Season Sponsor
DR. BRICE ADDISON
Exploring music that includes added sights and sounds, including a work by Jacob Druckman, whose music is known for dramatic sonic impact.
FRIDAY
Alliance for Youth
3220 11th Avenue S
SUNDAY
First Congregational Church
2900 9th Ave S
Chinook Winds
Program Notes
Rodrigo Sigal
Power Nap
For wind and electroacoustic quintet
(flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon)
An intense nap can be a healing experience or it can wipe out the rest of our energies. The work tries to visit the sound experience of the dream. The instruments are trapped in a virtual and digital world without being able to rid themselves of the bursts of information that the brain processes while resting without reaching a deep sleep. Power Nap is like an aural summary of a day full of sound impulses that are organized in random ways but with different meanings. The work was commissioned by the Quintet of Mexico City in 2004 and will be available soon on compact disc. (rodrigosigal.com)
I consider it as a piece that belongs to a cycle of mixed chamber works in which I explored the way to integrate sound sources that contain a certain meaning or specific cultural "baggage" (read commercial rhythms, voices of the Dalai Lama, etc) and in this way represent in a short period what a collection of dreams would be. It's like recapping a bit of the experience of being awake in a short time. The quintet is treated as the central unifying element of everything that happens. Using timbral convergences and height above all, I tried to create a context in which the quintet can survive in a world like the present one.
Notes by Rodrigo Sigal
Viet Cuong
Naica for Bass Clarinet & Electronics
The crystal caves of Naica provided amazing visual inspiration for my first venture into composing music with live interactive electronics. A simple gate-in and gate-out object in Max MSP creates a delay that initiates an unchanging tempo for the duration of the piece. Therefore, harmonies must shift using common tones and are always built upon the notes preceding them.
Notes by Viet Cuong
Stuart Breczinski
Fantasie for Bassoon & Electronics
In music, a “Fantasie” indicates that a piece is free in form, impromptu-like, or exploratory. This piece embraces those characteristics and allows the performer quite a bit of liberty in expression. The electronic component mirrors and morphs that expression, adding layers of complexity until it is nearly impossible to differentiate the sound created in real time by the bassoon and the electronics that amplify captured sounds from earlier in the performance. In this way, the fantasy is deepened and intensified, and it becomes less clear what is “real” and what isn’t.
From the composer: “There are two components to these electronics: delays and pitch shifting. Throughout the piece, the performer will be playing in tandem with a delayed copy of their own performance. It begins the piece playing very closely behind the player, lags further and further behind the player over the course of three minutes, and then begins to get closer to the player’s sound from that point onward (though it never catches up again).”
Notes by Natalie Law and Stuart Breczinski