Miranda Cuckson on Friday's show at Bargemusic.

Having a great time with the Wuorinen transcriptions, which he made recently for Tashi. Gorgeous, interesting music- the gently twisting lines of the Josquin and the wild intricacies of the Morley, with its quintuplets and septuplets. We play them over and over and hear new things each time.

Douglas's quartet: a cool mix of his frequent experiments with structured rhythms vs. non- , and some crunchy, head-banging stuff, Jessica wailing while the rest of us punch out rhythms in unison.

Looking forward to work with Lou Karchin and Kyle Bartlett, heading toward concert day... Having played a few pieces of Lou's, I find his Rhapsody very recognizably his... bright harmonies, ornate flourishes, gestures coming off the beat.

I'm really delighted we could put Kyle's new piece for violin and electronics on this program, after some technological issues impelled us to postpone the world premiere at last concert. The electronics are now sounding great- very intriguing and enjoyably strange, conjuring associations with her grandmother, lots of distorted vocal utterances and mechanical noises. Fun to combine pitched violin sounds with this!

Come and hear all this and more on Friday!

My first blog post ever! I'm excited.
We've been rehearsing Babbitt for Friday, and it is grueling. As Ben observed, we've been proceeding at a rate of about 50 bars per hour! Damn, that is slow! It's the very intricate rhythms, especially the irrational tuplets that don't align with strong beats, that are the most difficult.
But it is such incredible music, so incredibly rich and eventful. As Babbitt said, "I want a piece of music to be literally as much as possible". I love that, I always say that. This is some of my favorite stuff; it's sad that only now, after his death, is his music getting played more.

DISPLACER :: Aristotle on place and movement

counter)induction's printed programs often have a poetic or historical quotation to help frame the concert without drifting too far towards didacticism.  I was concerned about what to use as a prelude for Friday's concert, and then I remembered that someone else was thinking about this stuff long before I was:

"Place is thought to be something important and hard to grasp, both because the matter and the shape present themselves along with it, and because the displacement of the body that is moved takes place in a stationary container, for it seems possible that there should be an interval which is other than the bodies which are moved. The air, too, which is thought to be incorporeal, contributes something to the belief: it is not only the boundaries of the vessel which seem to be place, but also what is between them, regarded as empty. Just, in fact, as the vessel is transportable place, so place is a non-portable vessel. So when what is within a thing which is moved, is moved and changes its place, as a boat on a river, what contains plays the part of a vessel rather than that of place. Place on the other hand is rather what is motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is place, because as a whole it is motionless.
Hence we conclude that the innermost motionless boundary of what contains is place."

– Aristotle, The Physics (Book IV, chapter 4)

Here the link between place and movement is essential to any discussion of being; this is richly resonant with a concert involving spatial and temporal manipulation of sound  all the more appropriate for a concert in which sound itself is moved, a motion which reveal that the object being moved is itself a collection of motions – motions of string, of bows, of bodies, of wood, of air.

DISPLACER :: Jorge García del Valle Méndez on 'road, river and rail'

As part of DISPLACER, c)i wille be performing, for the second time, 'road, river and rail' by Jorge García del Valle Méndez.  This work was composed for the 2010 International Community of Auditory Display, which was held at the George Washington University in summer or 2010.

For Jorge, the thematic of displacement is strongest in the transmigration of sound material from the domain of the 'acoustic' to the domain of the 'musical.'

What follow is an extensive note from a panel discussion with Jorge at the ICAD conference.

I have been working for a long time with the idea of a world parallel to the reality in which we live. I am always trying to bring to reality this virtual world in order to shape my aesthetic. After many attempts I have realized that the best way to achieve my ambition to recreate that world for a few moments, to make it real through music is the electronic music.This technique of contemporary music allows me to express my vision of that separate world through its unlimited palette of means and techniques.And now my goal is to reach a sort of communication or feedback between our world and this virtual world of the electronic through a physical component in the work which is the chamber ensemble.
The system that rules the communication between reality and virtuality and also the processes of composition and interaction is the composition's language called “spectral music”.This musical system uses as starting material the overtone series of natural sounds so that the pieces are constructed on the development of the sound spectrum. The different characteristics from these sounds, analyzed by means of computers, will influence diverse parameters in the music, like harmony, melody, rhythm and form. It is a re-synthesis of the sound through acoustic instruments which main focus is the overall timbre.
road, river and rail is not only a musical composition in the usual sense. It is also a sort of multi-interaction on different levels between real and virtual life.These interaction-levels comprise, not only a performance-interaction, but also an interactive creation by the composition process as well as by the interpretation.The concepts of reality and virtuality are here applied to the two sides of the composition: the acoustic and the electronic one.
At the beginning I needed some materials of the real life as a starting point.These materials should be not only beautiful or exquisite, but also structurally interesting and suitable for a both artistic and digital processing.
Some years ago, when I was in search of another more appropriate material to work with, I got to know the bells of Korean Buddhist temples. Immediately I realized that the sounds of these bells were perfect for the accomplishment of my aesthetic ideal for many reasons.
In the first place, their overtone spectra is totally different and a lot richer than the one of any instrument.They are even quite different from a bell to another one and they also vary with the form to strike them.The formants are grouped in zones of the spectrum which are perfectly suitable to be played by acoustic instruments. Secondly, in spite of its uniformity the envelope is full of variations however maintaining a linearity appreciable at first, which facilitates the formal work.Thirdly, the character of the sound is varied, offering a multitude of small forms or modulations usable in the composition.
First of all I analyzed these sound-samples by a computer. With the aid of the AudioSculpt Software developed in the IRCAM in Paris, I began to analyze sounds through its spectral representations or Sonograms.This program analyzes the sound using a short-time spectral analysis, which consists of dividing the sound into small segments and looking at the frequency contents of each segment by creating a spectral representation of it. Each of the segments obtained in this way is processed by way of an algorithm which calculates its short-term spectral representation through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Once obtained the graphical representation of the partial components of the sound, which is the Sonogram, I can find the exact frequencies of these overtones and translate them to musical pitches that will serve me as structural material for both parts of the composition:They will define the pitches which I will use on the electronic and the notes of the instruments as well as the musical "colors" or "textures" of both.
For the construction of the electronic I needed raw materials, and so take place the first interaction-step: electronic, will be a reflection of the "real" musicians: I built the electronic starting from samples of the same instruments which play in the ensemble: clarinet, violin, viola, violoncello and piano. In this way I will reach an exchange of information between the real and the virtual world: Something taken from reality will come into reality again.The structural materials (the frequencies of the sound's partials) steer the control of the recorded sounds of the instruments and so will be formed the electronic, the virtual part of the composition.The instruments interact with the original sounds and with the electronic in a structural level: as they will be the raw materials for the electronic, they will define textures and colors.
Both parts of the work, the real one, the instruments, and the virtual one, the electronic, will be processed with various systems whose procedures also interact in reciprocal form:

• The process of composition will influence the same to the both components, as far as I have conceived and the electronics as a sort of "virtual ensemble".A compositional step on the instruments will have an effect or even determinate the next step in the electronic. For the same reason the electronic regulate the next action of the instruments.

• The realization process will be on the same way an interactive creation in other level: I process the sounds for the electronic through different programs and plugins which will change its characteristics, textures, colors...The montage of these sounds will also produce new gestures.The process and montage of the instrumental part will  influence and be influenced by the electronic on the level of "choice" or "decision" for the next gesture on the electronic or the instruments.

The final product of these processes will be the electronic in form of digital audio-tracks (virtual) and the instrumental part as a score (real). By the performance, the electronic will interact with the musicians (score), modifying the interpretation of the work in a controlled manner: the musicians react to the electronic as it were another live musician. The different parameters of the electronic and its spatialization will influence the musicians on how they play their parts.The electronic also creates the space in which the musicians perform and guides them through the composition.
The audience will be the observer of the last step on a chain of interaction processes, a sort of feedback without the perception of the dry signal.They will be confronted at the same time with the virtual part of the work (electronic) as well as the real one (score- musicians).The listener will also go through a sort of live-interaction, which will be processed as a perception in a subjective way.
The last step of the interaction-chain will be also controlled through the spatialization of the electronic: the audience and the musicians will perceive the electronic in a dynamic movement through the room, which will also influence the subjective recognition of the audio data and so the final impression (audience) and the interpretation (musicians).

DISPLACER :: Katharina Rosenberger on 'Scatter'

As part of DISPLACER, c)i is excited to be giving the east coast premiere of scatter 2.0 by Swiss born composer Katharina Rosenberger.  Katharina holds the position of Assistant Professor in Composition at the Department of Music, University of California, San Diego.

This concert is a great context in which to get to know Katharina's music – much of her work (for acoustic and electronic mediums) manifests in an interdisciplinary context and is bound to confront traditional performance practice in terms of how sound is produced, heard and seen.  The work is often deeply involved with electro-acoustic and acousmatic technologies in which time, sound, and space are reshaped by the acoustic, electronic and human actions.

Interestingly, in the work presented on DISPLACER is an acoustic one, the only purely acoustic work on the program.  And yet, the problematic of space, (dis)location, and motion remain at its core.  The piece is for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, and attaches to our theme of displacement through transformations and context shifting of small motivic collections.

Of the work, Katharina writes

"scatter is movement - a chase, a pursuit, a run in all directions, regrouping at times, then falling apart again, a split, splinters or sparks, disperse or dissolve… these moments of agitation are depicted in three different segments that overlap and share similar material in ever-changing configurations. The listener could imagine looking through a kaleidoscope, turning and shaking the tube at various speeds, to observe the “action-patterns” collapse and reassemble to new constellations and images. It is this interplay of contrasting formations that split up to the very high or to the very low and rumbling register, that temporally press ahead or stutteringly pull back the flow which ultimately drive the music forward and reinforce the scattered evolution of the piece."

scatter 2.0  has been released on HatHut Records, Switzerland this March 2011 on the "ensemble für neue musik zürich" release, entitled "Women Composers I."

DISPLACER :: c)i @ Tenri Cultural Institute | Friday, 20 May 8p

This Friday's concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute will be a hi-tech and low-tech exploration of how music embodies thought and is in turn disembodied. Through the course of this concert, musical material and sound itself will mobilized in the performance space, through the placement of the performers, the structures of the music, and the through the use of a sophisticated array of speakers and software supplied for the event by VRSonic, an audio technology company based in Arlington, VA.


Over the next few days, we'll be posting notes about the works to be performed, and technology being used, and the ideas behind the concert, including comments from the performers, the composers, and the technologists involved. Stay tuned for more information and some previews...