Gypsy Chronicles for the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra

I just finished a new work for the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra. This orchestra that mixes instruments of the western orchestra with instruments from all over the world presents a unique challenge. Their musicians have different skill sets: some read music with great fluency, while others learn music mainly by ear. Some who read music are faster with their signs from their Chinese, Indian or other traditions using letters, numbers, and lines, rather than the notes and rhythmic notation we're used to in western music. It all makes for a great challenge to write music that the whole band can play.

My greatest challenge was to create an opening that everyone in the band could get their musical mind around, and to celebrate the great project of intercultural music making. To this end, I imagined myself on the road to Byzantium, or Constantinople, or Istanbul (take your pick): somewhere on the Silk Road, with a bunch of gypsies, who originate from Allah/God/Vishnu knows where. And they are all playing their instruments together. So the first movement (of four) is somewhat traditional in sound, evocative of some sort of imagined Persian music. The Persian 17-note mode – the tuning of the "tar" (triple-coursed gourd-resonating guitar from Iran), one of the 'guitars' in the band – is at the core of the sound of this music. (Ah yes, the sound of the music, based on this scale and an altered Chahargah mode, has wonderful resonant properties that merit a completely separate entry…) This first movement is infused with the unison melodic practice of the Middle East, yet it is mysteriously striving to compose itself, perhaps suggesting echoes of the early melodic conversions of Claude Vivier and Stockhausen, yet I unabashedly veer toward the Troubadours. All great fun to prepare you for the small monuments of the second and third movements, about which I'll say absolutely nothing – don't want to spoil the party. And in closing, the music returns to dance.

My propensity for rhythmic drive, precision, and variety make my music challenging to play. This is appropriate since the concert is all about rhythm. It's titled "Rising Beat on the Infinite Horizon" and takes place on November 28, at The Cultch featuring a 22-member orchestra with 6 guest percussionists. There is a great deal of playfulness in this piece and lots of fun with solos on Arabian oud, Persian tar and santur, frame drum, tabla, erhu, and western chamber orchestra. I hope to see you there.

EVENT DETAILS:

"Rising Beat on the Infinite Horizon"
at The Cultch
1895 Venables St, Vancouver, BC, CA
November 28, 2010, 8 pm

Chenoa Anderson's "Birds of Paradise Lost" completed

I've just finished the first version of my composition for amplified flute and computer for the great Canadian flutist Chenoa Andreson. The work is designed to be performed by a duo of solo flutist and computer musician. The flutist plays into a microphone which is attached to the audio interface of the computer. Once in the computer, the flute sound is transformed in real time to be sent out the loudspeakers in the hall.

The computer part is uniquely designed to run exclusively with Ableton's "LIVE" software. For anyone unfamiliar with the software, it allows the mixture of realtime processing and the launching of audio files with an interface that is easy to set up and use. The company also provides a 14-day completely functional trial version that allows the user to open any previously-saved files and play and manipulate them (but saving is disabled). This allows a composer to create an entire working document that can be sent anywhere in the world because the software runs on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The computer keyboard is used to control the flow of the processing and computer performance, so no extra devices are needed to perform the work. All that is needed is audio cables to go from computer to sound mixer. Very simple, this piece could be played anywhere.

The title comes from the nature of the sound materials themselves. Chenoa sent me recordings of herself performing various special flute sounds and techniques. After I multitracked the sounds and created the first few minutes, the title came to me, and it has stuck. (The connection to the Milton text is an echo rather than any direct reference to meaning in this great classic.)

The solo acoustic instrument (here the flute) is processed through various multiplication and sound colour manipulation techniques to create an entirely new sonic beast that evokes soundscapes and sound textures one would normally associate with nature and/or industrial noise; yet within the large sound, one hears the "motives" that are the source of it all, as performed by the soloist. With electronic music, it is possible to go further than "motivic development" as the primary source of forward movement in music. Where the primacy of sound rules, excitement is created using other means than the (harmonic) modulation techniques of times past. We speak of "textural transformation" rather than "modulation" – although "modulation" in electronic music refers not to chord changes, but to "frequency modulation", which is another beast. "Birds of Paradise Lost" presents a seeming contradiction between consonance and dissonance, with microtonal chromaticism colliding with beautiful tonal resonances.

Is "dissonance" defined purely by the resonating/beating properties of musical intervals and sounds? Or does the rate of change also contribute to perceived "dissonance"? As Stockhausen, Grisey and others have observed, the structure of moving sound, from still (static) to hyperactive (chaotically dense movement) is a complex web of interdependent components. For example, a dense cluster of quiet, slow-moving microtones can be quite peaceful if the beating of the intervals – the sound texture – has a very slow rate of change. It is the behaviour of the sound over time that defines its level of tension for the listener. As is often the case in my music with manipulated sound, the texture may seem fairly busy, but the underlying rate of change is often quite slow. This allows the listener into my sound world, which often contains very high, sometimes "rough" sounds.

This is music for those who would like to hear music beyond the equal-tempered music for pianos and pop-computing: music for curious minds and thirsty ears.

Premiere yet to be determine, likely 2010.