Picture of the Day – July 10, 2012

The Dahlia Flute Duo performs “Two Flutes and Tape” by Nomi Epstein at this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert.  The composer provided the following notes about the piece: “Written for Australian flutist Janet McKay’s 2009 US Tour “Those Vanished Hands,” the work explores material as sonic block both as live player and prerecorded tape parts. Juxtaposition of blocks are presented through stratification and variation of durational properties.”

The Dahlia Flute Duo

 

Picture of the Day – July 2, 2012

Kathryn Denney and Lisa Hadley perform Anita Kupriss’s Soul Tea at Capital Community College, where this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert was held on March 8, 2012. Written for vocalists and a fixed electronics track, the piece features sound samples of a tea kettle.  The composer writes:

“In the mornings I often sing along with my whistling tea kettle (doesn’t everyone?) and decided that I just had to write a piece for two (or three) female voices with a pre-recorded tea kettle background track. The pitch of the tea kettle, which undulates between an A and a Bb, sounds the pedal tone for the entire piece, while the click of the electronic starter generates a recurring rhythmic motive. The text, a series of vowels, gives the singers the freedom to create bursts of canonic melodies and modal harmonies. The singers employ glides and onomatopoeic sounds (tsik) as effects and sing descending and ascending quarter steps with the tea kettle, in order to heighten the harmonic tension. At first I thought that this would be a humorous piece, but as I composed it the mood became more melancholy which ultimately inspired me to name this song Soul Tea.”

 

Kathryn Denney, Lisa Hadley

Picture of the Day – June 30, 2012

In today’s picture, Central Connecticut State University professor Dr. Daniel D’Addio performs My Father Was a Ventriloquist by Festival Associate Director, Jessica Rudman (www.jessicarudman.com).  The piece makes use of a text written by the composer read as part of a fixed electronics track that accompanies the live trumpet player.  Commissioned by Dr. D’Addio, the composition was premiered in 2011 and has since been performed around the Northeast.

Daniel D'Addio

 

Picture of the Day – June 29, 2012

Eunsun Jung performs Eun Sook Baek’s Poverty to Liberty on this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert.  The piece is composed for the gayageum, a string instrument from Baek’s homeland Korea.  According to the composer, “the title Poverty to Liberty is used to describe the immigrants arriving on a foreign country, America. When the immigrants arrived at New York, their first encounter was the Statue of Liberty. As these people witness the Statue of Liberty, they start to imagine the American dream. In this piece, the Korean instrument ‘Gayageum’ represents the American land. East Asian Composers usually expressed their own culture and timbres through western instruments. However, for this piece, the western culture was expressed with an eastern instrument, and the immigrants (all ethnic group) with western instruments. This piece includes the sorrowful departure from the immigrants’ homeland, to achieve the American dream every other people aspire. It also includes their harsh journey across the sea, and the arrival to a land of hope.”

 

Gayageum

Picture of the Day – June 28, 2012

Today’s picture comes from the Electro-acoustic Concert on March 8, 2012.  The concert opened with Ryan Ford performing Kirsten Volness’s work for bass and electronics entitled Hints and Hauntings.  The composer describes the piece in her program notes:

“Hints and Hauntings is a pastiche paying homage to a long list of influences and experiences that have shaped my musical life. I sought to use sounds I once found far more prevalent in my daily existence, whose absence and possible future obsolescence I’ve noticed. (You’ll find I spent a lot of time as a child listening to records and reading the dictionary.) Formative sonic experiences find their way into the piece as well, like playing in a drumline and discovering electronic music, from early analog sounds to my teenage years dancing in clubs.”

 

Ryan Ford and Kirsten Volness

 

To learn more about Kirsten and her music, visit her website at www.kirstenvolness.com/.