counter)induction

counter)induction plays well with others

2011-10-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

MULTIPLE MODERNISMS is the opening show in a year of fierce and fabulous collaborations. We're really excited to have Matthew Levy of the Prism Saxophone Quartet suiting up with us for the gig. These collabs give us the opportunity to work with people we admire and respect (Matt, then Magnus Lindberg 1/23/12, Paula Robison 3/4/12!) and stretch out into new repertoire. Both Steve Beck (piano) and Matt Levy (sax) are performing Milton Babbitt's "Whirled Series" for the first time. This is what Steve says:

"Rehearsing Whirled Series with Matt- what a great pleasure! Although we live in two different cities, we've managed to carve out a good amount of time for it. I'm pleased to report that it's not as hard to put together as some of the other Babbitt duos I've played (I remember Sextets being particularly vexing). Or maybe it's just that I'm getting experienced at all the ins and outs."

I hope you'll join us on 10/30 for this hot show!

2011-10-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here's what c)i clarinetist BENJAMIN FINGLAND has to say about the Webern quartet Op. 22, which we're preparing for our Oct. 30 show:
Just finished our first Webern rehearsal - what a piece! A perfect example of 'less is more'. My individual part is almost sight-readable, and extremely minimal. But when put in context with the others, one realizes how much rhythmic, textural, and coloristic detail is compressed into every note. Grace notes abound, many within an intensely hocketed, syncopated framework - covering very large intervalic jumps, which at the breakneck speed of the second movement are extremely challenging to coordinate between parts. The real magic happens with the convergence of all the individual details, and the character of the piece (in my opinion, both impish and suave) shines through. Klangfarbenmelodie at its best! It's a real pleasure playing with Matthew; the sax is by far the coolest addition to our forces to date!

upcoming show with the rockin' MATTHEW LEVY!

2011-10-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

counter)induction is super-revved for our upcoming concert MULTIPLE MODERNISMS. On October 30 we'll be playing Boulez, Bartlett and Davidovsky, PLUS we'll be joined by the renowned saxophonist Matthew Levy (of the Prism Saxophone Quartet) for Webern's Quartet Op. 22, and the fiendishly complex Whirled Series by Milton Babbitt. He'll also play Scelsi's solo Tre Pezzi.

Matthew sends along this message...

"I've been a huge fan of c)i for many years. The group plays with breathtaking sensitivity and virtuosity, and their programs are brilliantly conceived. I was deeply honored to be invited to join them. Plus, I dig me some modernism."

Ah, Matt, you know how to talk to the ladies!

MULTIPLE MODERNISMS is the first concert in a year celebrating the art of collaboration. First Matthew Levy, then Magnus Lindberg, then Paula Robison, and then... YOU, as you help us celebrate the release of our first cd later this spring. See you soon!

Miranda rehearsing Kyle's new work

2011-06-03T15:19:00.001-07:00

Getting ready for the premiere

on history

2011-06-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

As is the entire ensemble, I am excited about this performance at Bargemusic, the first performance of my music at this New York institution.

I'm also excited because of the strong thematics of the program connecting contemporary compositional practice to historical practices and so in turn to the historicity of of all acts of musicking. Further, these lines-of-flight connects this historicity of work-objects to the archeologies of the self, especially as expressed in the works of Kyle Bartlett, Louis Karchin, and myself.

As I write in my program notes for the Piano Quartet #1,

“This work is for me a return to the rhetorics and formal structures of my “misspent” youth playing in punk-rock bands on the New Jersey shore in the late 80’s. The music we wrote was music with much ornamentation and embellishment, but little improvisation as the term is generally used— there was little time for expansive guitar solos in songs clocking in at under two minutes. In this temporally compressed grammar (or perhaps “syllabary” is a better term) distinctions between phrase and riff and verse were unclear, yet relevant, for this was music with a flair for form, form that could be felt in the body, not merely heard in the mind’s ear. Juxtaposition was privileged over transition, and repetition over development. Our ears brimmed with The Germs and The Minutemen, but also the more aggressive side of the British progressive rock scene. First among these groups was always King Crimson and its leader Robert Fripp. The particular harmonic and formal approaches of that group have had substantial impact on my compositional approach, and my approach to functioning and persisting as a musician in the late modern."

Thoughts like this have been in the front of my mind of late, as you can see from this series of postings I wrote a little while ago over on Bigmouths. (Here is the place to start the series).

It is, as ever, a delight to hear such subtleties expressed through the tremendous musicianship of the musicians of counter)induction. Not a show to miss!

On staying on track.

2011-06-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes (well, often) the music I end up with is quite different from the music I intended to compose. I hope this is not from incompetence; really it is as though only by getting to know the material in a very deep way will I discover what the piece needs to be like. And then if I can’t “stay in the game,” if I can’t for some psychological or practical reason follow where the material leads, I usually end up with a crummy piece or no piece at all.

Take, for example, the piece that Miranda Cuckson will premiere on Friday’s counter)induction show (Friday, Bargemusic, 8pm). For a long time I wanted to compose a piece using some recordings I have of my grandmother’s voice. I made the recordings about a year before she died, and they are very dear to me, almost too powerful. I began with very fixed ideas about what I wanted the piece to be like, and my stubbornness combined with the power of the recordings was a formidable obstacle. Somehow, though, I found first a way to let go of the form I had wanted, and then I let go of using the actual recordings of her voice. Instead I started with sounds that I associate with my grandmother in memories and in recurring dreams, like a sewing machine, a cigarette lighter (she was a committed chainsmoker), coins being dropped, water. After beginning in that way I was able to incorporate the sound of her voice as well.

Now I am just putting finishing touches on the final two-channel version to be performed on Friday. In affect it is really very dark. My husband said he found it “disturbing” and our bandmate Steve Beck said, “If I had a bed I’d check under it!” It wasn’t my intention to make it so dark, and I don’t think it says anything troubling about my relationship with my grandmother. I just tried to follow where it needed to go. You can judge for yourself at the concert.

Miranda Cuckson on Friday's show at Bargemusic.

2011-05-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-05-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

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'

2011-05-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

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'

2011-05-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

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...

Felipe Lara on Livro dos Sonhos

2011-01-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

I asked Felipe Lara to write a little bit on his work which will be performed tomorrow night on c)i's "Discourse: to hear and be heard" concert:

"I am really excited to hear my old piece (2004) Livro dos Sonhos (Book of Dreams) for clarinet and piano. I haven’t heard it live since the performances that took place that year, by duos formed by Jean Kopperud and Steve Gosling, as well as Michael Norsworthy and John McDonald.
I’m thrilled to be able to hear a performance of the work by two world-class musicians such as Ben Fingland and Steve Beck.

The idea behind my piece fits quite well with the title of the concert, "Discourse: to hear and be heard”, as it is about the negotiation of flow between two entities, in this case the clarinet and the piano. Both instruments are constantly interrupting, joining, amplifying, agreeing, disagreeing, and ultimately questioning the music presented by one another. This happens in the pitches, rhythms, timbres, and gestures. This very negotiation is at the core of the poetics of the work.

Both musicians start and end in perfect agreement (unison), but the journey through the piece becomes a game of differences and their negotiations. The piece gravitates strongly around Eb4 (middle of the piano) and in several instances unison on this pitch help punctuate and trigger each subsequent musical phrase. On the last section of the piece the musicians finally try to settle and play a Messiaen-inspired cantilena. This section of musical agreement doesn’t last very long, as the piano gradually perforates it with its somewhat violent and incisive attacks. This is perhaps a portrait of myself at the time trying to negotiate and subtly liberate myself from the enormous influence Olivier Messiaen had on me as young composer.

The title reflects on the seemingly disjunct, capricious, and perhaps unpredictable character of the events caused by these musical discussions. As on dreams, this piece attempts to create a vivid, but rapidly changing and non-linear sensory experience.

I’m honored, thankful, and extremely excited to take part on this concert presented by this great ensemble that is counter)induction."

On Discourses and Concert: c)i @ Transit Circle

2011-01-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of
Frans de Waal.
[CC-BY-2.5]

c)i is thrilled to be performing at the Transit Circle concert series, curated by our own Miranda Cuckson. This concert, "Discourse: to hear and be heard" the idea of conversation and its role in human relationships, and is sizing up to be an incredible concert, with works by Brice Pauset, Vinko Golbokar, George Rochberg, and Felipe Lara.For me the situating of my work 102nd & Amsterdam within an interrogation of musical conversation is particularly resonant for me;– my works in general and this work in particular has a strong dialogic element; 'conversations' amongst the performers en volant are foregrounded rather than hidden in the background of textures, or 'solved' in rehearsals. There is a constant unfolding as the work is performed again and again. The work, like all works, is not an object, but an exchange of roles, attention, instrumental color and motivic material;– these transaction that in themselves do not bear import, but by their being afford opportunities for music making.

I'm very excited to have the musicians performing the work again, c)i recorded the work in 2009, and it is avaolable for purchase as part of the SCI-Capstone Record series. An (very full) note on the work can be read HERE , and a recording by the same performers can be found HERE.

Definitely a concert well worth making! This Sunday, 23 January 23, at 7:30p, at the Mannes Concert Hall

Thinking about our upcoming concert

2010-09-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

8:13pm, Friday, September 10, 2010.

Exactly two weeks from right now we will have just begun our season-opening concert, DRAMA: music and its double. I think in many ways that this will be counter)induction’s most ambitious performance to date. Aperghis, Globokar, Saariaho, Schnittke… all works both intriguing and complex, asking questions that seem too tempting not to reflect upon. I’ve chosen these pieces because they all either explicitly or implicitly suggest a presence outside themselves. To me the idea of a “presence” assumes some content of being, some quality, maybe even an identity or a character. All these works engage with characters, either by their “presence” in the piece or in the tension of their absence.

This engagement is the “drama” of DRAMA: music and its double. It was important to me to create some dialogue between these compositions, to lean into the idea, present in our concerts from the beginning, that by placing one musical work alongside another creates a meaningful relationship that enriches both. We are going to dwell in those in-between spaces through improvisation stemming from these works, creating music that can only exist by the physicality of combining elements from different pieces, different stories, bringing them fleetingly into each other’s gravity. That’s the double.

Braided into this, words- letters, essays, poems- will “un-explain” obvious associations and add another layer of connection and potential meaning. Very nice, but what is the audience supposed to think of all this? I really value this idea from the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky,

“The method whereby the artist obliges the audience to build the separate parts into a whole, and to think on, further than has been stated, is the only one that puts the audience on a par with the artist in their perception of the film. And indeed from the point of view of mutual respect only that kind of reciprocity is worthy of artistic practice.”

I am sure that this holds for music as well, and for performance, and for creating relationships between performances and music. I hope everyone will come to the concert on the 24^th, slightly less than two weeks from now, and help us create this unusual, and special, musical event.

c)i @ ICAD in Washington, DC | 12 June, 2010

2010-05-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

c)i has been invited to perform a concert at the 2010 conference of the International Community of Auditory Display, at the Jack Morton Auditorium on the George Washington University campus on the 12th of June. The main portion of the conference will run from June 11-15.

ICAD is a forum for presenting research on the use of sound to display data, monitor systems, and provide enhanced user interfaces for computers and virtual reality systems. It is unique in its singular focus on auditory displays and the array of perception, technology, and application areas that this encompasses. In keeping with its theme Sonic Discourse—Expression through Sound, the conference will feature a relaxed day of demonstrations and poster presentations, and an evening concert of sonifications and compositions written expressly for the conference.

The concert draws attention to role technics (either electronic or human) in performance, in moving potential into actual expression. The acoustic and acousmatic works focus on the way in which the performers embody a hermeneutic interface between the physical and the musical domains. As a touchstone, the concert will feature the performance of several excerpts from Mark Applebaum's 'The Metaphysics of Notation,' a graphical score in which the cultural and technical practices of music reading are foregrounded by their absence, replaced by a complex and exquisitely rendered piece of visual art. By returning to this work, we hope to emphasize the role of the performer as interpreter in this hermeneutic exchange. The several works programmed focus on the translation of data into musical expression; David Sponike's 'Schnappschuss von der Erde' takes data from public databases at the World Bank, 23 categories of economic data referring to 187 countries, while Jorge García del Valle Méndez's 'road river and rail' uses live performers to emphasize and actorialize elements of the overtones of a Korean temple bell. Katharina Rosenberger's 'Torsion' establishes relationships between certain parabolic spirals found in sun flower heads and spectral analysis of the lowest octave of the piano, scaled to the temperate system. The other works emphasize the role of performers in musical performance as embodied technics. Paul Oehler's 'Protolith' bring spatialization into the domain of traditional musical parameters (such as rhythm, tempo, and pitch), while Douglas Boyce's 'Displacments 1b' explores the mediating function of the body of the performer, using spatialization to disembody and re-embody the the perceived source of sound in the performer. Finally, Cooper Baker's 'Signal Painting' analyses musical notation as geometry, discarding the semiotics of the system and producing an acousmatic metaphor for the ink and paper which is the very stuff of this tradition of music making.

I hope that those in the area can make the event!

On my new piece "Present" for the 5/16 and 5/21 shows

2010-05-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the starting point of a piece is a particular sound-texture or a melody; sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s a poem or a picture. Sometimes it is a case of finding the right metaphor for something (a feeling? an idea?) that escapes direct analysis. For this piece I first felt a sense of movement, free movement, movement impeded by obstacles, movement that travels long distances, and movement that stands in place. I had the idea that the music from the piano behaved like a liquid. At the beginning of the piece it is sloshing around in there, from one end of the keyboard to the other, very turbulent. So turbulent that sometimes some of this music would splash out of the piano onto the violinist, whose music would be colored or diluted by the piano. The strings become soaked with this music, and the piano’s leftover liquid becomes more and more viscous, clotting up into funky rhythms and chords. The strings have two identities, they can be “stringy”-those piano notes are expressed as long, drippy glissandos- or they can be brittle, with very short, sharp digs into the string making more noise than tone. (Only later did I realize that these properties are shared exactly by Laffy Taffy. Sorry.) And the winds? The flute behaves like a flame, playful and agile, producing a lot of heat and light. The clarinet is earth. Most of the time it is just damply observing. But under the right circumstances it turns dry, abrasive, gets into everywhere it shouldn’t. Maybe this is all a bit too surreal: what I have are different chords, textures, melodic fragments. The instruments each have their own ways of expressing these materials, their own dialects, perhaps. Experimenting with different combinations of material, in different combinations of instruments, is my (and the piece’s) motivation.

Even with a clear starting point, the final product can be surprising. I don’t like to plan everything out beforehand. When my intentions become too ossified, I tend to lose interest, like knowing the end of a suspenseful movie. Instead I compose outward, and let myself be drawn toward what is necessary. Last fall when I was asked what would be the title of this work, for the press materials, I replied, “How to disappear is how to appear completely.” It was the fall, and I was completely submerged in the emotional and compositional challenges of The Lost Child, the most complex and deep-driving work of my career. Perhaps I was subconsciously thinking of making a quick getaway. But as the spring arrived, with the success of The Lost Child, getting back with old friends, making new ones, deepening emotional connections and feeling more power and more purpose, this music had to be renamed. The piece is lively and rhythmic, with bright, astringent harmonies and showy demonstrations of virtuosity. Cheerful, even! I chose the title “Present,” which refers first to “being present,” a wonderful sense of being alive in the world, being alert and immersed in activity; and second, “present” as a gift, a gratitude for that feeling and for the musicians who so beautifully render my work.

(the foundation of this article comes from a blog entry generously commissioned by the Philadelphia Music Project e-zine: http://pmpmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/sound-diary-kyle-bartlett/ )

New Old thoughts on "The General Schemed"

2010-05-09T12:26:00.001-07:00

At two upcoming c)i concerts, my work The General Schemed will be performed– it is always a happy thing to return to past works, especially with players like these. The work was premiered by counter)induction on 13 June, 2008 in New York NY; it is always interesting to return to a piece after some time, in that interval between performances provides perspective on the successes and failures of a work and on the technical compositional devices employed, but more interestingly for me at least the shift in context of presentation will reveal new aspects and implications of the work, opening new dialogues with other works and practices.

The work was originally written as part of a collaborative project between c)i and the Beijing New Music ensemble. As part of the bridge between the New York and Beijing aspects of the project, I wrote a work based on a poem of Tang Dynasty poet Li Bao. The lament, ‘Fighting South of the Ramparts,’ was probably written in 751, a year of significant military defeats for the Tang Dynasty, which was approaching both its cultural and political peak and soon to face the rebellion of An Lushan. Li Bao, always iconoclastic, was sometimes more concerned with the fullness of his wine bottle rather than politics, but in poems like ‘Fighting South of the Ramparts’ his engagement with the concerns of the day come through clearly; the air of an empire at its zenith abounds, with the possibility of coming decline beginning to creep in at the corners of the rhetoric. One delight of reading a ‘classical’ literature (Greco-Roman, Chinese, Babylonian, what have you) is the delight in finding the shared interests and concerns of an individual remote to oneself in space and time; perhaps the sense of tragic is that much sharper when those shared concerns are of the futility of death and disaffection with a political and cultural regime. In the work, the spatial arrangement of the instruments is intended to amplify the shifting affiliations and alliances among the instruments partnerships and sharings which hold a promise of coordination and true friendship, but which cannot in the end be sustained. The title of the work is taken from the closing passage of the poem, translated here by Arthur Waley:

"Captains and soldiers are smeared on the bushes and grass;

The general schemed in vain,

Know, therefore that

the sword is as accursed thing

which a wise man uses only if he must."

Though the cross-cultural framing of the poem in the context of its premiere trumps most other reading, the political overtones were still profoundly present. The work if marked in tempori belli, and was written and premiered as political and military crossroads where very much in the air.

In the context of this upcoming concert, the work feels more political, but also less overtly. Juxtaposed with Crumb's Eleven Echoes of Autumn, my work feels more elegiac and less immediately politically, but as I have been reworking parts and reengaging with the piece, the work remains political in at least one interesting way - in a work inspired by a poem about command and agency in a militarized political system, the score of the work carefully and systematically undermines its own authority, asking performers through aleatoric and quasi-improvisatory notations to take an active role in the foundations of that which makes this work this work - the notes, the rhythms, the durations, the very stuff of composing as it is typically understood. My hope in the use of these technics, in this work as well as in my other works, to both share the delight in that decision making, but also to remind audiences of the variety and density of choice-making that constitutes music making, the field of possible choices that we chose to let ourselves make. That simple fact is inescapably political, another fact that should not be forgotten, lest we forget the need to maintain the space for agency and free action.

Politics is first of all a way of framing, among sensory data, a specific sphere of experience. It is a partition of the sensible, of the visible and the sayable, which allows (or does not allow some specific data to appear; which allows or does not allow some specific subjects to designate them and speak about them. It is a specific intertwining of ways of being, way of doing and ways of speaking). (Ranciere, "Dissensus," 152).

Rehearsals

2010-03-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Just finished a great rehearsal with Sumi and Ben; it's always a delight working with performers like c)i, but this concert has reminded me again not only how much is 'left of the page,' but how often that's the fun stuff.

This work is from a set of etudes that I'm working on that are etudes both in the sense of the systematic study of technical performative elements of music, but also studies in compositional technics. My program note is here, but better still to come and here it! Sunday night at 8p!

The Anticipation of Meaning

2010-03-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

For reasons likely of interest to no one, I spent some time over the last week or so in Rome, rereading Gadamer's Truth and Method and the resonance between Sunday's concert and the following followed me around the city.

The anticipation of meaning that governs our understanding of a text is not a act of subjectivity, but proceeds from the commonality that binds us to the tradition. But this commonality is constantly being formed in our relation to tradition. Tradition is not simply a permanenet preconditions; rather, we produce it ourselves inasmuch as we understand, participate in the evolution of tradition, and hence further determine it ourselves.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Truth and Method, p. 293

Second, Revised edition

Continuum

It is easy for listeners, composers and performers to simply imagine the relation to the past as static, as simply given. But what we think of as the clear and stable fact of history is in fact delineated and maintained by our attention. Each act we take reshapes and reformulates (in however small an amount and discrete a method) the tradition in which we operate.

Kyle's meditation on collapsing cultures and crumbling empires, Rogerson’s elegy on human and cultural extinction and Honett’s fragmentation of material speak to time as the leveler of mountains, while Gilbert’s lament imagines an alternate history where the lost world is found again, Halka's trio connects the cultural to the individual, and my own work figures the interplay of the sculptor and the stone as the play between the composer and history.

As Ryan Streber's introductory essay in the program book will highlight, composition is a matter of technics, and thus of adoption the project of adoption is always a project of self discover, or, better, of auto-explication. The automatic, ineluctable discovery of commonality with the past, the unpacking of the forgotten givenness of one's capacity is the result of engagement with the past— what begins in an exploration of alterity becomes an emergence of ipseity. Adoption doesn't build a bridge to the past, it makes that past part of the now. The question here is not so much eternal as it is perpetual– tradition is opportunity and responsibility, and it is always old and new as once.

~douglas

Prize winners on March 28th

2010-03-21T20:18:00.001-07:00

Sunday's concert will also feature two prize winning works from c)i's 2009 composition competition. Every two years, c)i reviews works submitted anonymously from around the world, and working with a panel of respected judges, pick the works that excited us, and spoke to the c)i sound. The two works on Sunday's program are Christopher Rogerson's 'Brothers' and Charles Halka's 'Trio.'

Christopher Rogerson is a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studies composition with Jennifer Higdon. He has won awards from ASCAP, the Presser Foundation, the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, and the National Association for Music Education. 'Brothers' is a musical memorial to Buddhist monks executed by the Burmese army in 2007; it contrasts the bell-like tones of the temple with martial rhythm.

Charles Halka is completing coursework towards a Doctor of Musical Arts at the Shepherd School of Music; this season, his works are being performed by ONIX Ensamble, the Armonas Trio, and the saxophone and harp duo Pictures on Silence. His 'Trio' is hypotyposis of musical memories and interests, ranging across style, but striving for synthesis.

Come here these up and coming composers, Sunday, March 28th at 8 pm.

This is me talking about my piece on the show.

2010-03-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

I find myself these days thinking about the end of empires. What was it like as the Lusignan dynasty folded into itself, overcome by the ascendant Ottomans? Did the courtiers sense what was happening? What did a court composer think of his work at a time like that? Did he question his purpose in a dusty, fading outpost, forgotten by the mainland? Perhaps he slowly turned the pages of a book of music, dreaming jealously of his more fortunate predecessors, questioning the importance of music at a time like his. Or maybe he redoubled his efforts, seeing himself as a musical witness to history. My piece for this concert, "My sorrow of rare proportion," a tiny thing, is based on the medieval rondeau, more or less. "Rare proportion" is an old-fashioned way of talking about irrational rhythms (like 7 into 3, etc.) and thus refers not only to a depth of feeling but also the supple means of its portrayal. Its two kinds of material, textures as much as tunes, evolve the way empires do. Meaning, one kind of music grinds to a halt under under the weight of its own excesses, while the other slowly disappears without a trace.

photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/antmoose/17433068/

The Codex Torino J.II.9 - a digital edition

2010-03-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

counter)induction's upcoming concert features composers reacting to, responding to and generally engaging with music from the Codex Torino J.II.9, a fascinating book of music from 15th century Cyprus. We'll be posting more about the new works and the codex itself in the next week and a half, but first I thought it would be great to post a link to this incredible digital edition of the codex.

This webpage is organized and hosted by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane e per le Informazioni Bibliografiche in Rome, and contains images of the entire codex, as well as a great deal of information about the codex itself, if your Italian is up to it.

There are some great recordings of this repertoire out now but I thought it might be nice to start off highlighting the physicality of the codex. It is many things, a chant manuscript, a liber motetorum, and a chansonnier, but it is also quite beautiful. The time, fire and water have weathered it, certainly, but have also given its colors and clarity that much more power through contrast— in the long fight against entropy, we have at least one exquisite survivor.

More on the music within the covers and the new works counter)induction will be performing in the next few days.

LINK: http://www.internetculturale.it/upload/sfogliatori/franco-cip/francocip.jsp?s=6&l=en

Recording 'Deixo | Sonata' with Jessica at Oktaven

2009-12-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

Last thursday, had a great recording session with Jessica Meyer and Steve Beck at Ryan Streber's amazing new recording studio in Yonkers, Oktaven Audio. We're still assembling the preliminary cut, but the session was incredible, and we're excited to assemble all the takes into the whole work. You will be the first to hear it, never fear!

Reading student works in the Rose Studio @ UPenn

2009-11-23T06:25:00.001-08:00

Up bright and early to read brand new music!

Rehearsing at Amado Recital Hall for tonights concert

2009-11-22T09:32:00.001-08:00

Sumi, Miranda and Steve rehearsing a trio by Anna Weesner. Look for more snaps of rehearsal throughout the day!

Register

2009-11-19T20:15:00.000-08:00

New season, New work

2009-09-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

As the autumnal winds start blowing through the trees outside my apartment, I am reminded that indeed the season has started. Of course - the (painfully) sudden onslaught of practicing, part-making, rehearsing, meetings and emailing has also provided a clear cue as well.

Though I am having a tougher time than usual making this shift from summer to fall, I have particularly enjoyed our rehearsals so far for "Kalas". Having a brand new piece in front of you to discover is always exciting....especially when it is written for you and someone close to you in mind (clarinetist/hubby is my partner in this piece...and also in life).

It has its challenges as well - it's very much like having a mess of puzzle pieces in front of you... some fit, some look like they might fit but you can't figure out how they relate to the puzzle as a whole, and some you just have no idea what to do with them.

Thankfully, the composer Mohammed Fairouz lives just downtown from us, so we had the luxury of working directly with him to help realize the shape and nuances that are often impossible to really notate in the parts. Mohammed has a clear vision of what he wants and sings it for us (which thankfully saves us a lot of rehearsal time to be spent guessing what would be best). For those pieces that are not yet fitting, we play and play again, while also spending time brainstorming how to better interpret or amend what is on the page.

Having said all this, Ben and I are now looking forward to going back into the "studio" and making this piece truly our own as well as Mohammed's. Hope you can all make it on Saturday to see the premiere performance!

Messiaen and Me

2009-09-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

I am so pleased that c)i will be performing Quartet for the End of Time next Saturday. This piece, and the work of Olivier Messiaen in general, are very dear to me, having been present at the very beginning of my life as a composer. My first composition teacher was Herman Weiss, who as a Fulbright Scholar was a student of Messiaen. He told me a story that he and Messiaen were at a concert with the Quartet on the program. Herman knew he was coming down with something, and by the intermission felt quite ill. He attempted to make his apologies to his teacher, but Messiaen told him, “Weiss, if you leave I will never speak to you again.” Of course, Herman stayed, and fell into bed at the end of the concert. After a week of the most horrible flu, he staggered to the window of his apartment, to see about some commotion he heard. And there, on the street below, was a motorcade, and Richard Nixon going by in a convertible, waving. He could not feel sure whether this was a hallucination from the illness, or if it really was Nixon.

Anyway, I heard lots of stories about Messiaen and his music. The Quartet was the first work I seriously studied “as a composer,” trying to analyze how Messiaen practiced such an economy, or perhaps such a unity, of material and at the same time created such a fantastic breadth of colors, characters, and expression. He taught me how rhythm bears a strong impact on the perception of pitch. He could take the exact same string of pitches, and in one movement express something harsh, even violent, and then in another movement show it as furtive, quiet, imminent. The Quartet is a work I can go to again and again, and every time I give myself to it I discover something new.

And the best way to hear Quartet for the End of Time yourself is definitely to hear the counter)induction version. As Messiaen would say, “Elle rocke.” Read what Allan Kozinn had to say in The New York Times the last time we performed it…

MUSIC REVIEW; Beauty Despite Terror and Melancholy

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: Friday, October 3, 2003

A facile connection is often made between the apocalyptic vision of Olivier Messiaen's ''Quartet for the End of Time'' and the circumstances of its composition, in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. The work's odd scoring -- piano, violin, clarinet and cello -- reflects the instruments available in Stalag 8A.

Yet Messiaen's fascination with Catholic mysticism would probably have led him to write this work even if he were free and at peace. His inspiration was not the war but the imagery in Chapter 10 of the Revelation of St. John. And although parts of the score evoke both terrifying power and sublime melancholy, the work mainly strives to offer a glimpse of otherworldly beauty and eternal salvation.

Given the vividness and variety of Messiaen's writing, it is easy for even an ad hoc chamber group to create an effect with this work. But conveying its full emotional weight and spiritual grandeur, as the new-music ensemble Counter)induction did on Tuesday evening at Christ and St. Stephen's Church in Manhattan, requires an uncommon combination of precision, suppleness and an almost choreographed interpretive approach.

Everything was right: the second, sixth and seventh movements, meant to convey the rainbow coloration and mysterious presence of the angel who announces the end of time, was played with a fiery ensemble virtuosity. Benjamin Fingland's clarinet playing gave substance to Messiaen's depiction of the celestial birds in ''Abîme des Oiseaux.'' And with the steady, perfectly measured support of Blair McMillen's piano, the group's cellist, Sumire Kudo, and its violinist, Asmira Woodward-Page, played the two meditative slow movements with a transforming intensity and beauty of tone.

The performance was almost shattering enough to make a listener forget all that had gone before it. But the first half of the program was equally worthy. Kyle Bartlett, one of the ensemble's two resident composers (the other is Douglas Boyce), contributed ''Sown Under the Skin of Her Hands,'' a brief, tactile string trio that begins as a study in pianissimo textures but quickly gains thematic coherence and heft. Jukka Tiensuu's ''Beat'' entertainingly explores the tensions between sliding microtonal clarinet and violin lines and the fixed pitch of the piano. And Jessica Meyer, the ensemble's violist, gave a focused, beautifully centered account of Krzysztof Penderecki's unaccompanied Cadenza.

counter)induction: it goes up to eleven.

2009-08-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

We’re psyched to announce our 09-10 season—our eleventh! c)i is presenting an exciting and wide-reaching year of music both brand-new and timeless. We’re also happy to be playing three out-of-town gigs—two in Philadelphia and one in Syracuse.

finis terrae

SAT SEP 19 2009, 08:00PM

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE

FINIS TERRAE presents renderings of the perimeters of being, its beginning and end, and the space between the real and the notional. Gorecki’s string trio Genesis I imagines the energy and tumult of the foundation of the world, while Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time muses upon its apotheosis and what comes after. Mohammed Fairouz’s new work Kālas, for clarinet and viola, considers the famous line: kālo ‘smi lokakşayakŗt pravŗddho’ (I am time, the mighty destroyer of worlds) from the eleventh chapter of the Bagavad Gita, exploring the connection between enlightenment and mortality.

c)i @ upenn

SUN NOV 22 2009, 08:00PM

counter)induction returns to its spawning grounds of the University of Pennsylvania, featuring performances of works from our decade of concert making. Douglas Boyce’s monumental Deixo | Sonata for viola and piano keeps company with Salvatore Sciarrino’s arresting Centauro Marino, while Eric Moe’s sardonic Dead Cat Bounce, written just for c)i, counterpoints Kyle Bartlett’s transfixing adagio sostenuto.

codex

SUN MAR 28 2010, 08:00PM

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE

THU APR 1 2010, 08:00PM

RED HOUSE ARTS CENTER

CODEX will present an evening of music engaging with the mechanisms and mythologies of musical traditions and their creation, and the possibility of inspirations from sources real and imagined. Starting with a singular, enigmatic, and historically / culturally isolated source, a collection of late-medieval polyphony contained in the codex Torino J.II.9, five composers imagine what a centuries-long tradition flowing from the works and practices of the codex might sound like, producing real works in a fictional tradition. New works by Peter Gilbert, Christopher Jon Honett, Douglas Boyce, Kyle Bartlett and Ryan Streber will be featured.

the child is father to the man

SUN MAY 16 2010, 02:00PM

PHILADELPHIA CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY

FRI MAY 21 2010, 08:00PM

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE

THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN examines two seminal 20th century composers by presenting their works with those of their students, metaphorically searching for hidden traits expressed in the musical genetics of the next generation. Iannis Xenakis and George Crumb are presented here not as remote figures of genius, but as mentors and master craftsman, shaping the future through their connections with younger composers. Xenakis’s indomitable Ikhoor is balanced by Trio Rombach of Pascal Dusapin, his only recognized student. Kyle Bartlett, one of Crumb’s last pupils, will present a world premiere companion to Crumb’s timeless Eleven Echoes of Autumn.

Keep your browsers pointed to counter)induction on Facebook, the counter)induction YouTube channel, on our blog, and the website, for updates, concert footage, podcasts, and more! See you on September 19th!

Review in the Times and Upcoming NYC Season!

2009-08-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hello counter)induction fans!

I hope everyone is having a great summer, and wanted to give everyone an update on everything c)i.

Our 10th anniversary show was a great success, and we were so happy to open the paper a few days after to find this review in the NY Times. CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK

All in all, it was an inspiring end to our decade, and a wonderful incentive to make our upcoming one even more exciting.

Sadly, our violinist Sharon Roffman has had to leave us - but for very good reasons. She is now living abroad and is in the middle of deciding which of the plum jobs offered to her she should take. However, we are more than pleased to announce that Miranda Cuckson will be joining us for our season this year. Miranda is no stranger to c)i, and you can hear her playing with Sumi and I on Doug Boyce's "102nd and Amsterdam" in our web site's Listening Room.

Also listed is our upcoming season here in NYC, so put the dates in your book now! Stay tuned for more news about our upcoming concerts in Syracuse and Philadelphia....

'Deixo | Sonata' performance video

2009-08-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

A video of Jessica Meyer and Steve Beck playing my 'Deixo | Sonata' at Merkin Hall in June; an extraordinary performance!

More video clips from our Merkin Hall show will become available in the next few weeks, and we'll post them all here!

Finally, my first post as a member of c)i!

2009-06-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's so exciting on so many levels for me to be involved with the RW>>FFWD program. I'm still getting my bearings in general as the newest member of the band, so the fact that the first c)i concert with which I'll be involved as an "official member" also happens to be the 10th anniversary concert is an honor and a thrill. I've been lucky to work with c)i in various capacities over the past couple of years, first as a composer, then as an engineer and recordist, then as a curator for a new program (stay tuned for more!) and now as a part of the family. I continue to be amazed by the abilities, energy, and intellect of everyone in the group, and I can only hope to contribute something to this already wonderful and singular ensemble.

Of course, a part of my excitement in advance of Monday evening derives from Sumi's US premiere of my Partita for solo cello. I wrote it for her in 2007 for a premiere in Japan, and I still haven't heard the piece live myself. Hearing the recording of the premiere, and especially listening to her play through it more recently, I am blown away by how easily and beautifully she brings the various strands of the piece to life, giving each voice in the work's dialogue its own distinctive character while maintaining the unity of the whole structure. It's so rare as a composer to put a new piece in front of a performer and almost immediately hear back exactly what you had in mind. I'm fortunate to have had such an experience with Sumi and Partita, and I can't thank her enough for it. Beyond this one piece, though, I really have Sumi to thank for introducing me to c)i and being such a strong advocate for my involvement.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday and throughout the upcoming c)i season!

SONATA: TAKE 2

2009-06-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

It is not often that I get another shot at performing a piece in the same town so soon - and at this moment, when logistical details of our big 10th Anniversary show are swirling around me, I am so very glad that I gave a preview of Douglas's piece last month at the New York Viola Society's collegial concert. It gives a chance for not only the performers, but the piece itself to get a rest in between and an opportunity for reflection and revision before being launched into sonic space again.

Rehearsals now are a bit different as well. Instead of wondering, "what do you have there? how does this fit together?", we are able to concentrate on more of the nuances and flow of the piece. However, since Doug did do a slew of little revisions that are not very obvious to the scanning eye at first, there were certainly a bunch of moments when Steve and I looked at each other and said "was this a 7/8 bar before?, what ARE you playing over there?".

It is also fascinating for me to see what my muscles remember a month later and to subtly train them to make these changes while simultaneously exploring how these new ideas effect the phrasing and pacing of this piece - and ultimately, how I feel when playing it. 30 days of just plain living has passed in that time, and just that alone can make a piece different...and hopefully better.

New Podcast!

2009-05-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

Scoot on over to alonetone.com to listen to c)i's newest podcast. It features a recording of my "love letter" to rock music, "Teratography," plus some info about how the piece went from inspiration to performance. Hope you like!

http://alonetone.com/counterinduction/tracks/teratography-podcast

Or just go to alonetone.com and look for "counterinduction".

composition competition winners!

2009-05-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

counter)induction is proud to announce the winners of our second composition competition. The dozens of entries had a huge stylistic range and came in from the US, Europe and Asia. As with our first competition, we were blown away by the range and quality of the submissions, and only wish we could have awarded more prizes.

The winning work in Category II was Carl Schimmel's sly and energetic The Pismirist’s Congeries; Carl currently resides in Grinnel, Iowa, and you can read more about him at his website.

In category I, the award went to Christopher Rogerson for Brothers. Chris is a third-year student at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Carl Schimmel's work will be performed on counter)induction's June 15th concert at Merkin Hall and Christopher Roberson's will be performed on a concert in out 2009-2010 season

In addition, the judges awarded a honorable mention to Charles Halka, soon to be attending Rice University to work on his DMA.

We look forward to working with the composers, and to see you all at Merkin Hall in June.

Technorati Tags: triennial

Revisions & Rehearsal

2009-04-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

So when I'm not pondering the deep questions of being I still occasionally write music. Kyle has just posted a nice thought about the mutuality of performance, and i thought I'd echo it, having just come out of a fabulous first rehearsal of my 'Deixo | Sonata' with Jessica and Steve Beck. Two thoughts came to mind during our session which connect to and expand Kyle's point.

The first is the extent to which scores underdetermine performances, but that that is a good. One way of looking at that is completely selfish– i much prefer to play with people and try things out and uncover things about that work through a discussion, through the interplay of engaged musicians sharing openly. A 'perfect notation' (i.e. a notation which somehow captured that perpetually elusive 'intent' of the composer) would amplify the power dynamic which has evolved between composers and performers, but would (imho) limit how good a piece could get, since the would then be the result of one perspective, rather than several. Certainly, as composers, we have developed models of performers that we use in constructing a piece, hopefully somewhat more sophisticated than 'I hope this triple stop isn't too hard,' but similarly conditional. My model will never match the insight that a Jess or a Steve bring to the process of developing a work, though the better the model the more efficient that process can be.

The second thought follows on from this; if I am to take the above point seriously, than I need to take seriously the fact that other are contributing in non-trivial ways to that collective activities that we refer to as a particular 'work.' I've just been thinking a bunch about how as composers we are both individual actors and inheritors of the concepts and traditions, and how the interference pattern between these two fields is what makes us who we are, not only in the sense of providing influence and provoking responses, but truly making us, giving us the opportunity to be. But if that is that case, then I must have a similarly interactive relationship with the colleagues with whom I'm working on these projects. Kyle in her post mentions generosity, which I think is a good word for it, but I would add openness, openness to the intermingling of self and intent that is musicking. Revisions are literally what this is all about.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, Jessica, Kyle

Brand New Anniversary Podcast!

2009-04-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

In celebration of c)i’s 10^th birthday, we’re reaching into the archives to revisit some great performances of concerts past.

Our first retrospective podcast takes us back to this seasons’ opener, a show called ROOT, BRANCH, CRYSTAL, from last October at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York City. On that program we performed Caroline Mallonee’sThrowing Mountains This piece tied for first place in c)i’s first composition competition back in 2006. The band was especially attracted to the piece’s vivacious extraversion, strong lines, and general all-out rockingness.

Caroline Mallonée says about her work: “Throwing pots” is the terminology for the process of creating a ceramic piece using natural forces and natural materials. The momentum of the wheel allows the potter to create symmetrical objects out of earth and water. Throwing pots is also a fun and loud way to dispose of thrown pots. In Throwing Mountains, ranges and peaks arise from the momentum of the music. Throwing mountains in the end might also be said to be a fun and loud way to dispose of thrown mountains.”

Don’t forget to join us on Monday, June 15 for our concert “Rewind>>Fastforward: 10 years of counterinduction”. This Merkin Hall program will celebrate our decade of great new music and great performances with world premieres by Eric Moe, Douglas Boyce, and Kyle Bartlett, as well as the winner of our 2^nd Composition competition. To find out more visit us at counterinduction.com and on Facebook, and don’t forget that there are more great c)i podcasts to be had on iTunes.

c)i podcast: Mallonée's Throwing Mountains

To subscribe, click here Or visit www.itunes.com and search for counterinduction.

The granularity of work

2009-04-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

I’m currently working on two pieces. One is The Lost Child, a kind of “opera” for flute with electronics, percussion, recorded sounds, and actor. It’s by far the biggest project I’ve ever done, both aesthetically and in terms of logistics. At the same time I am working on Adagio sostenuto for our June 15^th anniversary concert. It’s my sixth work involving the whole c)i instrumentation, which I find surprising. I had no idea! What’s impressive is that I still feel like I’m just getting started with this sonority, I’m just digging into the possibilities not only of the instruments but also of the expressive characters of the c)i performers. Like Doug, when I write for these musicians I feel I’m not just writing for the instrument, I’m writing for the player. It is a privileged position to have a long-term relationship with a group of such virtuosic, dedicated, creatively astonishing and generous people. With these musicians I never feel worried about the piece not being understood, or not being prepared.

But how did we get to this place? I’ve been thinking a lot about continuity; that’s what Adagio sostenuto is about, I think. I get confused when I’m making a piece. I often forget what came first: some nameless creative impulse, a certain “taste in the mouth” of what the piece should be, or my fine philosophical justifications for those impulses and vague notions. The program notes! Anyway, I had already been working with these mass textures made up of tiny events, like clouds or swarms. The surface sensation is of a solid substance, but when you look closer it is really many tiny grains of sound. Then I started to think that being in counter)induction is like that. When you say “10 years” it feels like some big object, some Monumental Achievement. But what it really is, is countless individual rehearsals, meetings, hours at the desk composing, mountains of press releases, postcards, emails (God, the emails!), writing grants, setting up chairs before a concert, playing the concerts… Countless individual acts that add up to ten years of effort, ten years of music.

Welcome, Ryan Streber!

2009-04-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

c)i is very excited to welcome Ryan Streber to the group. Ryan is a great composer and we've enjoyed working with him so much in the past that we decided to invite him to come on board! You can read about his many projects and works here.We'll be performing his Partita for solo cello at our June anniversary concert, and he's already put together an program for us for next year's season, about which you'll hear more later.

Violas, Sonatas and Barn

2009-04-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that I've just finished a new work for viola and sonata which will premiered by Jessica at the counter)induction's anniversary concert at Merkin Hall on 15 June.

The work is tentatively titled Deixo | Sonata. Deixo in the Greek connotes both a logical proof and a stylish display of oratory in the presentation of that proof. Jessica has several times over the years asked for a viola sonata from me, and as I settled down to work on the piece, it struck me that she was asking for a performance from me as well. To compose a piece as squarely in the tradition of sonatas for soloist and piano is to strike a balance between expectation and opportunity, between that which is constitutive and essential and that which is potential and unexpected.

I've been lucky to have this time at the Millay Colony to focus on the final stages of preparation; the grind of editing and making parts is always a drain and having a view like this, good food and interesting interlocutors helps keep ones nose to the grindstone. The next step is the most rewarding one, and the one which c)i was built to cultivate. I have been writing for Jessica for over a decade, and so I've written the work both as a summa of the techniques and approaches the Jessica and I have worked on over our time together, and as a show piece for her skill and artistry. This kind of collaboration is the goal of counter)induction, not merely a coming together for a single performance or premiere, but the commitment over the long term to cultivating the capacity for imagination and craft and performers and composers. Hopefully I've made the page-turns in reasonable spots!

The First Post

2009-04-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to counter)induction's weblog, where we'll be posting about upcoming and past shows, compositions and thoughts about things musical. We hope to get c)i performers and composers contributing, and also some talks with guest composers and performers.

So subscribe to the RSS feed, and check out the band's podcast at the iTunes store, and stay tuned for more news soon!

~ douglas