About grey angel (2001) by Christopher DeLaurenti
grey angel reflects my interest in updating the musician-plus-tape genre of electroacoustic music by distorting and blurring the perceptible distinction between what is ‘live’ and prerecorded, two categories which are ultimately meaningless to a truly attentive and absorbed listener. Through the use of deeply reductive materials, I intended the score of grey angel to foster imaginative, out-of-the-box interpretation and improvisation with electronics.
-Christopher DeLaurenti
About Cyclic Complement (2010) by Angelique Poteat
In Cyclic Complement, Angelique Poteat unites two of her passions: bass clarinet and bicycles. The piece emphasizes the rhythmic aspects of cycling, and juxtaposes that with a drawn-out focus on pitch with the bass clarinet. To complement each other, a rhythmic motive is utilized by both recorded bicycle sounds and the bass clarinet. Basic extended techniques on the bass clarinet, such as slap-tonguing and flutter-tongue, attempt to remove the instrument from its fixation on pitch and place it in a more percussive, transitory world. Conversely, by speeding up some of the bicycle sounds and bringing out a variety of frequencies, every-day bicycle noises are converted to pitch-based music, uniting melodically with the bass clarinet.
– Angelique Poteat
About find — viola ( / cello / bass) and electronics (2019, rev. 2021) by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti
Original viola and electronics version commissioned by Kieran Welch. Bass and fixed media version commissioned by Shangri La. Special thanks to sound engineer Greg Heimbecker for recording, to Adam Morford for the use of his Morf-enhanced electric guitar that is featured in the electronics, and to Nina C. Young for creating the patch for the live electronics.
find is about the illusion of repetition—remembering, altering, trying to hold on.
– Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti
About Inference Engines (2022) by Yiğit Kolat
An inference engine is a component of a neural network that infers new information based on what it has learned. This piece features three inference engines. The first inference engine is the musician’s mind that is able to generate new musical expressions based on a score provided for this piece. The second inference engine is an artificial neural network that outputs changing, evolving excerpts of musical notation.
The third inference engine is a facial recognition network that is unable to recognize and distinguish black faces due to biased training. The output of this network is routed into a secondary network which processes audio. The result is a distortion effect, applied to the soloist’s sound. The distortion emerges as an independent element that disrupts the musical experience for both listeners and performers. While it is an inescapable part of the overall experience, the distortion is not part of the musical process—it does not interact with the musical narrative or with the soundscape. It exists as an inherent flaw in the system, like the sonic artifacts of a damaged speaker.
This deliberate distancing between the musical process and the sound effect serves to emphasize the essential identity of the distortion as an output of a faulty neural network. Its separate and insistent presence reminds us the very real consequences of using such networks. In 2020, Robert Julian-Borchak was arrested from his home, in front of his wife and young children, and wrongfully imprisoned, when facial recognition software powered by a neural network with similar biases, misidentified him. Mr. Julian-Borchak’s experience was possibly the first known instance of such misidentification by law enforcement, but certainly will not be the last.
Today, despite all efforts, the “distortion” still remains.
– Yigit Kolat
About echo fantasia V (2018) by Maria-Eva Houben
echo fantasy V is part of a series: the echo fantasies I – VI were composed in 2018 for several instrumentations, some of them are dedicated to the ensemble Ordinary Affects (USA), in connection with a project in Boston during October 2018. Playing the organ, I joined the group Ordinary Affects (Morgan Evans-Weiler, violin; Laura
Cetilia, cello; J.P.A. Falzone, vibraphone/piano; Luke Martin, guitar) during our trip in Boston and to New York, Middletown, and Hannover. In Middletown we had a beautiful recording of the fantasies I, IV, V, and other pieces (edition wandelweiser EWR 1904-05). One notice in the score might be a path into the piece, for performers as well as for listeners: “nothing more than a vibrating standstill.”
– Eva-Maria Houben
About WAR (2022) by Darius Jones
Darius Jones has created a new minimalist work titled WAR for the Seattle Modern Orchestra. WAR explores the sonic palette of sustained intensity and aggression in an orchestral environment. This work attempts to elicit the same emotional weight of the battle cry and lay bare the ominous reality of impending conflict.
What does it mean to prepare for WAR? It’s not just the physical but the psychological aspect of confronting sustained conflict, violence, and the reality of death; how often we confront these elements is dependent on who we are within a society or community. This piece commands the ensemble to prepare for WAR.
-Darius Jones