Upcoming performances

On October 23 soprano Deborah Norin-Kuehn will be performing my work Diaspora at the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music festival in Bowling Green, Ohio.

On December 10, 11 and 12 violist John Graham will be performing his abridged version of my Dying of the Light at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center.

Current compositional projects

I have begun working on the music for a new film/musical composition to be created in collaboration with animators/filmmakers Peter Byrne and Carole Woodlock. While planning for this piece is still at a preliminary stage, a pivotal concept will be perceptions of moving through various types of time/spaces -- spaces that are elastic, and thus can interpenetrate and overlap, and alternately fuse and disentangle. I am very much looking forward to working again with these two accomplished and insightful artists, with whom I collaborated on the 2007 experimental film Passage.

After completion of this film/musical composition I will be writing a percussion duet for virtuoso percussionists (and cousins) Michael Burritt and Thomas Burritt for premiere in 2010.

Next in line is another work for two players: saxophone and percussionist. The saxophonist for the premiere will be Dannel Espinoza.

Concert of my recent music at Eastman on October 1

As part of the 2009-10 Eastman Faculty Artists series I presented a concert of some of my recent acoustic, electroacoustic and multimedia works, along with one golden oldie, in Eastman's Kilbourn Hall on October 1. Works presented included a "pre-premiere" screening of the film Off-Line for which I recently completed the sound track, the Rochester premiere of Take Flight, and Vivre, Take Me Places, Passage and Diaspora. Guest soloists included Deborah Norin-Kuehn, soprano; Nathaniel Bartlett, marimba; and members of Ossia, with conductor Geoffrey Pope.

Performances of Take Flight

Take Flight, my most recently completed composition for solo marimba, real-time audio processing of portions of the marimba part and computer generated sounds was premiere on May 29 by marimba virtuoso Nathaniel Bartlett at at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison Wisconson. This work, written in celebration of 100 years of aeronautical navigation, includes live processing of portions the marimba part, sustaining notes played by the marimbist and altering the timbre and articulation of these passages.

Over the summer Nate performed Take Flight on west and east coast concert tours, presenting the piece in Houston, TX; Albuquerque, NM; Tucson, AZ; Santa Ana, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; Somerville, MA and Atlanta, GA. Additional performances are scheduled for the coming months.

This composition, made possible by a Fromm Music Foundation commission, will be a featured work in Bartlett's next commercial recording project, a hybrid multi-channel SACD (also playable on conventional stereo systems) entitled Powered Flight to be distributed by Albany Records.

Completion of Off-Line

Last spring I completed work on a commission from animator and director Tom Gasek, owner of OOH (Out of Hand Animation) Productions to create the musical sound track for Off-Line, a clever, ironical but also winsome narrative experimental animated film that deals with microtechnology. The music is constructed in 31 tone equal temperament, and also provided me with the opportunity to explore some new (to me) techniques for processing, abstracting and transforming naturalistic everyday sound sources made by household items such as curtains, switches and electrical appliances.

Work on visual imagery editing and post production of this eight and a half minute film is now in its final stages in preparation for a series of forthcoming festival presentations.

Summer 2009 : Catching a breath

Over the summer I took a three month break from composing, the first such extended hiatus in several years, in order to rejuvenate and to clear my head; to play around in the sandbox with some new sound synthesis and acoustic processing techniques; and, most of all, during some long hikes, to reflect upon my recent professional work and upon some compositional interests that I just never seem to have the time to pursue, especially in the area of acoustic composition.

I found it useful to jot down some of these reflections to clarify them for my own benefit, of course, but also because I know from conversations that similar thoughts occur to other composers as well from time to time, and sometimes it is helpful to share ideas on what we do, how and why we do it, and "the ones that get away." And so, in the "for what it's worth" and "to whom it's worth anything" categories, is my "how I spent my summer" essay

Older news: Spring 2009 performances

Second Sight was presented on a concert on April 24 at Stony Brook University sponsored by the Stony Brook Electroacoustic Studios.

Diaspora was performed by soprano Jamie Jordan in two concerts sponsored by the Ossia New Music Ensemble:

• February 19, 8:00 pm in Eastman's Kilbourn Hall
• February 21, 7:30 pm, Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University

Vivre was performed in its 8 channel version on February 21 at Cornell University in a concert sponsored by the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center.

Kenneth Thompkins, principal trombonist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, performed my composition Eternal Winter in recitals.