SPLICE Institute 2022 Participant Concert 1 Program
Saturday July 2, 2022
10:15am EDT
Multimedia Room, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
download program pdf (does not include notes/bios)
Yuseok Seol: At a Public Library (2022)
Connor Johnson, double-bell quarter-tone trumpet
Alex Bernhardt: Hysteresis (2022)
Alex Bernhardt, CryptWarbler
Willyn Whiting: Pastorale (2022)
Elsie Han, viola
Connor Scroggins: Crash Soliloquy Passive (2022)
Robin Meiksins, flutes
Wang Ziyu: is.nova.in? (2022)
Sasha Ishov, flute
Ryan Lindveit: Stunt (2022)
David Munro, oboe
Benjamin Baker: ORATORIO no. 1 [CREATION] (2022)
Benjamin Baker, alto saxophone
Notes
Yuseok Seol: At a Public LibraryAt a Public Library was mainly written while I am at a county public library. The place has a weird vibe as the people studying or reading books evoke a calm, relaxing, somewhat intellectual mood, but at the same time there are tense moments that the homeless generate by snoring, murmuring, and staring at me. While I was composing this piece at the library, I was imagining a scene in which a person suddenly appears and plays trumpet, and the tense noise produced by the homeless starts interacting with the sudden trumpet sound.
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Alex Bernhardt: Hysteresis
Hysteresis characterizes a system whose behavior does not only depend on its input, but also on its past behavior, on the path it has followed.
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Willyn Whiting: Pastorale
"E quindi sul fiorito ameno prato
Al caro mormorio di fronde e piante
Dorme 'l Caprar col fido can' à lato."
"On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches
rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps,
his faithful dog beside him."
(Antonio Vivaldi 1725, Translation by Armad D’Angour 2019)
To many the Viola in movement two of Antonio Vivaldi’s Spring is simply imitating the sound of the goat-herd’s dog barking. This is not just any dog, however, but an idealized dog, one that exists only in memory or perhaps doesn’t exist at all. The Viola line is also more than a sonic object but a role. Its bassline portraying something of the dog’s faithfulness to its master. Another interpretation could be that the dog is simply holding the bassline because it is physically below us and we the listener are the goat-herd.
In Pastorale (2022) I try to articulate how this movement not only describes a human-animal relationship but power dynamics between people. Moreover, I want to explore how these dynamics can be subverted through a musical project.
Written for SPLICE Festival 2022 for a premiere by Elsie Bae Han.
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Connor Scroggins: Crash Soliloquy Passive
The flute and the human voice can merge, conflict, accompany, contradict, reconcile, and inform each other’s sonic phenomenal qualities. In this way, this piece explores the expressive, musical relationships between the voice and the flute.
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Wang Ziyu: is.nova.in?
is.nova.in? is, at its core, a piece about censorship and misinformation, and is a commentary on the internal dialogues of individuals living in censored societies.
is.nova.in? is a puzzle and conversation for live flutist, recorded flute and voices, using words constructed from the letters in the piece’s title: a, i, i, n, n, o, s, v. The letters guide pitch content, and the meaning of the words formed by these permutations guide the development of the musical characters.
There is one banned permutation of letters. It is banned because it clearly describes the way the flutist feels, and this clarity is dangerous. The closer the flutist gets to pronouncing the banned word, the more words flood the space.
Governments often censor information via omission. However, this is not the only way to manipulate citizens. Governments also censor by overwhelming the information space with conflicting data, making it impossible to determine what is true and what is manipulation.
The solution in this situation is by saying everything other than what is actually censored, trusting the conversation partner to fill in the gap. The individual must self-censor to survive.
Notes by Sasha Ishov and Wang Ziyu.
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Benjamin Baker: ORATORIO no. 1 [CREATION]
A play on the traditional oratorio genre, ORATORIO no. 1 is an unstaged musical story in which each “character” is represented by a specific voice or chorus. In this piece, however, the characters are not vocalists but are instead different electroacoustic elements. These characters are represented by the saxophone, vocal samples, percussion, sampled speech, vinyl record samples, and other miscellaneous elements as the “chorus.” ORATORIO no. 1 is a story of creation, told here in a secular and abstract context with interpretation for what “creation” implies in this scene.
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