Tag Composition

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DIAMOND VARIATIONS: Activated Memory I & II by Sabrina Ratté

Dec 31, ’11 4:45 PM

Activated Memory is a two video project based on animated photographs of different parks and buildings of Montreal. Through the use of video feedback, 3D animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of “reality” subsist. The music accompaniment is composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.

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Article on Robert Ashley’s “That Morning Thing” in Performa Magazine

Nov 22, ’11 7:18 PM

I did a short write-up on Robert Ashley‘s opera “That Morning Thing” at the Kitchen. (Audio of the original 1969 production at Mills College is available here.) The show was organized as part of the performance art biennial Performa, and the article appears in their publication, Performa Magazine. Teaser below, full review here.

Robert Ashley’s opera That Morning Thing is a rumination on spoken language. Split into three acts and an epilogue, the first piece “Frogs” sets the tone by motioning toward the inevitable misunderstandings and inconsistencies of language. The composition is introduced by audio of various frog species croaking, most likely sampled from scientific recordings, which then gives way to an essay read aloud by a man in a suit. Delivered in a resounding voice and assertive manner, the essay discusses the inadequacy of language to communicate human thought. Four men in a row repeat the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and after multiple repetitions, their sounds begin to recall a chorus of frogs. At the same time, a group of women in matching white dresses and rounded goggles, with their hands held up in front of them with open faced palms, walk in robotic lock step. Periodically, the female dancers collide with another and connect hands, an action that triggers flashing lights on the goggles. Their movements seemed both random and controlled, as if they were directed by a larger system. The chance connections between dancers remind the viewer that despite the obstacle of miscommunication, understanding is possible.

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Matrix III (1972) – John Whitney

Apr 13, ’09 12:08 PM

graphics programming by Dean Anschultz music by Terry Riley

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Interview with Walter Branchi

Jan 5, ’08 4:14 PM

Walter Branchi is a renown Italian electronic music composer. Since the 1960s, his contributions to improvisation and musical theory have been widely recognized. He’s founded and co-founded a variety of initiatives, including the Studio R7 in Rome, LEMS (Laboratorio Elettronico per la Musica Sperimentale / Electronic Studio for Experimental Music), the electroacoustic music association Musica Verticale and the conference Musica/Complessita. He was a member of the freeform group Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza for nearly ten years, and was also a member of the Gruppo Intercodice ALTRO from 1973 to 1977. He has performed and taught internationally over the span of his career.

During the month of January, Branchi will show five selections from his larger work Intero at the Brooklyn sound and intermedia gallery Diapason. Intero is a constantly evolving, unfinished composition which Branchi began almost thirty years ago.

Please explain what Intero is exactly.

“Intero” means Whole or Entire. It is the title of an on-going composition started in 1979 (while I was a visiting professor at Princeton University) and still going on. It is a huge composition, made up of many parts which may be performed separately but are not isolated from one another.

How does Intero fit into your larger approach to composition?

After almost thirty years of composing in the same musical dimension, I have to say that this way of composing is now deeply rooted in my way of conceiving music and I still find it exciting and full of surprises. But during the sixties and seventies I wrote many compositions for traditional instruments and for different ensembles. In those years I was also a member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

How did the concept for Intero begin?

It began when I decided to start using an electrodigital “system of sound” and stopped using mechanical or electro-mechanical or even electronic systems of sounds (instruments) for my compositions. The electrodigital solution was the only one possible if I wanted to compose within sound and not with sounds.
The strength of a system of sound is that it permits the invention of forms by composing within sound, from inside. The principle difference between composing within sound and with sounds is the level of resolution that can be applied to the musical material; the passage is from an atomistic concept of music, in which the sound represents the smallest indivisible entity, to a sub-atomic concept, in which the creation of the sound is the aim of the compositional process.

How has the piece evolved?

I started organizing a virtual system of sound relationship. It means that I decided on a configuration of numerical proportions capable of regulating all the musical parameters of all the compositions that can be generated from that system. Practically, every composition I composed is a different face of the same system of sound. I think of my music as a single great composition formed of parts that can be performed separately but are not isolated from one another.

I think of my music as a whole (as an “Intero”) which will take my entire life to compose and which will never be completed. “Un grande canto” where every part includes the whole and is included by it. Every such part can be performed singly, in sequence or in counterpoint with the other parts of the whole. I think of my music as a contribution, a music of all music where every whole is part of an ever greater whole.

Can you tell me a little bit about the five pieces installed at Diapason?

The five pieces of “Intero” are five parts of the same generating system I just explained and the sequence I prepared for the Diapason Gallery is mainly based on the idea of small contrasts.

Have you presented Intero in this way before?

No. I presented Intero during the last “Ear to the Earth Festival”, but never in a gallery for sound and also the sequence was different.

Do you have any plans to present Intero in New York in the near future?

A very good friend of mine proposed to perform a part of Intero every time I am in New York.

Interview conducted via email on January 3, 2008

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