SPLICE Institute 2023 Participant Concert 2 Program
Saturday July 1, 2023
1:00pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
download program pdf (does not include notes/bios)
James Parker : No Vacancy; or, Neon Lights Electric Through Five Moments of Midnight (2023)
Anita Chandavarkar, bansuri flute
Mickie Wadsorth : Mirror Mirror (2023)
Mickie Wadsorth, voice
Sum Yee Lee : Stromatolites (2023)
Kyle Blake Jones, saxophone
Chujun Li : The Lost of a Poem (2023)
Adeline DeBella, flute
Kevin Swenson : Movements for Clarinet and Live Electronics (2023)
Jacob Wolf, clarinet
Leni Kreienberg : Grain Monism (2023)
Leni Kreienberg, flex meadow
Jasmine Thomasian : do // what do // do you (2023)
Waveform Collective: Max Winningham, contrabass; Quincy Doenges, percussion
Max Gibson : ...all things weep as if out of the frost into heat... (2023)
Waveform Collective: Max Winningham, contrabass; Quincy Doenges, percussion
Notes
James Parker : No Vacancy; or, Neon Lights Electric Through Five Moments of MidnightThis is the sister piece to my previous existential horn piece My Anxious Thoughts as I lie Awake at Night Where as that piece explored the general buzzing of my thoughts and chaos of trying to fall asleep with too much on my mind. This piece explores what it sounds like as I daydream in the shower, thinking of really cool or really terrible ideas that race around each other, and make me forget how long I’ve been taking. It starts quietly with a single idea, and then it begins to build and race, and tumble out of control, getting chaotic as I spin the thought other ways in my mind, before finally coming together at the end to be one really big, idea. Is it good? bad? Unsure, but I finally remember I need to get out of the shower, and it all ends in an instant.
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Mickie Wadsorth : Mirror Mirror
When you look in the mirror, what stares back at you?
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Sum Yee Lee : Stromatolites
Stromatolites - Greek for 'layered rock' are formed by blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). They have played a pivotal role in Earth's geological and biological evolution. Most importantly, they are the reason why we're alive today! Around 3.4 million years ago, Cyanobacteria performed oxygenic photosynthesis to produce oxygen into the oceans and released into the air. With enough oxygen in the air, life was able to flourish and evolve.
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Chujun Li : The Lost of a Poem
In the work The Lost of Poem Chujun explored the Chinese sonic world with the help of audio analysis tools and built a close connection between flute sounds and Chinese sounds. The modal text is from her recent poem. Below is the translation of the Chinese text.
I, a woman, tonight,
Will look for that broken moon?
But through the window I cannot find the moon,
In a safe room and behind a thick door there is no moon,
I have not seen the moon for far too long.
Grabbing keys in hands,
Like a warrior on the battlefield holding a knife,
Wearing a thin tank top, soft maxi skirt,
A woman walks out of her room.
Into the street in dark night.
She is almost running,
She is almost going to her death,
At one o’clock in night, she insists to see,
The moon temporarily blocked by the earth,
The clouds were thick that day,
The moonlight shone though only a bit…
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Kevin Swenson : Movements for Clarinet and Live Electronics
Lately, it seems that every third piece I compose feels like pulling teeth. For reasons that (mostly) have nothing to do with the work itself, Movements (for Clarinet and Live Electronics) is one of those pieces. Whatever dramas may have unfolded between April and May, I will give some dry information about the piece.
Movements (for Clarinet and Live Electronics) is comprised of a series of four short moments. The first three are fully notated; the third is improvisatory. Each movement was constructed using a pitch-class set derived from the name “Jacob Wolf”, the performer for whom this piece is composed. The Bach library for Max/MSP was used to create the original sketches, which then underwent “composition surgery” in Sibelius. These four movements were then brought back into Max/MSP where the score is displayed in time with the live signal processing.
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Leni Kreienberg : Grain Monism
Grain Monism explores the relationship between "natural" and "unnatural" sounds. Using a custom instrument system, the boundaries between body, instrument, and computer are obscured, the distinction between natural and unnatural transformed. The voice is made unnatural while synthesized sounds are molded into organic shapes. The instrument system, flex meadow, takes on a cyborg identity, confronting antagonistic dualisms and mutating so-called natural processes of sound.
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Jasmine Thomasian : do // what do // do you
we try to reach memories
memories intrude
we adjust memories
memories intrude
we construct memories
memories intrude
What do you remember?
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Max Gibson : "...all things weep as if out of the frost into heat..."
Composed in 2023, this piece, for double bass, percussion, and fixed media, gets its title from a line in Snorri Sturluson’s famous poem, Death of Baldur. I wanted to take the essence of the poeticism of this line and think of it outside of the context of Norse Mythology in a more physical and acoustic sense. The piece explores different kinds of motion that unfold temporally and timbrally, and interweaves different layers of sound including musical, natural, and processed.
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