Composer Blogs@Sequenza21.com
Jacob David Sudol(b. Des Moines, Iowa 1980) writes intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena and the inner nature of how we perceive sound. He recently finished his M.Mus. at McGill University and currently resides in La Jolla, CA where he is working towards a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego with Roger Reynolds, Chinary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Rand Steiger.

Over the last five years some of Jacob's mentors in composition have included John Rea, Denys Bouliane, Philippe Leroux, Sean Ferguson, Dan Asia, and Craig Walsh. He has also participated in master classes with Danish composer Bent Sørensen and German composer Manfred Stahnke.

During 2005-2006, Jacob was the first-ever composer-in-residence for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Denys Bouliane, in collaboration with the McGill Digital Composition Studio. He has also written music for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Contemporary Keyboard Society, percussionist Fernando Rocha, saxophonist Elizabeth Bunt, and clarinetist Krista Martynes. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, he composed the music for a collaborative dance project with choreographer Hillary Peterson, and he was the principal composer and pianist for El Proyecto de Santa Barbara, a chamber Latin jazz ensemble.

During the 2005 and 2007 Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques and 2006 MusiMars festivals Jacob was an electronic assistant for performances with Court-Circuit, Matt Haimovitz, Sara Laimon, Martin Matalon, Moritz Eggert, Manfred Stahnke, the Caput Ensemble, and the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble. These concerts were broadcast by the CBC and the European Broadcasting Union in over fifty countries throughout the world. He is currently a studio research assistant for Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds.

During his free time Jacob takes an active interest in religious phenomenology, cinema, acoustics, literature, poetry, and visual art. As a composer and performer, he always attempts to bring insights from these other fields into his work.

Archives
 10/04/05 10/10/05 10/16/05 10/27/05 12/04/05 12/17/05 12/29/05 01/11/06 01/12/06 02/02/06 02/13/06 02/26/06 04/12/06 04/22/06 05/27/06 06/01/06 06/09/06 06/12/06 06/14/06 06/18/06 06/22/06 06/24/06 07/03/06 07/06/06 07/10/06 07/11/06 07/15/06 07/19/06 07/23/06 07/26/06 07/29/06 08/02/06 08/04/06 08/06/06 08/08/06 08/11/06 08/16/06 08/18/06 08/21/06 08/24/06 08/25/06 08/29/06 09/07/06 09/15/06 09/17/06 09/19/06 09/22/06 09/26/06 09/27/06 09/29/06 10/03/06 10/04/06 10/06/06 10/13/06 10/17/06 10/19/06 11/03/06 11/06/06 11/08/06 11/10/06 11/14/06 11/16/06 11/21/06 11/24/06 12/08/06 12/12/06 12/16/06 01/17/07 01/18/07 01/19/07 01/21/07 01/24/07 01/30/07 01/31/07 02/01/07 02/06/07 02/07/07 02/11/07 02/13/07 02/15/07 02/19/07 02/26/07 03/09/07 03/20/07 03/21/07 03/29/07 04/01/07 04/03/07 04/09/07 04/15/07 04/20/07 04/22/07 04/24/07 04/25/07 04/27/07 04/29/07 05/04/07 05/09/07 05/15/07 05/19/07 05/21/07 05/24/07 05/25/07 05/29/07 06/01/07 06/08/07 06/09/07 06/10/07 06/11/07 06/13/07 06/16/07 06/19/07 07/02/07 07/12/07 08/21/07 11/04/07 12/30/07 02/17/08 02/20/08 02/24/08 02/25/08 03/16/08 08/25/08 11/23/08

Contact:
jacob.sudol@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All music posted on this blog is posted out of love and the idea that for the truly great music of our time(s) to be known it must first and foremost be heard. If you like what you hear please support the artist by buying the recordings, scores, and/or encouraging the performances of the music in every way possible.

If you are the composer, performer, performing organization, artist or directly represent the composer, performer, performing organization, or artist of anything posted on this website and would like your material removed please contact me and I will happily oblige.

Back to Sequenza21.com

Powered by Blogger

stats count
11/23/2008
Mp3 Blog #98: “The Space Between”


Jacob David Sudol: ”The Space Between” (2008)

For soprano, flute, clarinet, cello, and live electronics

Performed by Stephanie Aston (voice), Christine Tavolacci (flutes), Przemyslaw Bosak (clarinets), Ashley Walters (cello), Jacob David Sudol (electronics/mixing), Robert Zellickman (conductor)

* * * * *

‘Alas, when the Uncertain Experiencing of Reality is dawning upon me here,
With every thought of fear or terror or awe for all set aside,
May I recognize whatever appear, as the reflections of my own consciousness;
May I know them to be the nature of the apparitions in the Bardo:
When at this all-important moment of achieving a great end,
May I not fear the band of Peaceful and Wrathful, mine own thought-forms.’

–verse for traversing the Chönyid Bardo *

The Space Between was written in 2008. The composition intends to explore the experience of traversing through and inhabiting a great variety of constantly changing yet unified intermediate states.
The primary inspiration for this work was the initial state of dying as described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead where one first begins to recognize “the dissolution of earth… into water, water into fire, fire into wind, wind into consciousness.”* These ideas were treated abstractly and combined with a personal vision of dying as a confused state where unusual simplified archetypal characters constantly bleed into and out of each other.

* Texts taken from Chapter 11 of the The Tibetan Book of the Dead: translated by W.Y. Evans-Wentz (Oxford, 1960)

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

8/25/2008
Mp3 Blong # 97: "Longing, we say"


Jacob David Sudol:
”Longing, we say” (2007)

For violin and cello (preliminary sketch for future string quartet)

Performed by Batya McAdam-Somer and Kaylie Eriksen

* * * * *

"Meditation at Lagunitas”

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.


- Robert Hass
from the poetry collection “Praise” (Ecco Press, 1979)

Labels:

posted by Jacob Sudol

3/16/2008
Mp3 Blog # 96: "Crois-tu en l’immortalité de l’âme?"


Claude Vivier:
"Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire" (1982)
For Soprano and Ensemble

Performed by Ingrid Schmithüsen and the Société du musique contemporaine du Québec

Available on this album at emusic

"Crois-tu en l’immortalité de l’âme?" (incomplete 1983)

Performers unknown

Live performance on this DVD

* * * * *

“...I pursued my work with a kind of marvellous serenity. I compose more slowly as I have more and more notes of my music to write! I have just completed the first six minutes of Croix-tu en l’immortalité de l’âme? I am almost doing ‘Dripping’! The whole piece uses two poles: mobility and immobility! Here is a text which I sue in an immobile part:
I was cold, it was winter
well I thought I was cold
maybe I was cold.
God had told me that I would be cold.
Maybe I was dead.

I was not afraid of being dead
as much as I was afraid of dying.
Suddenly I got cold
very cold - or I was cold.
It was night and I was afraid.
I believe that it is a beautiful text for the work I am now composing...”

Excerpt from a letter to Thérèse Desjardins by Claude Vivier, Paris, January 7th, 1983

Labels: ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

2/25/2008
Mp3 Blog # 95: Diario Polacco

Luigi Nono:
”Quado Stanno Morendo. Diario Polacco N. 2”

For two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, contralto, bass flute, cello, and live electronics

Performed by Ingrid Ade, Monika Bayr-Ivenz, Monika Brustmann, Susanne Otto, Roberto Fabbriciani, and Christine Theus

Currently out of print

Another recording available on this SACD

* * * * *

Campo dei Fiori

In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors’ shoulders.

I thought of Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haddle, laugh, make love
hs they pass by matyrs’ pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet.
until, when all is legend
and many years have passed,
on a new Campo dei Fiori
rage will kindle at a poet’s word.

-Czeslaw Milosz
Warsaw, 1943

(translated to English from Polish by Louis Iribarne and David Brooks)

* * *

The texts sung and the historical context of this masterpiece are available in this thorough online analysis.

Labels: , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

2/24/2008
Mp3 Blog #94: Some Older Two-Part Compositions


J.S. Bach:
From The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1
Prelude in b flat minor
Fugue in b flat minor

Performed by Glenn Gould

Available on this compact disc

Fryderyk Chopin:
Two Nocturnes, Opus 55
#15 in f minor
#16 in E flat major

Performed by Arthur Rubinstein

Available on this compact disc

Ludwig van Beethoven:
Sonata # 32 in c minor, Opus 111
I. Maestoso; Allegro con brio ed appassionato
II. Arietta: Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile

Performed by Artur Schnabel

Available on this compact disc

* * * * *

Before I post a few more contemporary two-movement works I wanted to post a few older two-part and two-movement compositions.

The first two works not technically two-movement compositions. That said I feel that both are good examples of a work constructed in two parts. For example, the prelude and fugue is arguably one of the archetypal pairs that comprise a whole. I’ve chosen J. S. Bach’s b flat minor prelude and five-voice fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 because it is possibly my favorite prelude and fugue.

Most of Chopin’s nocturnes were published in pairs and to this day are often performed in recitals that way. Opus 55 is probably my favorite of these pairs.

Beethoven struggled with the two-movement form periodically throughout all of his piano sonatas and arguably it wasn’t until the last try that he really got it right. While looking for two-movement compositions I noticed that the form is used far less regularly than three or four-movements. This might be because it is harder to balance multiple movements when there are only two of them. In my opinion it is this attempt at literal balance that makes most of Beethoven’s other two-movement sonatas less remarkable. On the other hand, it seems to be the misbalance between the normal-length tempestuous first movement and extended and almost transcendental second movement that makes Opus 111 so moving and unforgettable.

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

2/20/2008
Mp3 Blog #93: Two Movement Compositions/Nørgård and Wölfli


Per Nørgård:
Symphony #4: (1981)
I. Indian Rose Garden
II. Chinese Witch's Lake

Performed by the Danish Notional Radio Symphony Orchestra

Available along with many of Nørgård's works on emusic

* * * * *

In the last three years I've been rather preoccupied with the idea of writing two movement compositions. In reflection, I think this preoccupation started after I heard Denys Bouliane present an analysis of his work "Rumore Sui." What struck me the most about this piece at the time was the two-sidedness of the two movements -- how, although the two movements are constructed in a very simple near perfect symmetry, one perceives something much more complex in their relationships.

This preoccupation has led me to work on two compositions that each have two movements -- a work for clarinet or saxophone and electronics and a violin and cello duo. To date, I have only finished the first movement of each work. (The violin and cello duo was premiered at a jury recently at the University of California in San Diego and the clarinet/electronic piece will be premiered in a rough form on Tuesday.) Not finishing either of these works has bothered me quite a bit and in attempting finally finish the second movement of the clarinet or saxophone and electronics works I've begun to listen to a lot of my favorite two movement compositions.

One of my favorite two movement compositions is Per Nørgård's Symphony #4. Lately I have been listening to a lot of music Per Nørgård. This is in part because he has written a number of successful two movement piece such as the Third Symphony, "Voyage into the Golden Screen," "Remembering Child," and his Fourth Symphony.

Nørgård composed his Fourth Symphony soon after he became obsessed with the work of outsider artist Adolf Wölfli (1864 - 1930). As a result of this obsession Nørgård dedicates this work to Adolf Wölfli. This obsession with Wölfli is also seen in the compositional style of this symphony which includes an extreme drama not found in any of Nørgård's previous work. In fact, I often hear this symphony as a parody of the monumental high structuralism that is so present in his previous Symphony #3. That aside, this symphony also includes a personal emotionalism drawn from Nørgård's reflections on some of Wölfli's imagination. In my opinion this emotionalism is largely what imbues Nørgård's compositions written since the 80's with an expressiveness that I am greatly drawn towards.

Labels: , , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

2/17/2008
Mp3 Blog #92: "Rumore Sui"


Denys Bouliane:
"Rumore sui”: (2002-2003)
Via prima
Via secunda

For string quartet

Performed by the Quatuor Bozzini

Recording not commercially released

* * * * *

"Rumore sui” is the second in Denys Bouliane’s new trilogy of chamber works (the first being the previously posted ”Qualia sui" (2001-02) for piano trio and the final being “Tremore sui” for violin and piano (2004-)). The thematic linking in these works derives itself from the Latin word “sui” which means “of oneself." As the trilogy progresses a there is a progression towards a deeper level of introspective probing.

The two movements in "Rumore sui" are essentially two views on the same musical material -- the first movement an extroverted view and the second an introverted view. The second movement of this work with its early culminating vortex and the following hypnotic shattered modal faux-music-box is quite possibly my favorite of all of Denys's works.

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol

12/30/2007
The Sanctuary Project

In my last post I failed to mention that in late Summer I moved from Montréal to San Diego where I just started studies towards a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego. Unfortunately this move, and the subsequent challenges of getting my feet on the ground again, kept me from updating this blog with my previous regularity. That said, now that I have a little more free time I wanted to share some of my recent experiences.

* * *

As part of my stipend at UCSD I was assigned to be one of Roger Reynolds’s two studio Research Assistants. This quarter this meant that I got to help work on Roger Reynold’s most recent large work Sanctuary, for percussion ensemble and live electronics. My main tasks included consulting with Roger and Ian Saxton (Roger’s other Research Assistant) on the PD patch Ian programmed to run the live electronics in Sanctuary, helping with the technological set-up, as well as triggering the piece’s 180+ electronic cues during rehearsals and performance.

In mid and late October Steve Schick, red fish blue fish, Roger Reynolds, Ian Saxton and myself spent a little a more than two weeks at UCSD working in the Multipurpose Space at CalIt 2. We spent this time experimenting with and refining technology for the world premiere of Sanctuary that occurred on November 18th.

Below are two photos taken while we worked in the Multipurpose Space


Left to Right:
Greg Stuart and Roger Reynolds


Left to Right:
Ian Saxton (at computer), Greg Stuart, Justin DeHart, Roger Reynolds, Fabio Olivera, Ross Karre


For a week in mid-November, Steve Schick, red fish blue fish, Roger Reynolds, Ian Saxton, Josef Kucera, and me headed to Washington D.C. to prepare for and give the world premiere of Sanctuary in the atrium of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. Every night before the performance we had to set up everything for Sanctuary after the gallery closed, rehearse, and then breakdown everything by 11 P.M. This was particularly stressful because not only did the the set-up include five percussion stations, two remote almglocken stations, but one to three microphones for every station, twelve speakers distributed across three levels of the gallery, recording equipment, and multiple computers and audio mixers. That said it was remarkable to rehearse in the National Gallery after it closed every night and the performance went off with virtually no technical problems.

Below are some photos I took while we worked at the National Gallery of Art. (There are also photos of the premiere available here.)


Steve Schick rehearsing Chatter/Clatter during a dinner break

Fabio Olivera watching Steve Schick rehearse

Roger Reynolds, Lina Bahn, and members of red fish blue fish relaxing before rehearsal


Ian Saxton frenetically programming behind the empty chair where I sat with the score and triggered cues

Breaking down after a successful performance

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Jacob Sudol