Michael Cooke

Light & Water is a collaborative multimedia project with my wife, Lisa, seamlessly blending music and video. Conceived as an inseparable pairing, the video, crafted by Lisa, serves as the foundation of the work. It is a montage of footage from our travels, capturing moments in Taiwan, Japan, Las Vegas, and the San Francisco Bay area.

This piece is structured into three movements, each characterized by distinct mood and color changes, yet unified through a continuous landscape theme. A key component of the piece is the Musique concrète sound bed crafted by Lisa. Musique concrète is a pioneering technique in electronic music where various recorded natural sounds are manipulated and mixed to create an auditory collage. This forms a unique sonic tapestry that blends real-world sounds with musical qualities.

Over this innovative sound bed, I layered my composition using multiple bassoons, prominently featuring multiphonics. This advanced technique enables the production of multiple pitches simultaneously on the bassoon, creating a spectrum of sounds ranging from harmonious chords to dissonant echoes. Achieving this rich auditory tapestry involves employing unconventional fingerings and intricate embouchure adjustments, which significantly extend the expressive range of the bassoon in this avant-garde context.

The transitions between each section are fluid, with a slight overlap, giving each movement its unique character while maintaining a cohesive narrative. Light & Water made its debut at the SFCCO virtual concert on May 8, 2021, and was well-received during at a MENSA event in November the same year.