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Study of a piano (dampers)

The characteristic sound of an instrument relies, to a great extent, upon the transient on-set, or attack, of the sound. By obscuring this, one can obtain sounds that, though familiar, are harder to identify as coming from, for example, a piano. This hard-to-place timbre can be dissociated further from the familiar sound of the piano by hiding the attack of multiple notes and releasing them sequentially, creating a beveled edge to the tail-end of the sound, effecting something like a crossfade between pitches.

Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie recorded and mixed this performance by Imri Talgam at Elebash Hall in May 2017.

String Quartet

The Mivos Quartet premiered my String Quartet at Elebash Hall on 9 May as part of their residency at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Viola Viola

Carrie Frey and Hannah Levinson performed Viola Viola in Elebash Hall on 20 December 2016.

 

 

Study of a piano (trills)

Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie recorded and mixed this performance by Imri Talgam at Elebash Hall in May 2017.

 

The latest sighs of mortality

The title quotes Charles Babbage’s The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837) that posits that all sounds on Earth are etched into the atmosphere where they wait to be heard by the right stethoscope.

My violin teacher was dismayed at the wobble in my bowing. Unable to extricate those unwanted shakes, I left the violin behind for a time. In the latest sighs of mortality that hobbling ghost of music past returns to rattle its chains. Following the process popularized by Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room, this piece recycles live violin playing through a recursive process of recording and playback. What the violinist plays at the beginning of the process will have a dramatic effect on the shape of the piece, but by the time the performer hears the consequences, it is too late to change course. Eventually the live performance is submerged in a swell of room resonance. The process overtakes the violinist who, by the end, is transformed from a producer of sound to a listener.

This is a live recording from Elebash Hall on 24 February 2016 with the composer performing the violin part. The concert was part of the Composers Now festival.

 

Inhalation for the horn player

This is a recording of a live performance by Elizabeth Martignetti at Elebash Hall from 15 December 2015.