Posts Tagged ‘MENSA’

Sunset Shapes

Saturday, November 13th, 2021

Sunset Shapes

Sunset Shapes is a unique musical collaboration with artist Ian Fink, featuring bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, and Chinese meditation chimes. This piece draws its inspiration from Fink’s painting “Houses,” known for its surrealistic portrayal of three-dimensional shapes and a captivating sky, which I envisioned as a sunset. The painting’s vivid imagery sparked a bass clarinet line in my mind, leading to the birth of this composition.

Influenced partly by Eric Dolphy’s Hat and Beard, the structure of Sunset Shapes is intriguingly unconventional, with every alternate repetition of the form extending by an additional measure. Different segments of the music are reflections of various elements within the painting, creating a rich tapestry of sound that mirrors the visual complexity of Fink’s work.

The world première of Sunset Shapes took place at the SFCCO virtual concert on November 13, 2021. It was also well-received during its showcase at an art and music event hosted by MENSA later in the same month.

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Iberian Impressions

Saturday, November 13th, 2021

Iberian Impressions

Iberian Impressions is an evocative collaboration between myself and artist Ian Fink, culminating in a solo flute piece steeped in the rich musical heritage of Spain. This composition was born out of a reflective conversation with friends about a concert tour in Spain back in 1992. It prominently features the Spanish Gypsy scale, also known as the Phrygian dominant scale, and draws inspiration from the distinctive performances of Eric Dolphy and Pharoah Sanders in John Coltrane’s Olé.

As the music of Iberian Impressions came to life, it spurred Ian Fink’s artistic creativity, leading him to create a painting titled “August 17, 2020.” This painting, featured in the accompanying video, captures the surreal day when San Francisco’s skies were shrouded in orange, a vivid reminder of the wildfires raging in the surrounding areas. The intersection of music and visual art in this project offers a profound and multi-sensory experience, encapsulating a moment in time marked by both cultural richness and environmental poignancy.

The world premiere of Iberian Impressions took place at the SFCCO virtual concert on November 13, 2021 . It was also well-received during its showcase at an art and music event hosted by MENSA later in the same month.

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Light & Water

Saturday, May 15th, 2021

Light & Water

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.

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