There are three musical events in January that I'm involved with that are all different from one another in some ways, and totally interconnected in others. The first event - a commission from the Seattle Rock Orchestra is a bit of an outlier from what I usually do (they're an orchestra that does arrangements pop music from the last 60 years), but I'm really excited about the working with a new ensemble and getting to explore some new terrain. The piece, I Am a Rock explores the ubiquity, timelessness and intersection of Simon and Garfunkel, their song I Am a Rock, and geology. We’ve all had experiences like standing in an elevator with granite floors and hearing gentle muzak versions of this song tinkling through the speakers above, hot stone massage while hearing a Chinese lute playing Sounds of Silence on a CD, or been at a house with fake rock speakers, Mrs. Robinson drifting over your conversations in the background...and now I'm combing all that together in a concert work. The orchestra will be playing found rocks, a few string soloists will play abstracted song fragments, and an electronic track of people being interviewed about this music blends these disparate elements together. Details here! It's Saturday, January 12th. Come see 40 people playing rocks.
The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North in Los Angeles and San Diego
In mid-November I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska to hear the University of Alaska Fairbanks percussion ensemble - Ensemble 64.8 (yes, that's the latitude there) - play my percussion quintet Unrelated (have a listen to their excellent performance here). While there I worked with visiting professor Bonnie Whiting Smith on a new piece for solo percussionist with electronics. She'll be debuting this new work, The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North, at The Wulf on January 16th, and playing it again at UCSD on January 19th.
The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North is designed so that it can be played at different stations that the player moves to between movements, and this is noted throughout the score, though it is not a limiting factor if this is not an option. The title is derived in part from a travelogue by 17th century Zen hermit poet Basho, entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho’s work is written in a style that combines haiku with standard prose, and explores the landscape, natural events, and people he meets along the way interacting with both. This solo percussion piece takes a similar path, but in the context of sound. Whereas haiku capture a moment and potentially juxtaposed ideas occurring in our everyday lives in Basho’s work, here there are a series of field recordings that capture the sounds of a trip I took from Seattle Washington to Fairbanks Alaska to hear some of my percussion music played and also work on this piece with percussionist Bonnie Whiting Smith. And, in place of prose, we have a series of stations of instruments creating a narrative sonic landscape that the performer interacts with and illuminates for the audience. The source of the music as alluded to before is drawn from a few days in Alaska discussing and exploring sounds and instruments, observing the changing of light at a northern latitude, stargazing, and watching the aurora borealis; as well as from everyday life for me here in Seattle. Being a sort of record of a period of time, a similar travelogue title seemed appropriate, and since paved roads, and cramped airline aisles are par for the course for anyone working in music, changing road to aisle seemed like a simple and final way to customize this travelogue format for our modern sonic context, as well as describe, if only casually, where this landscape of sound was drawn from.
The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North is designed so that it can be played at different stations that the player moves to between movements, and this is noted throughout the score, though it is not a limiting factor if this is not an option. The title is derived in part from a travelogue by 17th century Zen hermit poet Basho, entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho’s work is written in a style that combines haiku with standard prose, and explores the landscape, natural events, and people he meets along the way interacting with both. This solo percussion piece takes a similar path, but in the context of sound. Whereas haiku capture a moment and potentially juxtaposed ideas occurring in our everyday lives in Basho’s work, here there are a series of field recordings that capture the sounds of a trip I took from Seattle Washington to Fairbanks Alaska to hear some of my percussion music played and also work on this piece with percussionist Bonnie Whiting Smith. And, in place of prose, we have a series of stations of instruments creating a narrative sonic landscape that the performer interacts with and illuminates for the audience. The source of the music as alluded to before is drawn from a few days in Alaska discussing and exploring sounds and instruments, observing the changing of light at a northern latitude, stargazing, and watching the aurora borealis; as well as from everyday life for me here in Seattle. Being a sort of record of a period of time, a similar travelogue title seemed appropriate, and since paved roads, and cramped airline aisles are par for the course for anyone working in music, changing road to aisle seemed like a simple and final way to customize this travelogue format for our modern sonic context, as well as describe, if only casually, where this landscape of sound was drawn from.
Space Weather Listening Booth at ONN/OF festival
I was invited to present something at the ONN/OF festival this year - it's a great festival that features a couple dozen artists who create installations and works based around light in a rented warehouse and runs for just two days. For the festival I am collaborating with Seattle composer John Teske to create a sound installation based on the aurora (aka the northern lights) entitled Space Weather Listening Booth. We're taking geomagnetic data from the earth, information about solar wind and other phenomenon (yes, space weather) and interpreting these things into music and sound. Our allotted installation space is small, so only one or two people at a time will be able to enter and listen. Just as the auroral band moves around the earth slowly, so will our sound shift and move over time, enveloping the listener. In addition to the immersive sound installation, for parts of the festival we'll have private one-minute performances in the booth for one listener at a time - one musician, one audience member. The festival is taking place on January 26th and 27th this year in the old Seattle BMW dealership between Boylston and Harvard on E Pine St.
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