spring of 2001, he was featured in an ACP performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra. Over the past five seasons, Mr. Ritchie has also collaborated with performers in Mammoth Lakes, Ca. as part of the Chamber Music America Rural Residency Program.
Charles Settle (percussion) is in his third year as percussionist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Before coming to Atlanta, he was a member of the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas from 2000-2004. At New World, Charles worked with Jack Van Geem and Nancy Zeltsman on Tilson Thomas's "Island Music" for four Marimbas and two Percussion with premiere performances in Miami Beach, PASIC '03 and two performances in Carnagie Hall. He also performed regularly with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Charles attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA and studied with the late Michael Bookspan and Don Liuzzi. Charles was born in Princeton, KY and first studied music with his mother and a local piano teacher before starting percussion lessons with his uncle in the fifth grade.
Jessica Peek Sherwood (flute) has been Principal Flute with the Cobb Symphony Orchestra since the 2000-2001 season. An active free-lance musician, she has performed with the Atlanta, Alabama, and Charleston Symphony Orchestras, the Atlanta Opera Orchestra, as well as Thamyris New Music Ensemble. Prior to moving to Atlanta, Ms. Sherwood performed extensively throughout the South Florida region, including work with the New World Symphony and the Naples Philharmonic. She held the Principal Piccolo position with the Ann Arbor, Flint, and Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestras while living in Michigan. Chamber music performances include the Renaud Chamber Orchestra (Lansing, Michigan), Michigan Chamber Players (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and the Contemporary Arts Octet (Ann Arbor, Michigan). She currently serves as chamber music coach and woodwind coordinator for the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Dozier Centre for Performing Arts (Kennesaw, Georgia) and teaches a large studio of private flute students. A native of Philadelphia, Ms. Sherwood received her Bachelor of Music from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she graduated a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda Honor Society. Her primary teachers include the late Clement Barone, Kazuo Tokito and David Cramer.
Tom Sherwood (percussion) is the Principal Percussionist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. A native of Fairfax, Virginia, his musical career began at a young age when he discovered his father’s old drum set packed away in the garage. He graduated with his Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. A student of Tom Siwe, he was the youngest recipient of the Edgar Varese Memorial Scholarship. He went on to earn his Master of Music from Temple University, where he studied with Alan Abel (former Associate Principal Percussionist of the Philadelphia Orchestra). Tom made his solo debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the 2004-2005 season, performing Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Robert Spano. He can be heard with the ASO on Telarc and Deutsche Grammophon recordings. Prior to joining the ASO, Tom performed regularly with the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, and was also a member of the New World Symphony. An active teacher and clinician, he has presented masterclasses at the 2001 and 2003 Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. Tom is an endorser of Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments.