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Sarah and Marja in Conversation
On March 2 I attended a webinar of the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter on Zoom: Sarah Hennies + Marja Ahti: Artist to Artist Talk. Originally I intended to write about this conversation between the two eminent composers, but then I got caught on two statements, one by Sarah Hennies and one by Marja Ahti…
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Music inspired by science
My new album Transition States is an album exploring several scientific principles and forces important in chemistry and biology by means of music. The core principles used as compositional tools are transition and equilibrium, i.e. dynamics and stasis. The music of the album is oscillating between these opposite principles until it gradually finds a rest…
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Wasted Sounds for Irmag
Liner notes for my sound art piece for the installation of Kinga Toth in Debrecen For her installation Irmag in Debrecen multi-disciplinary artist Kinga Toth built a work of art out of unnecessary things and waste materials she collected from the citizens of the town. These materials range from plastic bottles and other plastic waste…
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Misappreciations in music criticism 1: Pharoah Sanders: Love Will Find a Way
At the end of her Late Junction episode on January 1, New Year, New Horizons, dedicated to “sounds of hope and kindness”, the wonderful Jennifer Lucy Allan played Pharoah Sanders’s Love Will Find a Way in its epic entirety of 14 minutes, because she “absolutely refuse[d] to cut this”. She also said that Love Will…
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In Times of Crisis (End of 2020 Mix)
The title of my end of the year mix of tracks from releases I purchased on Bandcamp in 2020 and one track off of one of my own releases is borrowed from one of the most beautiful releases on Longform Editions in this year, Carmen Villain’s otherworldly Affection in a Time of Crisis. Although all…
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Liner notes for the radically minimalist piece Patterns
Patterns is a minimalist piece for one sample and electronics. The sole sound material is a sample of one bell, which I stroke twice. This pattern of two bell strikes and two silences of different length is looped throughout the 30 minute piece. The regular pattern is manipulated first with different delays and the three…
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Last Christmas
No, this is not about the song, you are thinking about. Last Christmas I presented myself with the GRM tool bundle named “Creative” and advertised on the INA GRM webpage as to be the thing “For musicians !”. I was curious about these tools mainly because of INA GRM’s close historical connection with musique concrète.…
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Verbal score for my drone piece “Ad nihilum”
Try to do nothing Try to not do Try to do not much Try to not play Try to listen only Try to keep listening only Try to not play with the faders Try to leave the sound alone Try to leave the sound alone and listen Try to leave the sound alone to evolve…
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I can’t title this (or the art of titling)
It’s not a secret to those who know me and my music a little bit that I have an ongoing obsession with and deep appreciation for the music of the late Danielle Baquet-Long of Chubby Wolf and Celer. Some even know that Chubby Wolf’s record Ornitheology has been kind of an awakening experience for me,…
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How to use a poem as a score
My composition “Page 220” has been made for the collaborative music project Disquiet Junto. Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. https://disquiet.com The assignment for Disquiet Junto 0449 was…
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Time to announce the record of the year
Geneva Skeen’s new record is aptly titled Double Bind. Not only the last track on the record with the same title is really a double bind, but double bind is the concept behind the whole album. It is an ambient album, but you will not be able to lean back and enjoy the beautiful sonic…
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Alban Berg’s invention of the drone
(and my drone piece The Trumpet, Casting a Wondrous Sound in Tombs) Scene 2 of act 3 of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is an Invention on a note (B♮). It is the scene in which Wozzeck kills his girlfriend and mother of their child Marie. B♮ symbolized death for Alban Berg, who despite of the fact…
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