Zoë Keating (Wow, what can I say??) has definitely cultivated a very respectable place in the new music and indie music circles. After rethinking a classical concert career as a cellist for working a tech job, she was intervened to perform with various friends, played in the band Rasputina, eventually went solo with a gorgeously layered, rhythmic cello sound. Zoë went on to sell over 40,000 copies of her CDs without distribution, a record label or management. And she has over one million Twitter followers. The internet loves her!

Besides her solo career, her other projects include music collaborations with various dance companies (Apex Contemporary Dance Theatre, American Repertory Ballet, Digby Dance), film scoring (or soundtrack performances; Warrior, The Secret Life of Bees, The Conspirator), scoring for varied TV programs and other medias, and makes guest appearances alongside artists such as Amanda Palmer, Paolo Nutini, Imogen Heap, and many more.

CM: Can you give us the nutshell version of the beginning of your musical career up to now?

ZK: I studied classical pretty seriously as a teenager, but I decided not to pursue classical music as a career. I went to a liberal arts school, and when I got out of school, I started working in technology in San Francisco just because I needed to make a living. I played the cello in various groups, and friends started asking me to play cello in their rock bands. I said “yes”, and sort of just started playing in other people’s bands and playing non-classical music. I found that to be kind of more rewarding, and it became something that I was good at, because I listened to non-classical music. At the time it was unusual because classical musicians were supposed to play only classical music. So, then, time went on, and I just kept working and then eventually my cello career became big enough that I could support me and I didn’t have to work a day job anymore. I started playing with the group Rasputina in 2002, and I quit my tech job in 2003. I left Rasputina at the end of 2005 or early 2006, and I’ve been solo ever since. It’s been a very gradual process–I think it probably is for most musicians because it takes a long time to get established.

CM: How did that lead to composition?

ZK: I always wrote music. I started writing music in high school, just coming up with stuff, and then I pursued it in college, I took composition classes and improvisation, and made music there. I’ve been doing that since I was a teenager.

CM: It’s really amazing stuff! When you hear music from you guys in the new music world it’s hard to categorize it, and everything has its own version of melody and texture–it doesn’t even really necessarily have to factor in a categorization anymore. And the fact that you have this career where you can just make your own records, release them, stream them–Thank goodness for the internet because that definitely has played such a huge role in how you’ve sort of come up.

Click here to view the embedded video.

ZK: I think actually the internet is definitely responsible for my success, because I was playing the cello with other groups, but the kind of music that’s in my head that I wanted to make–Nobody else was making it, and it was just something that I wanted to do. It was a very solitary pursuit. When I finally had something recorded that I was happy with and was ready to release, which was in early 2005, I sent it out to a few people in the industry that I kind of had vague connections to, and they said “it’s interesting, but it has no absolutely no market potential”. So I felt like “okay that’s fine! I’ll just keep doing it ’cause it’s something I want to do and it’s my thing–Nobody else likes it, fine!”. [laughs] I really feel like in some ways it developed without outside input, you know, like business input or anything. And the fact that it ended up being modestly successful was a huge surprise and a bonus, and it was only possible because of the internet, because the internet allows me to find my audience, and it allows them to find me. It’s all about the fragmentation of music and the rise of subcultures. I’m very niche, and the internet is all about letting people and their niches find each other.

CM: I probably have heard you the first time last year on Q2 when you performed at LPR with Todd Reynolds. I think you were both awesome, and then the 2 of you played together–That was like 2 wonderful things happening at the same time! BTW, are you guys ever going to do another thing together like that either onstage or on a record?

ZK: I hope so! He’s kind of legendary, so I would love to do something else with him!

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s a lot more musicians right now–Again we’re becoming aware of them because of the internet, and then there is a little bit of a trend happening, and I’m like ‘”Finally!”. The New York Times had an article a couple of weeks ago about what they called “alt-classical”. It was the first article I ever read where I read that I might possibly fit into a group! [both laughing] That was interesting to read! A lot of it is demographics–I’m on the older end of it, but there’s a lot of younger folks who are coming out of school, and there’s as many of them as there are baby boomers, and they grew up listening to classical and other kinds of music, and so it’s inevitable that they would be playing both or mixing them together and being without genre.

CM: What’s so great today is that you have everything that exists in contemporary classical–Sometimes people have music for one instrument, some have music for one instrument layered and looped the way that you do it and different people that have their own version of that, and there’s people that still write for orchestral or smaller ensembles, and vocals (with or without accompaniment)–Everything you can think of is all happening now, and it seems to all work, and people either like it or don’t like it, or like some of it, and it seems like it doesn’t fall into political camps like it used to.

ZK: In the United States, people tend to be, or they used to be, very socially identified by their musical taste, which is kind of big, for not all countries are that way, and that’s the other thing I like about this trend is that it’s cross-genre, but that doesn’t mean that it lacks social cohesion or whatever. It’s nice to see people get out of their genres.

CM: And you do some wonderful things on the side as well with people like Curt Smith, Amanda Palmer, Imogen Heap, Pomplamoose–All really good indie artists too. Is there a huge difference between working with them and just working with yourself?

ZK: Well there’s always…When you’re working with someone else, there’s compromise, and you have their vision meets your vision, so that’s always going to be different no matter whether it’s music or a technology project, so, I like doing both. I don’t necessarily like one more than the other. For my own music, I have certain things that I want to do, and I like doing it by myself. And then I like what happens when you have two people’s musical vision, and they come together, and it’s something neither of you would come up with on their own. They’re both valid things, and they’re both necessary.

CM: And pretty much everybody lets you be yourself, they don’t don’t try to tell you “Can you play more classical?” or “Can you play less classical?”?

ZK: That’s kind of my rule. I don’t do it unless it’s something where I get to be myself! I’m very consistently myself for better or worse! [laughs]

Click here to view the embedded video.

CM: During the LPR gig on Q2, you said that when you perform, it’s like you’re in a film, and when you close your eyes you’re invisible.

ZK: I don’t necessarily feel like I’m creating the music. [laughs] The music is its own thing, and I’m just consumed by it. I’m sort of inside of it or something, and it’s a very satisfying feeling, it’s kind of like I cease to exist and it’s just a musical expression of myself. And then it’s like I’m in a film in that when I close my eyes, I can sort of see the sweeping landscapes and the abstract things happening. I really like that, and it’s very hard to explain because it’s not linear, it’s just a whole different form of communication or something, and as soon as I open my eyes, I can’t experience it that well. That’s one of the reasons why I keep my eyes closed, so that then I can be in this musical world–This kind of abstract musical space.

I like keeping my music in this world that is non-narrative. Everything else in our culture is built around words and stories, and there are other ways to communicate, and so I like to stay in this realm of non-narrative storytelling, you could say!

CM: I like the version you arranged of the second movement from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony [Allegretto].

ZK: Thank you! That’s fun to do! It’s like a little academic exercise, but I like doing it!

CM: It was cool because you started with parts that sounded like harmonies of the melody, and I was like ‘is she doing it in a different key?’ By the time you threw in the rest of it, it was more recognizable.

ZK: Yeah, you’re hearing it sequentially, because what I’m playing is the actual cello part as it’s written, and I’m playing each phrase sequentially and then adding them accumulatively, so you wouldn’t naturally hear them all together because it’s just the cello part, although those phrases get passed around the orchestra. So it’s kind of like taking the music apart, cell by cell.

CM: It’s like when you mix a record, and you hear the parts that you’re not used to hearing separately.

ZK: It’s like a Beethoven remix!

Arrangement of Beethoven’s 7th-2nd mvt (Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA 6/26/11)

CM: Can you talk about the cycle Legions that appears intercut on the CDs?

ZK: Sometimes I feel like my life has sort of musical themes, and they have different forms, and so, the Legions one was kind of this–It was like a theme that was like the musical setting for something, and then there were different versions of it. There was “Legions (War)”, which is the main one, and then these other sort of ways of looking at the theme, and then on the latest album I did this one called “Legions (Forest)” because I wanted to feel like I’m moving from the city into the forest, and I’m sort of starting out with the theme of my life, and then I’m moving it into the forest. They’re really little threads that tie it all together. The music to me is really me making one large piece of music, and it just so happens that I’m breaking it up into smaller songs. I see it all as a linear progression for me, from my teenage years to the present day. If I have my own way, I might just number all the pieces or something. [laughs]

CM: No, but that’s cool–What it is, is you’re making it sort of like a saga, and it’s being broken down into different chapters.

ZK: That is kind of how it is. The Legions one–It keeps cropping up again and again, so no doubt there’ll be other versions of it to come out.

CM: If you move into a suburban area, there’ll be another chapter then, right? [both laughing]

ZK: Here we go from the forest to the shopping mall!

Click here to view the embedded video.

CM: You had recently written an article about Spotify that’s very interesting. It was about them saying they compensate every artist, and you were saying there’s great dispute with that. Is there anything you could add to that?

ZK: My career is possible because of the internet, and the because internet levels the playing field, there’s no gatekeepers. I can interact directly with my potential fans and I can sell my music directly to them. And when iTunes came along, it was kind of revolutionary in a number of ways, and one of them was that they gave the same deal to every single artist. Traditionally, with a record deal, you don’t know what the deals are because they’re under NDA agreements and they can’t discuss them, but it might be that an artist might get X amount of dollars for their advance, and they only get a few pennies per album, a different artist at the same label might not get much of an advance and more back in payments, and they’re all different. But with iTunes, everybody gets 70 percent of every sale, and Apple keeps 30 percent. It meant that it’s still the burden instilled in the artist to go out there and promote your music and do your own thing, however, if you’re able to do that, you can make the same amount of money as somebody who’s on a major label! [laughs] You’re getting the same deal! So I have a direct label account with iTunes, and if somebody goes and buys a track for 99 cents–We’re giving and taking pennies here–I make roughly, slightly less than 70 cents, and it’s extremely fair.

To go to Spotify, we’re moving towards this world where people are buying less and less digital music, and instead they’re streaming it, but Spotify has a throwback to the old way of doing things. They have different deals with each artist and each label, and they don’t allow independents to even negotiate, so, I can’t actually just go up to Spotify and put my music up there, I have to go through a gatekeeper, going back to the old model. So the gatekeeper I have to go through is somebody who aggregates music, for example, CD Baby or something. So Spotify makes its money through subscription fees, like if you get a monthly subscription for Spotify, that’s one way. The other way is advertising, in fact they make more money from advertising! But the major labels, they get a percentage share of Spotify’s profits, like share price, they own shares in Spotify–Across the board, they make money. So, it doesn’t matter for them about the exact streaming rates for a particular artist. In other words, like Warner’s, or Universal, they make money off of me! People go up there and they listen to my music and there’s advertisements up there and stuff, Universal Music is taking a cut of the proceeds. I don’t get to take a cut of that. So it’s not equitable, and that’s my complaint with it. I’m not saying that streaming might not be the way to go, and maybe it is the case, that artists have to adjust to this new world where they only make .0008 cents per song as opposed to 99 cents per song. Because that’s the difference. It would take me–I’d have to have millions and millions and millions of listens in order to make the same amount of money that I can make with just 10,000 listens on iTunes.

CM: It’s insane! I can’t even wrap my brain around it, other than Spotify doesn’t seem to play ball fairly–I also noticed that there’s a lot of artists that didn’t make the deal with them and are absent from the stream.

ZK: My other point about it is that not to sort of just complain, but I don’t see anybody standing up for independent artists, and so I feel like, because I small amount of prominence in the world of independent artists, I feel like it’s my responsibility to say these things publicly because nobody else is doing it. It’s kind of like, I feel like I have to stick-up for everybody. And then if nobody’s talking about it, then you have to fight for everything in the music industry, and I’m wanting to just make sure that people hear our story, that actually there are independent artists out there who make a pretty good living through music, and this new streaming model is cutting us out of the picture and saying that the only thing we should care about is exposure. That’s why I do it. I hate to sort of, go on about it, but I just feel like, for whatever reason I’ve always felt like this in life, it’s my responsibility to call out things that people aren’t paying attention to.

CM: For the record, believe it or not, they put my album [CMc] on Spotify, and I think the reason for that is CD Baby probably put it on there because I actually have a deal with them! [laughs] I was shocked to find it on there–All I had to do was type in the name of the record and there it was!

ZK: I have advice for artists about what to do, and this is what I have done–Don’t release everything. Don’t stream everything. I always say put some of it up there, the stuff that you want people to hear to get interested in you, and keep the rest back. 1/2 and 1/2. Because there’s nothing to be gained if people can get everything of yours for free. I think it’s better that they be able to get some of it, and if they want the rest, then they should go support you as an artist. And I also think that Spotify should make it easier to support artists, like, while you’re streaming on Spotify, if people are listening to my music and are listening to the whole album, Spotify should show them that I’m on tour. If they really do care about artists, they should make it easier for potential fans to find the artist and go to their concerts.

BONUS TRACK:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Zoë Keating: Avant Cello
Zoë’s official website

Click here to purchase Zoë’s CDs

Amy X Neuburg/Cory Smythe
Roulette
Brooklyn, NY
Dec. 13, 2011

It’s East Meets West…coast, that is.

On the stage of the old-school charming Roulette in Brooklyn was yet another creatively edgy program, put on this time by the pairing of West-coast avant-cabaret artist Amy X Neuburg and New York’s own pianist-composer, ICE‘s Cory Smythe. Presented without an intermission, the show was almost entirely electronic or electro-acoustic in nature (with the exception of a refreshing burst of Fats Waller’s “Handful of Keys” from Mr. Smythe), and most of the pieces were composed and/or arranged by both of them.

The proceedings kicked-off with When, a piece that was originally premiered at one of Present Music Ensemble‘s 30th Anniversary concerts in Milwaukee back in June 2011, where the two artists first met. Neuburg is a very strong performer that has a gifted virtuosity for looping in performance, to the point where she hits the looping mechanism hard when she shifts the pattern. Neuburg’s voice having such a big presence in this art form, the show was like a resume of her vocal styles, ranging from beautiful, to spoken word, to plaintive, to loud and ugly. 2 Disorders was an interesting example of how low (and ugly) her voice goes, while My God showcased her ability to sing choir-style (looping herself into something that sounded like “Coventry Carol”), use spoken-word over the looped carol, and then spew a frenzied rant over a visceral art-noise sample.

Other noteworthy parts of Neuburg’s performance were The Rat, rendering what sounded like an English-language sprechstimme. Every Little Stain had her utilizing teeth-brushing for a rhythm track. Agriculture, while not one of my favorite pieces, was fascinating for Neuburg’s use of an inside-piano-mike for her vocals at the start of the piece.

Smythe is a fabulous pianist, and I think the idea of playing piano together with loops and electronic sound can be a creative playground as evidenced on his recording pluripotent, but despite his great work with Neuburg at this show, the material from his album didn’t feel as exciting as a live performance. I’m not sure if the technical delay at the start of his solo portion had anything to do with that–It sort of felt to me like he was checking it out for the first time. The underwater effect on Lung & Lake and a couple of other of his pieces did induce a calming mood in me, but I couldn’t help but feel much happier during “Handful of Keys”.

They wrapped the night up with their own hi-tech re-working of Schubert’s breakthrough lied Gretchen am Spinnrade, replete with loops and electronic storm winds. Plus Neuburg sang it in German. It was an appropriate conclusion to the program.

Vital Vox: A Vocal Festival (Vital Vox 2011)
Roulette
Brooklyn, NY
Sat, Nov 5 & Sun, Nov 6, 2011

I guess there was no better way to kick off the Vital Vox Festival than with a primal scream. Gelsey Bell and her partner for this performance, composer/performer Paul Pinto, actually gave us several of them separate and together at the start of the song cycle Scaling, and they seemed to be the sound that signified both the power of vocal performance and the experimental nature of the festival as well.
In general, the festival is a huge emphasis on artists that recognize the human voice as an instrument, an instrument that has just as much range and capability as any great violin, piano or guitar, and works wonderfully as a duet with other instruments or other voices. These artists are all equally gifted as vocalists as they are composers or musicians of other instruments, and they all put on compelling performances.

Night One: Vocals and Keys

Bell started the festival with a song cycle that was an artist’s display of going against a normal piano song set. After the screams, they changed shoes, and Bell performed piano in various ways other than hands in front (i.e. behind her back, from on top of the piano lying on her stomach, with her knuckles, knees and arms, from the floor, etc)–Pinto was on the stage floor placing dirt from a plant and pieces of paper inside several little sacks tied shut with strings (More about this in a second), putting foil tins and pins inside the piano for a prepared piano sound on one of the songs. For a couple of songs, Bell also switched over to a small digital synth keyboard on the floor that had a tiny microphone, in which she gave spoken word about youth foibles and piano songs (“…Every love song is for the piano, not as an instrument, but as a surface…”). Despite its feeding back like crazy, the mike seemed to spur Bell’s performance regardless.
For the last song of the cycle, Pinto handed the bags he was preparing out to the members of the audience (some of us; me being one of them), and inside was the plant dirt and a note saying “when you see the signal, come and press your ear close to the skin of the piano”. So we went onstage and proceeded with what was basically an avant-garde take on audience participation, and though I thought she would either scream again or hit a loud chord cluster to shake us, she just finished the piece quietly.

Using Wii remotes and a laptop, Dafna Naphtali followed with her solo performance project titled {kaleid-o-phone}, a cavalcade of electronic pieces with an equally experimental vocal performance both with and without delay effects. A brief set, but she made great use of the effects and combining them masterfully with her vocalizations.

The night’s biggest reactions were saved for Judith Berkson, who previewed her forthcoming opera with a suite of demo versions of the arias titled Vor an Sicht. Berkson’s solo performances on vocals, minimal drums and percussion, organ and piano (accompanied with some pre-looped drums and vocal parts), gave everyone a taste of the final scoring with drum core, organ and children’s choir, but this solo performance seemed to be in and of itself another unique work of its own, and hopefully will still be after the opera is published.
Berkson’s cantor-trained voice lent much authenticity to the liturgical nature of the work, and the combination of the a cappella choral music with the sound of visceral drums promises a striking piece for the opera stage.

Night Two: Vocals and Strings

Toby Twining Music kicked off night two with a rather puzzlingly joyous sound due to the fact that one just doesn’t expect such a feeling towards music that uses “notes between the cracks of piano keys” as Toby put it–The group seems to invoke thoughts of “The Swingle Singers meets Alarm Will Sound”.
Though the group is primarily a vocal one, they do make great use of the cello played by Malina Rauschenfels (who played Twining’s unaccompanied cello piece Schoenberg Dreaming), and she is equally productive as a member of the singing group.
By the end of their set as they performed “Yes Yes Yes!” from the recently-released CD Eurydice, the group looked excited and the audience seemed just as much.

When they aren’t busy running and functioning as artistic directors of Vital Vox, Sasha Bogdanowitsch (who also emceed) and Sabrina Lastman are also the performing ensemble SoCorpo. The duo performed their new work Inelement, a cycle that highlights the natural elements (In this work there’s a fifth one: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Void), and the piece was scored for vocals, autoharp (strings struck with tuning forks) and bowed psaltery (with white bows, but the forks were also used for this).
Sasha and Sabrina played so exquisitely off of each other that they sounded at times like one voice, and, like Toby Twining’s group, have a superb use of both harmony and oral shapes.

For the closer, Iva Bittova came out with with her violin, a kazoo and a mbira, and placed them on the stage as she proceeded to walk around the audience and, un-miked, utilizing the acoustics of the auditorium, filled the hall with a stunning a cappella intro to the work Wood In The Wind, sung in what sounded like Czech, English and un-worded vocal sounds. Right by the front row where I was, she picked up the fiddle and began blending in a slow but gradually building up spiccato that evolved into a manic duet between voice and violin, and punctuated with occasional foot stomps, the piece was in full force.
Bittova also played a section with mbira, and another one with kazoo, with which she proceeded to provide the audience with intentional laughs as she gave an unusually comical side of herself and performed a mock jazz vocalization and pantomimed a trombone slide.
Bittova wrapped up with one last exciting violin piece and was given the festival’s only standing ovation.

A very fascinating and exciting show on both nights, I hope that we see even bigger turnouts and the need for even bigger venues for Vital Vox in the years to come.

VitalVox.com
Official website for Vital Vox

CM: Can you give sort of a small recap of how you got from your musical beginnings to your current status as a composer/performer? Was there a significant a-ha moment or was this something that was gradual?

JB: My father who is a cantor taught me to sing when I was very young by methodically teaching me Hebrew blessings which I would sing back by rote. He was demanding about precise pitch, I remember that. From about age 5 to 10 my family had a singing group/band where we played community centers and synagogues and we were required to be in it. It wasn’t really that fun since we had no choice and rehearsals were long and my father a perfectionist. But despite these conditions I was secretly compelled by music. I liked discovering how to do it. I started classical piano at age 5 and when I was 10 my father insisted on music theory lessons too. None of my friends had to do anything like that. I actually really enjoyed it though. I remember the circle of fifths blowing my mind. In high school I took singing seriously and started voice lessons. I reluctantly auditioned for conservatories not really wanting to go to college and ended up at the New England Conservatory. I thought I’d drop out and find people to play with and start a band but then I ended up falling in love with opera.

CM: How long have you been working/performing as a cantor?

JB: I’ve been working as a cantor for 12 years. I started when I was still at conservatory at a synagogue just south of Boston in Quincy, Ma.

CM: Is Liederkreis another side of your work?

JB: Liederkreis is a pseudonym that I use for my solo shows which includes anything from Schubert lieder to my compositions or piano music or electronic music.

CM: Can you talk a bit about the forthcoming opera that you will be previewing in solo arrangements at the festival?

JB: The opera is yet untitled but it’s about Salomon Sulzer who was Vienna’s chief cantor for much of the 19th century. It takes place mostly in 1826 when Sulzer arrived in Vienna at the newly built Stadttempel and started to do experimental services as part of the reform movement by adding choir and organ – conventions of the European church. He also asked Franz Schubert to write a piece for the temple’s dedication and Schubert wrote Psalm 92 for Sulzer and a choir. So the opera is about this crossing of influence and ideas.

The opera is being written for drum core, organs, voices and a children’s choir but for the solo performance I’ll be on vocals, organ, piano, drums, sequencer and drum machine. This is the first time I’m using an elaborate setup of instruments and sequencing in a show. It’s been a brutal amount of work but I am really really excited.

CM: After hearing your CD Olyam, it is clear that what you create is such a progressive style of music that also includes your singing. Do people ever ask you to categorize what it is in one or a few words?

JB: Ha ha.. I don’t know if I’ve been asked that before. Oylam was a culmination of several years work writing songs where I played and sang in a way that was hard to recognize. I think I took that as far as I could go and now I’m following other strains and interests. I’m about to record a record of German lieder and then there’s this opera!

2011 Vital Vox Festival
Sat, Nov 5th and Sun, Nov 6th, 8 PM
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave (At the Corner of 3rd Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(917) 267-0363

info@vitalvoxfest.com

Vital Vox Fest.com
Official website

Judith Berkson.com
Judith’s official website

Pat Muchmore

Some festivals have a curatorial vision that takes pages and pages of press releases and program notes to explain. Other curators, like Glenn Cornett, revel in the whimsy of amusing composers’ names. Why organize a one-night Nono, Muchmore, and Warp(ed) mini-marathon? The names sounded fun together and the players are the bee’s knees.

Glenn Cornett

The evening will feature music by Italian modernist master Luigi Nono, New York cellist/composer and Anti Social Music member Pat Muchmore, and San Francisco based composer/sound designer Richard Warp. With a 7 PM start time, the show is three and a half hours long, and is full of noteworthy fare for adventurous souls.

Starting things off is a set by Muchmore, featuring members of Anti Social as well as Ken Thompson (Gutbucket, Slow/Fast) premiering new pieces for strings and winds.

Cornett and Warp join electroacoustic forces on Warp’s in-progress piece “Illustrations,” a chamber work loosely based on Ray Bradbury’s “The Illustrated Man.” Pianist Taka Kigawa, violinist/composer Caroline Shaw, and bass clarinetist Jonathan Russell pitch in.

Miranda Cuckson

One of New York’s finest violin soloists, Miranda Cuckson, joins sound artist Christopher Burns in Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura”, one of the composer’s last compositions (1988-9). According to Cornett, this is likely to be the first New York performance in which the violinist performs the optional vocal part. Singing, playing, coordinating with electronics – all this while moving throughout the space.

Event Details
The New Spectrum Foundation
presents the
Nono Muchmore Warp(ed) Festival
Saturday 17 September 2011
James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary, Broadway at 121st Street, Manhattan

Presenting music by Luigi Nono, Pat Muchmore and Richard Warp
Several world premieres
Accomplished performers from both coasts (and in between)

Time: 7 to 10:30 PM on Saturday 17 September 2011.

Place: James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary. Enter via door on Broadway at 121st
Street.

Advance tickets ($12 for students and underemployed; $20 for others) are at:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/197540

Tickets purchased at the performance will be $15 for students and underemployed; $20
for others.

Take a seductive voiced art-pop singer and a post-jazz/alt-classical trumpeter. Add fragments of nineteenth century classical melodies, electronics elicited by a “mutantrumpet” controller. Then add influences ranging from ancient Greek mythology to the Hudson River Valley. What you have are the intricate yet intimate sounds on an evocatively beautiful new CD: Songs for Persephone.

The Persephone legend is one of the oldest in Greek mythology, with many variants that provide twists and turns to the narrative and subtext of the story.  In the myth, Persephone, daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter, is kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld. During her absence, vegetation is unable to grow in the world; fields fall fallow and crops cannot be harvested.

To break this horrible time of famine, the gods come to an understanding with Hades. Persephone is eventually freed, but on the condition that, if she has eaten anything while in Hades’ realm, she must return to his kingdom for a certain length of time. Thus, each year she must remain in the underworld one month for each pomegranate seed that she has consumed. This serves to rationalize, in mythic terms, the change of seasons, times of decay and renewal, shifts in light and weather; even the autumn foliage and the falling of the leaves.

Vocalist Mimi Goese and trumpeter Ben Neill have updated the Persephone story, while retaining its iconic essence, on their new recording Songs for Persephone (out now on Ramseur Records). As one can see from the pomegranate on the cover, (a visual designed by Goese), the duo is mindful of the legendary Persephone’s history; but they are not hung up on providing a linear narrative.

In a recent phone conversation, Goese, who wrote the album’s lyrics, said, “The artwork that I did for the cover, featuring the pomegranate, is one acknowledgement of the myth of Persephone. And there are other images that I found in the lyrics. But we were interested in using what was evocative about Persephone to create our own story. That’s sort of how the myth evolved too – one storyteller picks up the thread from another down through the years.”

They started work on this music some five years ago, but originally presented it as part of a theatrical production by the multimedia company Ridge Theater, starring Julia Stiles. In 2010, it was produced at Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Next Wave Festival.

The theatrical presentation and the mythological story behind it are only two strands in a disparate web of influences that resonate with Songs for Persephone. Both Goese and Neill make their home in the Hudson River Valley. Both for its stunning natural surroundings and its history as a home for artists of all sorts, the valley is rich with reference points. Neill feels that these are subtly imparted to the music.

In a recent phone conversation, he said, “I found myself particularly interested in the Hudson River School of painters. These Nineteenth Century artists depicted the local landscape and the changing of season with a dimensionality and symbolism that seemed to have an affinity with what Mimi and I were after in Songs for Persephone.”

For Neill and Goese, these extra-musical influences – artwork, nature, and theater – are an important part of the music’s genesis. But the polystylistic nature of their music making adds still another layer to the proceedings.

Goese says, “I started in dance and theater and later moved to performance art. Singing came along later. But I don’t have the musical background or training that Ben has – I’m self taught.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

She doth protest too much. Goese’s voice provided the steely, dramatic center to the work of late eighties band Hugo Largo. One part art rock and another dream pop, the group incorporated bold theatricality and ethereal experimentation, releasing two memorable full lengths, Arms Akimbo and Mettle, and the Drums EP, an alt-pop connoisseur’s delight. She’s also collaborated on several occasions with Moby and, under the moniker Mimi (no last name) released Soak, a solo album on David Bryne’s Luaka Bop label.

Goese is a powerful singer, but Songs of Persephone brings out the lyricism her voice also possesses. Cooing high notes and supple overdubbed harmonies are juxtaposed with the more muscular turns of phrase. Experience plays a role in Goese’s tremendous performances on the disc. But she also credits the musical creations of her collaborator Neill with spurring on her inspiration.

“Ben has been a terrific person with whom to work,” Goese says. “He’s inventive and willing to try new things. From the moment we first performed together, at a concert nearly a decade ago, I’ve felt an artistic kinship with him.”

One can readily hear why Neill’s music would be an engaging foil for Goese. His background as a producer, and his years of work designing the mutantrumpet, have encouraged Neill’s ear toward imaginative soundscapes. His 2009 album Night Science (Thirsty Ear) is an example of Neill’s nu-jazz arrangements and soloing at their very best.

On the current CD, Neill’s playing remains impressive; but his arranging and collaborative skills come to the fore. There are intricate textures to found, on which Neill’s trumpet and electronics are abetted by strings, bass, and drums, but it’s the melodies, floating memorably past, one after the other, that are most impressive here. Some of the melodic lines he crafts are imitative of the voice in their own right: it’s no accident that some of the most inspired music-making on Songs for Persephone are when Goese and Neill create duets out of intricately intertwined single lines.

Neill says, “The classical materials that I used as the basis of the compositions on Songs for Persephone were melodies from the Nineteenth century: from opera and symphonic music. Many of them were from relatively the same era in which the Hudson Valley painters worked. I found it fascinating to juxtapose these two genres that were in operation more or less at the same time.”

He continues, “I’d describe the material as fragments of melodies: small excerpts rather than recognizable themes. None of them are treated in such a way that most listeners will be able to say, ‘Hey that’s Berlioz,’ or ‘That sounds like Schumann.’ They were meant to be a starting point from which I would develop the music: it’s not a pastiche.”

At 7:30 PM on September 27^th, Goese and Neill will be having an album release party at the Cooper Square Hotel, part of Joe’s Pub’s Summer Salon series.  Goese says, “It’s an interesting space – we’ll have glass windows behind us, which is unusual as compared with a more conventional stage. But it’s fun performing in non-standard venues. It allows you to try different things and to bring different elements into the mix in terms of theatricality, lighting, and the way that you play off of each other. I’m excited to see how Persephone changes as we take it into various performing spaces.”

-Composer Christian Carey is Senior Editor at Sequenza 21 and a regular contributor to Signal to Noise and Musical America. He teaches music in the Department of Fine Arts at Rider University (Lawrenceville, New Jersey).

David Fulmer plays his Violin Concerto at FCM. Photo: Hilary Scott

David Fulmer, Violin Concerto: Written in 2010, Fulmer’s chamber concerto revels in complexity. Those who have heard his performances of the music of Brian Ferneyhough or that of his teacher Milton Babbitt, which sizzle with hyper-virtuosic playing, can readily understand such predilections. Fulmer’s performance as soloist on the Sunday morning FCM concert (on 8/7) was imbued with similar intensity.

Compositionally, it’s an abundantly promising work: but it isn’t perfect. Occasionally, one feels that a bit of crowd control might be brought to bear on the thickly scored busyness of the orchestration, to better clarify the angular counterpoint that propels the proceedings. Also, the inclusion of three keyboard instruments for one player – piano, harpsichord, and celesta – (without terribly extended parts for either of the latter two) seems an impractical choice that may limit the number of ensembles who will mount the piece. That said, Fulmer’s compositional language and performance demeanor exemplify an edginess and gutsiness notably in short supply among many of his contemporaries in the emerging composer realm.

Marie Tachouet plays the solo part in Felder's Inner Sky. Photo: Hilary Scott

David Felder, Inner Sky: Tanglewood is blessed with excellent student performers. And while there were a number of fellows who distinguished themselves on the festival, the standout for me was flutist Marie Tachouet. A member of the New Fromm Players, Tanglewood’s SEAL Team Six equivalent for contemporary music, Tachouet played on several FCM concerts. But she took her solo turn on its finale, an orchestra concert held in the evening on Sunday, August 7^th.

The flutist was featured in David Felder’s Inner Sky. Composed in 1994 and substantially revised in ’99, this piece requires the soloist to perform on four flutes: piccolo, concert, alto, and bass flute. The trajectory of the piece is charted by the move from high to low flutes, which is registrally mimicked by a supporting quadraphonic electronics part that features both distressed flute samples and synthetic sounds. An “analog” surround effect is also created by an even distribution of strings and percussion across the stage.

Inner Sky is an immersive listening experience. It’s also a highly sophisticated colloquy between soloist, ensemble, and electronics; one that achieves a carefully choreographed balance of elements, both acoustic and musical: a balance that is all too rarely found in works for orchestra plus electronics. It certainly helped to have Tachouet’s sensitive performance and Robert Treviño’s fine direction of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.

Later this year, Inner Sky sees release in both stereophonic and surround-sound formats. I’m looking forward to checking it out again (hopefully in both versions!).

San Francisco Community Music Center, July 20 – 23, 2011 

The first sound of the festival’s Wednesday night show was, perhaps appropriately, nothing. Theresa Wong started offstage, down front, with just a microphone. She circled it in front of her face, no sound coming out of her pursed lips. Fluid looping gestures, but no vocal to be heard for perhaps two minutes. Then, a “Woo.” Silence, the mic passing back and forth. “Hoo,” silence, then another and another. Hoots and cuckoos, then a low-flutter “Wo – wo – wo – wo” for thirty seconds, then putting the mic to ear and droning (can throat sounds pass out the ear canal?), long high tones splintering off whistling multiphonics, static noise, razzes, gulps, and hums, more microphone manipulation for Doppler effects, then an episode of something close to song-singing, ending on a slow tremolo submerging into underwater warbles.

Theresa Wong stands at a deeply resonating node where a number of Bay Area new music waves converge, and is thus an emblematic artist for the Outsound Summit.  Wednesday night’s all-vocal concert was titled “Face Music,” and the audience was faced with four singular solo approaches to the first instrument. Wong’s approach comes from a deep human connection to music and a direct, unaffected performance mode. When she took up her ‘cello for the second piece, even the most “abstract” sound worlds somehow evoked song-based territories. The instrument itself, when bowed, seemed to sound directly as her voice.

Aurora Josephson went even deeper during a short, ritualistic reading of John Cage’s Experiences No. 2. All in black, kneeling among candles on the floor in front of the stage, she conjured a dark and mournful atmosphere. She allowed herself long pauses between phrases, giving the listener time to savor her exquisitely precise enunciation and powerful delivery which, unamplified, rocked the room.

Joseph Rosenzweig, whose set closed the first half, delivered a choppy, harsh live sample-driven piece, a Hiss Concerto as it were, all glitchy and jarringly loud much of the time, causing the audience to jump in their seats when he’d suddenly pop a scream. His digital manipulations would seek out the hidden harmonic artifacts within his scratchy drones and, at one point, he pulled out the always useful “reverse glottal fry.”

Raising “Face Music” to its multimedia apex for the evening, bran(…)pos, aka Jake Rodriguez, erected a makeshift projection screen out of an umbrella and some diaphanous cloth, and placed it between his rig and the audience, Wizard of Oz-like.  All paid attention to this Man Behind The Curtain, for his face filled the screen while wet vocal pops and kisses danced around the room from loudspeaker to loudspeaker. Cheap electronics are one of his main soundwells, and, even though the materials and visuals suggest mass violence, escalation, and propaganda, it’s all somehow delivered in a cheerfully demented style that comes off as no more threatening than a swarm of angry pixies. Eventually, after a well-crafted arc of electronic disaster movie re-enactments, bran(…)pos’s face melted from the screen (replaced by a butterfly), and Jake stepped out from behind to take his bows.

On Friday night, local composer/performer Polly Moller curated “The Art of Composition,” featuring works by Krystina Bobrowski, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Kanoko Nishi, and Gino Robair. Showcasing the huge range and robustly idiosyncratic heuristics of the Bay Area new music scene is not an easy job, but Moller’s selection cut a deep slice, if not the widest possible range (although the latter could fairly be claimed for the festival as a whole).

Mr. Robair demonstrated his centrality to many of the sub-scenes that populate the worldwide out-sound landscape, being on stage for three of the four groups and performing diverse roles with nonchalant virtuosity throughout. First, he assisted composer and instrument inventor Krystina Bobrowski in “Lift, Loft and Lull,” which employed amplified balloons as resonators for thick steel plates and long tubular bells. The first part was a slow underwater procession, with the composer blowing a mournful kelp horn while Robair did the balloonatics; the second part, with the pair playing the long tubes, gradually expanded its phrasing and language into a kaleidoscope of bongs, scrapes, rubs and singing gong-like tones. The second piece had Bobrowski moving to the Gliss Glass and Robair applying his wet fingers to a set of wine glasses.

The Gliss Glass is Bobrowski’s most complex and compelling instrument: three open-topped vessels partly filled with water, suspended on height-adjustable tripods and connected with valved tubing. Using the principle of water seeking its own level, the glasses can be struck or finger-bowed then moved up or down, causing the tones to change as the water travels among the different vessels. The resulting sounds are guaranteed to haunt the ears for days afterward, and the set provided a bang-up opening to the night.

Andrew Raffo Dewar, formerly a Bay Area stalwart (now based at the University of Alabama), is a saxophonist and composer whose Interactions Quartet has performed in San Francisco before. Robair, again on percussion, was joined by Dewar on soprano saxophone, Kyle Bruckmann on oboe and English horn, and John Shiurba on nylon-string guitar. Typically for Dewar, every new composition for the group is miles away from its predecessors in sound and form. “Strata” sounded as if impressions of Dewar’s recent jaunt to far-off Ghana had rubbed off, the slow opening moments hovering between pointillism and hocketing, all in simple pentatonic harmonies. As it gathered speed, dissonance and density — settling into a sort of pulse for the middle section (Robair and Shiurba stomping feet, ankles wrapped in bell shakers), then moving beyond a simple pulse into polymetric, panchromatic complexity — the piece stayed suspended, timeless, as if one were swimming in adjacent dimensions of streaming gossamers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gino Robair led his own Ensemble Aguascalientes to finish the Friday concert through a suite “based on the politically charged engravings of … Jose Guadalupe Posada.” As with many of his compositions, Robair’s conducting [see the video above, from Robair's I, Norton workshop and concert footage @ the CAID (Detroit) and The Heaven Gallery (Chicago)] using hand cues and relying on the players’ spontaneous responses to the cues and the score, ensures that no two performances sound as kin. Shiurba was back on guitar, along with Scott Walton on bass, Joel Davel and Jim Kassis percussion, and Ms. Moller on bass flute, flute headjoint, and two sizes of ocarina. The choice of ocarina is a pivotal one in realizing Robair’s conception. “I definitely want to get away from standard tuning in this piece,” he says. “It’s all a bit unstable, pitch-wise. Which I happen to like.” The ocarina’s fragile tone and nomadic pitch —negatives in the European tradition — might be said to represent a “village” or even “revolutionary” approach (in the anti-imperialist sense), to music-making. If improvisation posits a direct-democracy alternative to the imperial composer/conductor/ensemble hierarchy, then the ocarina fires a sonic shot across the equal-temperament bow. Forgive the tortured analogies — such are the deep thoughts that Outsound concerts regularly evoke. (Besides, it’s Bulwer Lytton season.)

Kanonko Nishi’s piece (some explanation of her aims and methods may be found here), a graphic score realized by bassist Tony Dryer and guitarist IOIOI, seemed to be all about punishment of the ears, aided and abetted by a sound engineer who blasted the audience not once but four times with feedback before the thing even got started, then pegged the levels of Dryer’s droning bass-feedback section at stadium-rock levels — maybe fifteen minutes’ worth, although it went by like hours. IOIOI followed Dryer, dropping stuff on her electric guitar and banging on it occasionally, which was a little softer but more piercing and unpredictable. At least their racket drowned out the party carrying on next door. Somebody must’ve liked it — from my bunker I heard applause after it was over.

Saturday night of the Outsound Summit was dedicated to instrument makers. Co-curated by Outsound founder/quarterback Rent Romus and Edward Shocker, of the Thingamajigs group, the evening proved the maxim that the inventor is not always the most winning exponent of his or her invention. (Another point, demo’d by Walter Funk: It may not be the best idea to put a lasagna pan full of water onto a stage bustling with electric wires, computers and effects boxes, etc.) Among the presenters were new-instrument stalwarts Bart Hopkin and Terry Berlier (Her instruments are often quite beautiful sculptures). David Michalak played them in place of Ms. Berlier; unfortunately, the most impressive-looking one, a wooden dodecahedron riddled with sound-tubes and slapped with spatulas, was a sonic dud), Tom Nunn with Michalak and Stephen Baker, Brenda Hutchinson and Bob Marsh, Sasha Leitman and Walter Funk, and Sung Kim with Dan Ake. Ms. Hutchinson manipulated and sang into her long tube, enhanced by electronics and field recordings while Mr. Marsh, having donned a full-body suit covered in sliced-up water bottles, performed a pantomime to Ms. Hutchinson’s sounds that suggested Godzilla waking up to find he’s been genetically spliced with a jellyfish. It worked.

The highlight performance of the evening belonged to Tom Nunn, supported by Michalak and Baker. Mr. Nunn has been doing what he does for a very long time; he may be fairly said to be one of the granddaddies on the sonic sculpture family tree. His instruments are always a treat to look at and a delight to the ear. He favors nonharmonic, complex resonances such as are generated by metal rods and plates. His Skatchboxes generate insect and electronic sounds from mundane materials like combs, screws, and washers. Nunn debuted a new instrument on this night, a 3’ by 3’ stainless steel plate suspended by balloons in buckets and vibrated by cardboard tubes. Somehow the varying lengths of the tubes make different tones possible when rubbed along the steel. Mr. Nunn’s performing style is deeply rooted in his long, lanky body, never showing any doubt that he knows exactly what sound he wants and how to get it. The groaning sounds coming from the plate plunged the room under a mile-deep glacier, where blue echoes lightly glanced off the icy, inching walls.

Outsound.org’s New Music Summit has been around ten years, and granters like SF Friends of Chamber Music and The Zellerbach Family Foundation are just now beginning to pay attention. The programming that Outsound practices is vital in supplying fresh ideas and energy into the Bay Area’s music culture. Emerging and difficult-to-classify artists are given a forum. The value of these services cannot be overstated. Here’s to ten more years of Outsound.

Book of Ice
by Paul D. Miller with an introduction by Brian Greene
Mark Batty; 128 pages

ISBN: 978-1935613145

Paul D. Miller is probably best known as DJ Spooky, out electronica artist. But he’s also an eloquent author about DJing and musical aesthetics in books such as Rhythm Science and Sound Unbound. Well versed in contemporary classical music, Miller has collaborated with and remixed music by Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, and Terry Riley. His latest project is perhaps his most ambitious and it involves one of the longest field trips and most far flung residencies an artist can make:  a trip to Antartica.

In order to do research for Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antartica, a work commissioned by BAM for its 2009 Next Wave festival, Miller travelled to this remote region, soaking in its forbidding landscapes. Book of Ice is a companion to the Terra Nova project, a journal of the work in process. It’s also a travelogue for this most unlikely of destinations. Miller meditates on a complex array of associations  - historical, sociological, and imaginational – that humankind has with this principally uninhabited continent.

Along the way, readers are treated to a glimpse of Antartica’s fascinating past and its very uncertain and environmentally unstable future. Miller is a nimble ecological advocate, expounding upon the dangers we face from climate change – underscored by the impact it’s already had on polar ice caps – without ever allowing the book to tread too heavily. He also manages to make what might at first seem to be an unlikely pairing – that of DJ culture and Antartic exploits – cohere into an edifying and engaging read throughout.

Paul D. Miller. Photo: Mike Figgis.

Krys is a sound artist, composer and musician living in Oakland, California. In addition to French horn she plays acoustic and electronic instruments of her own design. Her collection of original instruments includes prepared amplified rocking chairs, bull kelp horns, Leaf Speakers, Gliss Glass (pictured at left) and the Harmonic Slide.  Krys received her M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and her B.A. in Computers and Music from Dartmouth College.  In addition to performing her own work, Bobrowski plays with the Bay Area-based improvisation ensemble Vorticella.

Her new work, Lift, Loft, Lull, is a series of short pieces exploring the sonic properties of metal pipes and plates and the use of balloons as resonators, performed by the composer and Gino Robair. The compositions have their origins in Bobrowski’s recent instrument prototyping work for the Exploratorium.

S21: Do your pipes, metal plates, and balloons come with any sound-generating history? Is there any “tradition” behind their use in music?

During my artist residency at the Exploratorium, I began experimenting with alternative resonators for musical instruments. I wanted to create an experience that would allow the listener to hear the ‘sonic bloom,’ the moment a resonator comes in tune and couples to a vibrating object.

As part of this project I started researching resonators in traditional and experimental instruments. I came across an interesting photo from the 1950s of someone playing an instrument made of glass rods attached to a series of inflated plastic cushions. The cushions were acting as the resonators for the glass. Later, I learned that the Baschet brothers, Francois and Bernard Baschet, invented this instrument along with dozens of other beautiful sound sculptures, including an inflatable guitar!

This started my exploration of using balloons as resonators, mostly for instruments made out of various kinds of metal: plates, pipes, bars, odd-shaped scraps. I also came across references to Tom Nunn’s and Prent Rodgers’ work with balloons and balloon resonators in a book by Bart Hopkin, ‘Musical Instrument Design.’ This led me to make a version of the ‘balloon gong’ instrument shown in the book.

The results of my sonic explorations and the ‘balloon gong’ will be featured in my composition, Lift Loft Lull.

S21:  Do invented instruments and found objects, with their newness, make different demands on the composer than orchestral instruments, whose capabilities are already well known?

Whether I’m composing for traditional instruments, invented instruments, found objects or any combination of the above, I’m organizing elements of sound. The only difference is what I’m organizing. A lot of my found objects and invented instruments can’t ‘carry a tune’ so I’m not going to use lots of melodic and harmonic structures. Instead I’m going to organize the sounds and the variations of sounds that the instruments can make. This requires some exploration, and, for me, it’s the really fun part: playing and experimenting with the sonic abilities and limitations of each instrument and object. It’s definitely a continuous process; I’m still finding new and interesting sounds to make with my kelp horn–and I’ve been blowing into kelp for over twenty years!

S21:  In writing for these sound-generating items, how do you get beyond just showing what the instrument can do, to its next level of musicality?

I design and build my own instruments because I want to expand the sonic palette in my compositions, improvisations and installations; not simply for the sake of making a new instrument. I’ve had the opportunity to demonstrate my instruments at pre and post concert talks, at the Maker Faire and the Exploratorium. People are always curious. ‘How does it work?’ ‘What does it sound like?’ These events are very enjoyable, and I try to show everything the instrument can do. However, there is a big difference between demonstration and composition.

My main goal in designing instruments is creating interesting music and I always have a musical concept behind the instruments I build. These concepts may be concrete or abstract. With the Gliss Glass it was a bit of both. I was looking for an acoustic system where I could create very long slow glissandos. At the same time I was interested in the social and musical interaction of the performers. A system where the performers depended on each other to change pitches – if no one raised or lowered their part of the instrument the pitches would never change.

S21: Do invented instruments and found objects lend themselves, more than familiar Western instruments, to improvisation than composed music?

In the improvised music ensemble, Vorticella, I play French horn, funnel horn, kelp horn, Gliss Glass and other found and invented instruments. I like having the whole range of sound worlds to draw from. I find that the traditional and experimental instruments in the group often meet in an ambiguous auditory middle ground where it is hard to tell by listening which instrument is which.

With the French horn I can use traditional techniques, even blow the occasional horn call; but, I can also sing into the horn, modify the instrument by pulling out slides, use a pie plate as a mute, etc. The resulting sounds and textures bring the instrument closer to found objects and invented instruments played by other members of the group. At the same time, while I can’t play a major scale on the kelp or Gliss Glass, I can find and hold certain pitches and often try to match a note on the cello or a harmonic emanating from one of the gongs.

S21:  You’ve recruited Gino Robair to be your duo partner in the Summit performance. (He’s also premiering a piece on the same concert.) How did you come to choose him in particular?

I’ve always admired Gino’s abilities as a percussionist and his musicality in any genre. Since meeting at Mills College in 1989, we’ve collaborated on a number of projects over the years including his opera ‘I Norton,’ my ‘Gliss Glass’ ensemble pieces, and many improvisation duo performances in the Bay Area and Europe.

Gino and I first performed together in the Mills gamelan ensemble directed by Jody Diamond. The group played both traditional and experimental pieces on the wonderful American gamelan built by Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig. Shortly after Mills, in the early 90s, Gino asked me to write a piece for him and one of my favorite gamelan instruments, the slenthem. I ended up writing a duo work, “Yellow Flower Burial”. The composition is a set of three ‘game’ pieces loosely drawing on elements found in traditional gamelan music. We’ve performed this piece together on a number of occasions including the premiere at the University of Redlands.

When Gino agreed to perform with me at the Outsound Summit, I took the opportunity to revisit some of the same compositional ideas from over fifteen years ago. Lift Loft Lull picks up on both the ‘game’ theme and some of the gamelan concepts, including abstractions of kotekan (fast, interlocking parts) and balungan (core melody). There is also plenty of room for structured improvisation. I’m excited to be premiering this work with Gino.