Notes about the program:
This concert offers a collection of electronic works that each work with and against the idea of fluidity. In David Medine's 'The Robot Devil's Trill a violist performs into a non-linear reverberation system which veritably stretches the performed music into taffy. Enda Grennan's 'Magma' offers sound at its melting point while 'Urvogel' by John Greenwood and 'ac-4' by Stephen McCourt present tension filled gestural soundscapes inspired by physical gestalts.
ac-4 (2010) (14m20s) features vibrations, static, and sounds breaking apart. The piece forms a machine/human dialectic, and draws influence from cinematic montage, as new images are suggested through the juxtaposition of sounds in space and time.
Stephen McCourt is currently engaged in a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition at the University of Limerick. In 2008 he composed "ac-2" and "ac-3" for two visual works, "warp & weft" by Mary Wycherley, and "missing" by Holly Kennedy. In 2009 he completed "ac-1", which was performed in 2009 at Soundings in Limerick, and at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. In 2010 he collaborated with Ian Wilson on the electronic score for "Una Santa Oscura", and completed "ac-4", which was performed at the CMC New Music concert and at Soundings in Limerick. He was also commissioned in 2010 to compose the music for "In This Moment", a collaboration between choreographer John Scott and video artist Charles Atlas. He performed this music live during a week of shows at the Project Art Centre in Dublin. In 2010 he presented two papers on his research, one at the EMS electroacoustic music conference in Shanghai and another at the Pierre Schaeffer MediArt conference in Rijeka.
Magma (2010) (6m59s) is a stereo piece composed in April 2010. The piece derives its title from the sound world it evokes; sounds that lie in the metaphorical melting point between the dichotomous forming principles of gesture and texture. The source material in the piece is the voice of popular hiphop artist Missy Elliot singing her hit single “Work it” . By reinterpreting material from popular culture, it could also be said that the piece is exploiting the postmodern notion of the simulacrum, a contested space where reality and representation collide.
Enda Grennan is a composer, sound designer and performer. He was awarded first prize in the Diffusion 2008 International Composition Competition for his six-channel piece entitled “Pneumatic Tautologies”. “Anima Insana in Corpore Sano” was composed in late 2007 and rewoked in 2009 to form the musical basis of “The Lightly Fragranced Solo”, a new work by the contemporary dance artist, Angie Smalis. The piece has been performed at many intenational festivals including the Islington Dance festival in London and will be performed at the forthcoming Dublin Dance festival. Since 2009, Enda has been working on a PhD in composition at the University of Limerick.
Urvogel (first bird) (2010) (12m10s) has its focus on gestural counterpoint in electroacoustic music. Gesture in music stems from a generic level of perception, where it is tied to gestalt perception, motor movement and mental imagery. Gestures, accordingly, are rich gestalts, that combine auditory information (hearing and movement) with implied visual information (imagining and movement), somato-sensory information (feeling and movement), and at a higher level of cognition, gestures are organized in groups and sequences, leading to musical form and narrative {Ole Kuhl}. In Urvogel, my research and thinking was focused on applying a form of functionalist perspective in composing sonorous objects through gestural counterpoint, and thus, investigating how it foretastes possibilities and prospect in the development of structure and form in both micro and macro levels of composition. On the narrative, Urvogel is a story about a trapped bird, first bird.
Composer and electronic music DJ John Samuel Greenwood is currently a Ph.D. student at University Limerick where he studies new music and electroacoustic composition under Kerry Hagan and Jurgen Simpson. The focus of his Ph.D. includes new approaches to composition through the study and research of gesture. Previous gestural works such as ‘Stressful Gestures’ and ‘Python in a toy box’, have been presented at SARC in Belfast, NUI Maynooth and also at the increasingly popular 'Soundings' performances. He has recently co-composed the electronic score for the multi-media production ‘Un Santa Oscura’, by established Irish composer Ian Wilson which was released in March 2010.
The Robot Devil's Trill -- David Medine (b. 1882)
This piece consists of me playing Guiseppe Tartini's 1713 violin Sonata,'The Devil's Trill' on viola (for some reason) and spitting that signal through a non-linear reverb/variable delay system (which I pretty much copied from something that Miller Puckette showed me). The system analyzes the performance and distorts the sound accordingly.
There is a famous story about the inception of Tartini's sonata. He claims to have dreamt that The Devil came to visit him and the composer (a moster violin virtuoso) gave him his violin to see if The Devil could play. The Devil proceeded to play with unparalleled virtuosity a sonata of singular beauty.
Tartini awoke and wrote down the piece which was still buzzing in his head.
The inception of this version of the piece is far less mythic so I won't bother to relate it.
