A composition for TAMU student dancers, choreographed by Carisa Armstrong.
Category Archives: Compositions
Live Sampling with Jazz Saxophone
At this year’s TAMU Music Faculty Recital, I performed a live sampling improvisation with tenor saxophonist Jayson Beaster-Jones using the Motet and Elektrodynamik environments.
Deck performed at Big Range Austin Dance Festival 2012
6/28–6/29/2012 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, Austin , TX (ticketed)
Choreographers Christine Bergeron and Carisa Armstrong worked with me to create a set of four brief pieces, each one minute long, on the central theme “Deck:” Deck of Cards, Decked Out, Hit the Deck, and Wooden Deck. Continue reading
Deck for Dance and Electronically Processed Found Sounds
As part of our respective research programs, TAMU Dance professors Bergeron and Armstrong and I won a Collaboration Grant from the IDHMC in support of developing feasible approaches to incorporating live media in contemporary dance performance.
While dance is an art form that is typically viewed live more than other disciplines, logistical challenges commonly leave dancers to adapt prerecorded music to their performances. TAMU’s PerfTech (Performance Technology) initiative develops methods to use technology in-and-as live performance without simply replacing traditional instruments with synthesized copies. With modern live technology techniques, we plan to merge the early twentieth century technique of Foley art for live radio broadcasts with the techniques of musique concrète (fixed media art music) developed since the late 1940s to develop approaches to building meaningful connections between dance and sound through common semiotic ground. Similarly, we explored incorporating digital imagery into this intermedia performance.
We developed this in a collaborative performance called Deck in four brief movements, each exploring a different sense of the word: “Hit the Deck,” “Wooden (Backyard) Deck,” “Decked Out,” and “Deck of Cards.” This work was accepted for performance at the Big Range Dance Festival 2012 in Houston as a juried submission. The equipment funded with the grant will be used to support future collaborations of this type among faculty and TAMU students.
Microtonal Étude for Horn at the International Horn Society
This work explores the technology of the horn. Since it is a mature acoustic instrument, we tend to overlook the artificial structures it imposes on the way we think about making music with it. Also, musical conventions lead horn players to struggle against the natural tendencies of the instrument, e.g., to force notes to be what we consider to be “in tune.” In its earlier forms, the horn had no valves Continue reading
Sound Design for Prelude to a Kiss
We had some fun with the sound design for the TAMU mainstage production of Prelude to a Kiss directed by Anne Quackenbush. In addition to using music from TAMU alumni band The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (some of which was recorded in our own studio), the music for the new age wedding ceremony is an algorithmic composition featuring Theatre Arts and Music student J.J. Ceniceros. We called the project Pomegranate Aspiration. Continue reading
A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte
This composition was invited for a compilation CD on the theme of steampunk, an art movement celebrating the ingenuity, effort, and danger of technology of the industrial revolution. In “A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte,” I perform what is called live coding, creating music by Continue reading
“The Collected Solo Piano Works of Ferin Martino, as Conjured by Your Presence”
This is an interactive art installation using a piano playing computer algorithm I wrote that generates music reminiscent of early twentieth century expressionist composers like Arnold Schönberg. Since the software is capable of generating its own œvre, I gave it a human-like name, Ferin Martino. Continue reading
Research Embodied: site-specific intermedia performance
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Co-created with designer Autum Casey, Research Embodied is an intermedia performance designed for the Great Hall of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library with musicians performing with amplified books and QWERTY keyboard, footsteps, and movement (in front of a camera-triggered synthesized carillon), along with two large video projections and five actors.
Acoustically, we highlight how the Great Hall amplifies presence in the space. The reverberation preserves instants in time, mirroring the function of a library. Visually, we merge the view of the archives with a glimpse of their contents. Functionally, we scripted and made music form the activities of participants in the Great Hall and scholars in the stacks. Conceptually, we call attention to the union and separation of the public and scholars and the challenges of moderated access to information.
Third Prize in the Music in Architecture International Symposium
Research Embodied, a site-specific intermedia performance and installation created for the Great Hall of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum (Austin, Texas) was awarded Third Prize in the Music in Architecture—Architecture in Music International Symposium It was one of five finalists chosen from 74 entries (6.8% acceptance rate), from among international and Ivy League competitors. And it was performed by our students!