Skip to main content

March 2017 Salon previews

ComManD

Thaumaturgy

ComManD ensemble presents a composition of music and dance enhanced by technology. Accelerometer information is used to digitally shape and alter acoustic music. Movement, electronics, acoustics and improvisation blend together in both subtle and obvious ways in this work seeking to define it’s own poetics and artistic statement. It’s an attempt to present interdisciplinary work beyond the novelty of what the technology offers— greater than the sum of it’s parts—while simultaneously geeking out on new tech and ideas!

S. Eric Scribner

Tree and Stone

The piece I’ll be playing at the salon is an audience-participation piece called Tree and Stone. Since the piece is aleatory, it would work with another piece at the same time, so I’ll play a preliminary version of The Sherványa Nocturnal Music (share-VAHN-yuh), which relates to my fantasy novel Tond. I’ll hand out the scores and instruments for Tree and Stone and I’ll play the other piece on the piano.

Tond on Amazon
Tree and Stone on Youtube

Blake Degraw

Electronic Quartet for Humans

One of my primary musical interests is in conduction. Over the last few years I’ve been exploring alternative methods of guiding musicians through performances outside of merely waving a hand or baton at them as they read notated music. I will be presenting a piece called Electronic Quartet for Humans, performed on four saxophones, which makes use of pre-recorded audio tracks that the performers listen to through headphones during the performance, guiding their interactions with one another through various aural cues, as well as providing material for them to interpret through mimicry and deep-listening.

Popular posts from this blog

January 2017 Salon previews

Tom Baker Three Movements 2017 marks 25 years since the first public performance of a piece of mine called "The Green Guitar" for solo guitar. In that span, I have written many works for solo guitar, including this piece to be performed on the Salon: "Three Movements". This piece is in 3 movements, each of which is a study of a different kind of physical movement: Slalom, Butoh, and R.E.M. It will be premiered by Satchell Henneman, a senior performance major at Cornish College of the Arts. Andrew Olmstead Spooky Action Taking inspiration from comics and musicals, draftsman Elk Paauw and composer Andrew Olmstead combine mediums to tell stories. All sound and art is produced by hand in real time. The combination of music and visual art is intended to communicate more effectively with the audience and in more precise ways. The pace of development is tightly scheduled, but there is some room for improvisation is the thematic material. Spooky Action's short s...
Read more

May 2018 Previews

Jay Hamilton My Muse, & Equal Temperament , cello and pre-recorded dialogue These two pieces are part of a work The End and Then…? presented on June 23rd at Velocity Dance Center Seattle. The show is mostly dance with music/dialogues begins with a funeral ends with a murder….and some of it funny. This is a one person performance (7 parts) I will be dancing during in the other 5 pieces sections. soundand.com/ Gavin Borchert Mazurka , for piano Berceuse , for piano Peter Nelson-King The Magpie’s Shadow , for solo piano The Magpie’s Shadow takes its inspiration from a poem sequence of the same name by Yvor Winters. Inspired by a line by Rimbaud - O saisons, o chateaux! - each poem is a single line of six syllables, a form invented by Winters. 28 poems are arranged in three sections, and my work has 28 aphoristic pieces based on each poem and grouped in the same section plan and same order. The poems depict mysterious, symbolic scenes in nature, possibly a dream ...
Read more

March 2018 Previews

Sarah Bassingthwaighte H20 , for soprano, flute, and guitar My piece is called H2O and will be performed by the Ecco Chamber Ensemble: Sarah Bassingthwaighte, flute; Stacey Mastrian, soprano; Mark Hilliard Wilson, guitar. The piece is written in graphic notation in the shape of a circle and the players rotate the circle as they go through 6 different forms of water: Snow, Droplets, Rain, Storm, Frost, and Ice. There is a lot of guided improvisation used by all of the players. It will be performed on April 21st at SOMA Towers as part of KING-FM’s Resonance Series. sarahbassingthwaighte.com Gavin Borchert Three songs Sagrada noche (4’) Cuando en el sol (4’) Una vez (7’) Gavin Borchert, piano; Michael Monnikendam, baritone Some time ago I discovered the song “Nacht und traume” by Schubert, which is now my favorite of all of his. Researching it I stumbled on a beautiful (anonymous) Spanish translation of Matthaus von Collin’s original German text, which itself seem...
Read more