The Dahlia Flute Duo performs “Two Flutes and Tape” by Nomi Epstein at this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The composer provided the following notes about the piece: “Written for Australian flutist Janet McKay’s 2009 US Tour “Those Vanished Hands,” the work explores material as sonic block both as live player and prerecorded tape parts. Juxtaposition of blocks are presented through stratification and variation of durational properties.”
Jim Liddle narrates Inés Thiebaut’s work Forget Nothing and Forgive Me Anyway while accompanied by Janet Jacobson on violin. Inés writes the following:
This is the second major collaboration with poet and dear friend Molly Bain. She wrote this poem on commission, and my only instructions to her were: “just make it abstract, don’t tell a story…” But Molly always writes stories, for she is a storyteller, even when they are not linear. Her words are the sole inspiration for the music, which is just a sound representation of them. In conversation, the voice and the violin follow each other while narrating the sense of aloneness, the notions of past and future, and how sometimes the simple things in life are not that simple…
Elisabeth Tomczyk warming up in preparation for last December’s benefit concert. In addition to Elisabeth, the evening featured performances by Anne Berry, Sheri Brown, Ryan Caparella, Patrice Fitzgerald, Windsor Johnson, Richard Leslie, and Grace Smith. The 2011 benefit concert featured music, drink, and food, with dozens in attendance to support the March festival.
Photo courtesy Mary Scripko.
Kathryn Denney and Lisa Hadley perform Anita Kupriss’s Soul Tea at Capital Community College, where this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert was held on March 8, 2012. Written for vocalists and a fixed electronics track, the piece features sound samples of a tea kettle. The composer writes:
“In the mornings I often sing along with my whistling tea kettle (doesn’t everyone?) and decided that I just had to write a piece for two (or three) female voices with a pre-recorded tea kettle background track. The pitch of the tea kettle, which undulates between an A and a Bb, sounds the pedal tone for the entire piece, while the click of the electronic starter generates a recurring rhythmic motive. The text, a series of vowels, gives the singers the freedom to create bursts of canonic melodies and modal harmonies. The singers employ glides and onomatopoeic sounds (tsik) as effects and sing descending and ascending quarter steps with the tea kettle, in order to heighten the harmonic tension. At first I thought that this would be a humorous piece, but as I composed it the mood became more melancholy which ultimately inspired me to name this song Soul Tea.”
Another shot of Owen Weaver performing Lisa Coons’s Percussion Sculpture No. 1, because it was just so cool! The metal sculpture was amplified, but no other electronics were added. The lights were dimmed for the piece, and Weaver was illuminated by lamp shown on the left. Toward the end of the piece, serendipity showed its face: the lamp began to flicker in time to the music (perhaps as a result of the vibrations from the sculpture), creating an unplanned but entirely appropriate addition to the atmosphere of the piece.
