New Recordings!

Hello all,

Here are some new recordings to listen to:

Database of Intention (2008)
The two texts for this piece were selected from the roughly 2 million search records of America Online users that were accidentally made available to the public last year. The searches span over a three month period and here I've scaled them down to 14 minutes, maintaining their relative durations.

Performed at The Pescadrome by Beth McMullen, Michael Deragon and myself at AUX.

Duet for Violin and Live Electronics (2007)
Performed by me on laptop and Andrew Tholl on violin.

Live Improvisation at Dangerous Curve, Los Angeles (2007)
A live improvisation with Casey Anderson (Sax), Megan Fong (Vln), Aakash Israni (Bass), Qasim Naqvi (drumset) and me on laptop with two game controllers.

Also a few pictures from the AUX performance (thanks to Christopher Jette for these):



Waldorf Statlir (Christopher Jette and Nicholas Wymbs)


Beth and Michael performing Database of Intention


Me performing


Mark Trayle

Fractal Plane

I just had a performance of my new piece "Fractal Plane" written for flute, viola, cello, piano and conductor.

Here it was performed by the New Century Players (Flute: Rachel Rudich, Viola: Mark Menzies, Cello: Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, Piano: Dzovig Markarian, Conductor: David Rosenboom).

Hope you enjoy:

Fractal Plane

Notes from the program: The title of this piece relates to the self-similar nature of the pitch material, derived from a fractal algorithm, which is used by all members of the ensemble.

New Performances and New Lessons

Hello all,

I've got a few performances coming up I thought I'd mention here.
This Sunday, January 27th 7pm, I'm playing with an improv quintet (Violin, Sax, Bass, Drums and laptop) at Dangerous Curve in LA. We'll be playing alongside Ulrich Krieger and Daren Burns. Should be a good show.

On February 11th at 8pm is a concert of student compositions performed by the New Century Players. I'll be premiering my new piece "Fractal Plane" for Flute, Viola, Cello, and Piano. It will take place in Roy O. Disney Concert Hall of CalArts.

On March 8th I'll be playing a new piece for electronics at the Pescadrome in Santa Barbara (101 S. Quarantina) alongside Christopher Jette, Mark Trayle and Sam Fischmann.

Mid-March will hopefully see the premiere of my new Violin + Electronics duo here on campus as well. I'll post when that becomes more final.

As to my recent activity in life:
I've recently been heavily involved with SuperCollider which I've been dying to get into for a few years and I'm loving it. There's something very liberating about working directly in code without the issues inherent in working in a graphical synthesis environment. Although I'll still be using Max/MSP quite heavily. They make a good pair, especially since I'm on Windows.

For the past week school has been in session with something called Interim. Basically two weeks of workshops before the semester starts. I've been taking a SuperCollider class, and attended masterclasses with Roger Reynolds (who was fantastic). I've also been taking an interesting class on New Media with Morton Subotnick and have been enjoying that. A class on field recording aesthetics was really interesting as well. This week I'm gonna go over the music of Lachenmann and learn to play the accordion (a lifelong dream) as well as continue with my current classes.

Next semester is equally exciting. Looks like lots of programming, performing and reading cool things.

Anyway, not too much else. Just busy working on a couple new pieces for the coming months.

The Renaissance of Violence

I have to say, reading "Noise: A Political Economy of Music" is great. Its actually an exciting read. Here's a quote from the chapter on the repetitive economy:

"We can deduce from the preceding discussion that if the 'Suicide Motels' were to undergo a rapid development, and if it came to the point that one could buy or sell the rights to use them, the arms race would automatically come to a halt..."

Sounds like a great business venture!
Another choice quote:

"Consumers - a necessary detour in commodity consumption, until it is discovered how to produce them as well - could be replaced by machines...the commodity could be replaced by the pure sign, a convenient way to stockpile - record jackets; tickets for travel, restaurants, clothes, life, death; passports; love certificates. The political economy of nonsense will have been founded: without man or merchandise."

Music Students, Varese and AOL

Its been an interesting week here. Yesterday I spent half the day at the Saturday Conservatory of Music in Pasadena giving placement exams and helping kids with music stuff. I was subbing for my friend Jason McKee-Ota and had expected to be teaching a class on Harmony but on arrival found out that they were re-testing everyone into classes. I was kind of excited about teaching but I had fun nonetheless. Its really great to see programs like this in action. Its also an interesting look at the way music is being taught to young people. It seems that classical music (as in Mozart) dominates and the idea that music after 1900 or so exists is not explained at all. I got to have a long conversation with a fellow composer about the state of music education and its problems over a pastrami sandwich and a gigantic tub of chili-cheese fries (which was enough for the next year I think). In one conversation with faculty I mentioned that I was going to see the LA Phil play Varese's "Amerique" on Sunday and was met with the response "hmm.. never heard of Varese." That threw me back a bit. I don't know why but I thought he was a pretty big composer in the music world. Big enough to at least be a familiar name.

As I'm writing this I just got back from the concert conducted by David Robertson along with Crumb's "A Haunted Landscape," Zappa's "Dupree's Paradise," and Copland's "City." The performance was fantastic and I particularly enjoyed the Crumb. We grabbed some student rush tickets and lucked out with some great seats up front. It was nice to get blasted with Varese's extended percussion section.

This past month I've been working on about 3 pieces concurrently and as I speak I'm loading about 2 million records into a database for some data mining. The data comes outta this.
I find it a bit disturbing, especially since while this data is theoretically anonymous, with little to no effort each record can be traced back to its origin. It is, however, interesting data and certainly is a nice glimpse into internet surfing in the country.

Things

Jacques Attali
Phenomenology
Particles
Time
Chili-Cheese Dogs

For Violin and Computer

I've been working a lot lately in improvised music, electronic music instruments and highly interactive music. So far it's taking me down the roads of interactive musical installations, 5 years of study in central Javanese, Sundanese, Malaysian, and Cirebonese gamelan (the latter containing the majority of the improvisatory material), and installation-style electronic music improvisations. These days though I've been working more with electronic solo improv along with various other combinations of instruments. This year I'll be getting together with a saxophone player (Casey) and a violinist (Megan) on Saturday mornings to practice and really develop music out of our own ideas.

Anyway after some working with a patch I created for performance, I've started to get a hang of it's nature. I think the patch itself, in a way, replaces a score as it limits the outcome and while there are many possible outcomes, they all seem to retain a similarity. I may post a few iterations of this piece but here's the first I've recorded. As usual in these sort of things, the best versions tend to occur when I'm not recording, but I think that's one of the great things about the form. I hope you enjoy:


For Violin and Computer (Oct30th2007)- 26'22"