CCRMA

Digital Music under the Stars - 2000

July 20, 2000, Thrusday at 8pm

Perhaps digital music is the result of computer synthesized sound, digital signal processing or musical structures stored on hard drives or compact discs. But being the subject matter of this summer concert, digital music has a broader meaning at CCRMA. It is the expression of a group of people working to breed compositions and musical gadgets which make numbers and equations a musical gesture. The works in this concert have inherited an amazing set of techniques mostly developed by the science of music which indeed would not have happened if there were not tools in the domains of frequency modulation, a great variety of filtering techniques, and most recently the ability to compose with physical models of acoustic instruments and the waveguide mesh, in addition to current research in perception and expression modeling. This concert includes state of the art pieces for violin and media, as well as computer generated pieces using real or modeled sounds of musical instruments, and expression of enfolding sound around a listening space as a crucial accidental in all compositions.

For more information, please contact the Stanford Music Department at (650) 723-3811.

where's the Knoll ?


Program
Fortepiano (2000) -- Oded Ben-Tal
Gravitational Tapestry 2 (2000) -- Chrysa Prestia
I was Born on Jupiter (2000) -- Jonathan Kirk
Gag Order (2000) -- Peer Landa
Interval
Double Mirror (2000) -- John Forsee
Straw-berri (1997) -- Juan Reyes
ChAnGEs (1997) -- Joe Anderson

Fortepiano

for 4-channel tape

Oded Ben-Tal

'Fortepiano' alternates between two moods. The first is loud and diverse, the second is soft and introverted. As the piece enfolds the evolution of each element is affected by the presence of the other. Most of the sound material is generated by granulating piano sounds, done in CLM. I am very grateful to my colleagues at CCRMA for helpful suggestions and valuable comments, and especially to Fernando Lopez-Lascano.

Born in Israel in 1969, Oded Ben-Tal studied music and physics in Jerusalem. Since 1997 he is a doctoral student at Stanford university. He recently received the ASCAP standard award for composition. Last year his music was featured in workshops in The Netherlands and Israel, as well as here at Stanford.

Gravitational Tapestry 2

for tape

Chrysa Prestia

Gravitational Tapestry 2 is a byproduct of a project for live electronics and voice commissioned by New York based sound artist Haleh Abghari. Essentially, it is an exercise in compositional constraint; only a small portion of vocal techniques and range is represented by the sampled material on which this piece is based.

GT2 is composed entirely of vocal utterances, deliberately left unprocessed except for a few discrete micro-variations in pitch. Technology plays a nontransformational role in the profile of the musical material; it functions instead as the fundamental tool in the creation of a virtual ensemble whose physiognomy and autistic precision would be distorted if recreated by other means. Thus the piece has suggested the appellation "computer-assisted acoustic music". As such, it is a sort of excursion into the known territory of musique concrete. But still hidden in this broader realm, an infinite variety of worlds rich with diversity flourish in miniature, still unexhausted. Perhaps this is a brief vision of one such land.

Chrysa Prestia is currently doing doctoral work at Stanford University and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. A native of Maryland, Prestia studied music and cognitive science at Hampshire College, composition at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (BA 1997) where she was a Provost Research Fellow, and electroacoustic music and digital arts at the Audiovisual Institute of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain (MA 1999). Her work, consisting of instrumental music, electroacoustic music, and multimedia art, has been performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. One aspect of her current compositional work is the incorporation of mathematical systems and computer-assisted algorithms to create multi-layered formal structures that model the behaivioral and structural complexity of organic systems. In addition to her work as a composer, Prestia is Managing Editor of Computer Music Journal.

I was Born on Jupiter

for violin and tape

Yasmin Craig, violin

Jonathan Kirk

I once had a mind-altering dream that I lived in Outer Space. I slept, ate,lived, and breathed in the void of the cold, black, and infinite realm of undifferentiated nothingness. This piece was conceived with these thoughts and memories in mind. Even the opening 'motive' was inspired by Gustav Holst's 'Jupiter' from his symphonic suite 'The Planets.' But because this piece is human and written for another human, it has human elements as well. The 'Turkish' melodies that appear and vanish and come in and out of and from space were written for Yasmin (for she is Turkish) ... some of them are hers', and some my own. It was illogically conceived and breathed on its own. It developed from dreams and nights of staring up into the homeland. As Sun Ra would say, "Space is the Place." The music is a story, a pulse, a memory, a dream, and a vision of Outer Space...that is where it comes from. And I was born on Jupiter. - J. Kirk

Jonathan Kirk,a native of Illinois was born in 1975. He is an active performer and improviser on the trombone, euphonium, and bass trumpet and has written in a diverse number of styles and media, including jazz, music for dance and film scoring. Primarily self-taught as a composer, his works have been performed in the United States and Europe, including performances by the Prism Brass Quintet and the Harvard Collegium Musicum. His music has also received performances at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the World Saxophone Congress in Montreal, and the Swiss Computer Music Center. Kirk studied at the Eastman School of Music.

Gag Order

for tape

Peer Landa

The compositional technique for Gag Order is entirely based on digital signal processing. DSP applications in the C-programming language have been written exclusively for this piece, i.e. no commercial application has been used. Gag Order serves as a presentation of these programs as well as a demonstration of a rather modern compositional technique which is a spinoff from the idea of using a general computer language (its code) as the musical notation. The initial audio material for the piece is derived entirely from three old native Japanese instruments; a bell, a drum, and a flute. Throughout the piece, the sound from the instruments are rigorously processed by the computer programs. Gag Order was initially a commission for INA/GRM Acousmonium (a 60 speaker diffusion system) but has since been truncated and mixed for a smaller system. The piece has its first public performance in the U.S.

Peer Landa , born in Norway 1960, has scarcely survived by composing computer and instrumental music for 12 years. He was invited by John Chowing to CCRMA in 1990.

Double Mirror

for violin and computer-generated sound

Yasmin Craig, violin

Jon Forshee

Double Mirror was written between January and March of this year. The title refers to the experience of standing between two mirrors: the violinist stands between two mirrors, and while facing one can only see her partial image from behind. The body blocks the line of sight. Turing sideways, to a different angle, her image still is largely blocked from view. Perhaps the violinist would wish to become transparent, an invisible eye, able to see her image at once frombehind and ahead, simultaneously, from all angles.

Jon Forshee was born in Enid, Oklahoma in 1975. Incorporating his travel experiences and love of nature, Forshee has written music for a wide diversity of musical forms and media. Much of his output is influenced by non-Western music and uses structural principles from Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, and early Western musics.

Straw-berri

for physical models and computer generated sound

Juan Reyes

This is an algorithmic and media - alone piece composed for physical modeling of the flute and plucked sounds. The contrast is the will or rather expression of an artist who talks and sings spontaneously along the background. The source of materials (i.e vectors) were obtained by balancing the wave equation of the flute close to the end of 1996. These are used for stretching the modeled string of the plucked sound and thereby portraying the state of mind of an engineer. Straw translates little whistles in spanish. The piece also pretends to create an image of a walking flutist on a circle back and forth.

Born in Barranquilla Colombia, Juan Reyes holds degrees in Mathematics and Music Composition. Since 1989 he has co-organized the International Contemporary Music Festival and periodic electro-acoustic cycles in Bogotá. He was also professor of art, music and a research associate at La Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá. His research topics include physical modeling, and spectral modeling of musical instruments, algorithmic composition and their use for expression modeling. Among his works are Equus & Resonancias, a collection of computer music works for the stage and also several compositions based upon instrumental sound subjects like Boca de Barra, for trombone, and Sygfrydo for cello. In the context of sound installations his works ppP and Los Vientos de Los Santos Apostoles have been presented in museums and galleries of Colombia. His writings have appeared on several international publications and his music has been performed around the world as part of contemporary music radio broadcasts and festivals.

ChAnGEs Music

for eight channels

Joseph L. Anderson

Prelude for the Unavailable Memory

Mysterious Duet (Melody 1)

Empty Music

Vinyl Construction no. 1

Bolero

Melody 2 (Cheap Duet)

Vinyl Construction no. 3

Ingalls Mix

Chorale

Music for a Windy Isle

Vinyl Construction no. 4

Metamorphosis of Night

From a letter to the pianist Hadley McCarroll:

. . . and I tend to think of Change's Music as a phonographic fantasy because it plays in all three of Dellaria's modes of sound recording: document, pseudo-document, and abstraction. I think to really get in to it, it helps to have some idea who Cage is and why he is interesting. Also, helps to know about the Music of Changes, as the Wergo recording of it is the pseudo-document the piece starts with, that it is one of Cage's first "silence" pieces (along with 4'33"). And has something to do with removing the ego of the composer from the music so the music can speak clearly. One of the funny things about the pseudo-document is that it is possible to have someone play what was never played or say what was never said and pass it off as having happened, as some kind of aural truth. The opening text from Cage where he gives the premise for this whole thing, "the use of records as instruments," is actually an excerpt from a speech about why he prefers live performances to recordings. More drastic are the wild trills and arpeggios played by Henck in the Vinyl Constructions. These never happened, but neither did the so called performance on the Wergo recording. My Constructions were composed with sound objects, Cage composed with symbolic notation. . . .

John Cage: Music of Changes II - Edition Peters no. 6257 - Copyright 1961 by Henmar Press Inc., New York - Licensed on behalf of the Publishers by permission of Peters Edition Ltd., London.

Music excerpts from John Cage: Music of Changes - Wergo 60099-50 - Copyright 1988 Wergo Schallplatten GmbH, Mainz, Germany, With kind permission of Schott Wergo Music Media, Radio Bremen, and Herbert Henck.

Text excerpts from I-VI by John Cage - Copyright 1990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard University - Text used by special arrangement with Harvard University Press.

Audio recording have been reproduced with kind permission of the John Cage Trust - All materials used by special arrangement with the John Cage Trust.

Voice: John Cage - Piano: Herbert Henck

Realized at the Electronic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Joseph L. Anderson (b. 1970, Dayton, OH, USA) likes to listen. . . no, not to you rattling on about all your pointless little problems, but to all these sounds he encounters daily. As an adolescent he was inadvertently exposed to Edgar Varèse's Poem électronique, and since then has been under the misguided impression that all sounds are potentially music. This misunderstand lead to his exile to the UK for a number of years where he studied his art in a more receptive atmosphere with one of the masters. He foolishly thinks of himself as a genius; a few have begrudgingly agreed with recognitions (including a "Grand Prix" from the 1997 Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition) and commissions (BBC Radio 3 among others). That said, he is know for his creation of stunning surround sound works and installations, as a proficient multichannel sound diffusionist, and as a kinda decent guy. Oh, and did I mention he currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area where he works as a radio producer and sound recordist?

About performers...
Yasmin Craig, a California native, graduated from Stanford in 1997 with a degree in violin performance and music, science and technology. She then went to Turkey on a Fulbright Fellowship to study Turkish Folk Music and play with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra. Currently, she studies with Professor Ilya Kaler at the Eastman School of Music, working towards her Masters Degree in performance.


©2000 CCRMA, Stanford University. All Rights Reserved.
Created by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, nando@ccrma.stanford.edu