As water freezes and melts and crystals form or dissolve, interesting sonic worlds take shape. Slowing these down and finding tiny universes in the instants of freezing, I found similarities to the overall shapes of tides, sleet falling, snow being crunched, and streams moving toward lower ground engorged after heavy rains. The playfulness and witty action of some of these sounds is underscored by the slow (yet accelerating) process of climate change, as oceans rise, glaciers and ice fields melt and dissolve into the sea, becoming water again, posing massive challenges and dangers upon the people who continue to hasten the global melt. Humans still flock to the sea to watch it roll in and out, see its beauty, hear its roar and sonic shapes – but soon the oceans will get to visit us at our homes the world over, whether we like it or not, and we won’t get to escape them so easily. There’s still hope, but each ice field that melts, each iceberg that becomes the ocean, brings us closer to hearing the permanent, irreversible roars of the ocean and the altered states of the Earth’s climate.

The main compositorial aspect of the piece Klangräume 2 for piccolo and tape was on one hand the examination of the instrument and electronics and on the other side on the combination of graphics and sound/ timbre. The aim was to set graphical constructions and sound in relationship. Besides this the graphics should have an aesthetical substance. The focus on the examination with graphical structures was the idea, to transform architectural static structures in changing musical processes.

This piece remixes Le locataire diabolique (1909) from director Georges Méliès, one of the first directors in the silent film era to use stop motion techniques. In this piece, a “diabolical renter” moves into his new accommodation. He unpacks his bag, and somehow all of his possessions are crammed inside: tables, chairs, a piano, even his family. For use in my composition, I changed the speed, direction and coloring, and set it to music/sound, mostly foley. As the piece progresses, the viewer is gradually pulled into the visual space by way of sound design. The presence of the virtual space is dynamic and unfurls during the piece, beginning as a mono signal, symbolizing one-dimensionality, and suddenly expands (a tablecloth gesture triggers it) into a contrasting auditory spaciousness.

Something like a deafening noise arose from inside their deepness and leave them out of breath. A primal fire burned out all their shelters. They were by themselves those who got inspired to descend upon the boundaries of their animality, without knowing it. And so on the grey angels trapped inside the oblivion woke up, one by one. Options were simple, to fall even deeper or to take flight with them to become white again.

At the Boundary, for amplified string quartet and interactive computer music searches for the border between technically and rhythmically difficult music, with angular melodies and dissonant harmonies, and music that is fun to play and hear. It was inspired by the string quartets of Bartók and Shostakovich, and the Swedish metal band Opeth, and is also infused with anxiety about the political military conflict in the Ukraine, that was brewing when the piece was composed. In the four attacca movements, the string instruments accompany arching sustained melodies and countermelodies, with driving rhythmic spiccato, half col legno, pizzicato, and flautando passages. Interactive computer processing, controlled by a computer musician, expand the timbre of the amplified string instruments, with delay, phaser, fuzz, and flanger effects. Following the quartet, the computer musician triggers delays of different rhythm and duration, phasers and flangers of different speed and depth, and fuzz distortion of different loudness and brightness, affecting the string instrument timbres. The piece was commissioned by the Third Angle Ensemble, for their New Ideas in Music concert.

Axon, for violin solo and interactive computer is a work in which pulses and impulses travel and refract away from each other, thus creating a sound world of new spectral motivic sound images. The piece was commissioned and premiered at the ISCM World Music Days 2002 in Hong Kong by Mari Kimura, who created the original Max/MSP samples, using sound samples of two of the composer’s earlier works. Special thanks to Noah Creshevsky for his assistance in compiling the original sound files used in the work. Axon has been recorded on Bridge Records.

Metafonie V ( a G. Scelsi) is devoted to the memory of the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988). At the center of the piece is the nature of sound and the idea of music as organized sound. In the my electronic music pieces, I use the FM synthesis and It allows me the formation of different adaptive morphologies really effective for music composition into the technological field. Since 1993, I have chosen to use for the different pieces titled “Metafonie” a vintage synthesis such as FM synthesis to reach beyond its conventional limits and routine, but to use its potential. It is the heart of a generative sound machine, very interesting in terms of both spectral and morphological results. In this piece they act perceptually and semantically in a border area, flexible and ambiguous. It will be up to the composer to decide with what cultural responsibilities he will manages the results in a music based on the sound and psychoacoustics.

Apocryphal Chrysopoeia was implemented in the graphical programming language MAX/MSP/Jitter. The title means “legendary but dubious alchemical transmutation into gold,” referring to the process of transforming the raw numerical output of several algorithms into a visceral and potentially sublime audio-visual experience.

Performing with the instrument involves interacting with a collection of sound- and light-emitting objects in a virtual three-dimensional space. This space is projected for both the performer and audience on a large screen, and a surround sound system is used to sonically immerse the audience. The collection of objects, or cells, provides a structured resource of potential sound and light that is activated by a cellular automaton. This automaton gives the instrument a rudimentary, moment-to-moment musical intelligence. The computer music performer can then manipulate both the long-term activity of the automaton and the spatial geometry of the cells. In tandem, these two areas of control allow the performer to create a dramatic multimodal experience for the audience.

The design of Apocryphal Chryspoeia draws upon research in spatial models of pitch perception. Pitch space theories correlate the experience of relatedness between pitches with spatial proximity. This sense of relatedness is context dependent, learned through exposure to a particular musical idiom. The fundamental pitch space used in this instrument is an altered form of cognitive scientist Roger Shepard’s “double-helix.” The alterations to this double-helix were made to more efficiently map spatial proximity to consonance. However, improvisations with this instrument focus on exploring new harmonic possibilities, emergent from spatially organizing virtual sound sources. The initial emphasis on consonance is simply used as a principled point of departure for finding more complex harmonies.

Tension and Release was among the selected works at ICMC 2015 – University of North Texas. It is a musical soundtrack to accompany “Rhythmus 21” an old silent movie of the 1920s by German director Hans Richter. The work attempts to give a voice to Richter’s geometrical patterns and their movement (a dynamic relationship between black and white) using real sounds recorded in the port of Bari (Italy). The work uses the concept of tension and release which was found in the sounds of the port’s sea boats tied up with ropes and chains. The bumping of the boats, clanging of the metallic ropes, stretching hawsers, and splashing water are all sounds triggered by the movement of the sea — simple but profoundly representative. The screening of the film is better in a totally dark room. It is also recommended that the public wait for one minute in the dark, in silence, before the screening begins.

In his new project, Noordwiijk (Jeremie Jones) explores the intimate meeting point of acoustic and electronic music. Sailor Boy II is an imaginary soundtrack of a boy crossing the Atlantic ocean on a ship in 1952. The piece “Silver Fox” is here presented in it’s new York premiere.

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” — Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso

In Xylography for solo cello and electronics, the performance begins with the cello turned backwards, a blank surface upon which the cellist starts to draw. The near-silence is projected around the concert space by a network of contact microphones, then analyzed by the computer to attempt an improvised response. The cellist in turn responds to this computerized noise improvisation through a score inspired by live improvisations of several cellist collaborators. This game of imitation continues with a broadening repertoire of sounds, finally coming to rest on the detuned fourth string, from which the performer elicits a flickering spectrum of harmonics and multiphonics. Xylography follows Graffiti, premiered by Seth Woods, and is dedicated to Séverine Ballon and Pierre Morlet.

Andrew Walters, Red Plastic Bell Abstract Red Plastic Bell Abstract allowed me to utilize some of the programs that I have recently installed on my computer and iPad. It uses sine waves generated from Max/MSP and recordings of a red plastic tube that I bought from a teacher’s supply store in St. Louis. This piece was partially inspired by the small abstract paintings of Hope Miller LeVan.

QfwfQ takes its name from the inter-dimensional narrator of many of Italo Calvino’s short stories including Cosmicomics (1963-4), which describe the beginnings of the world using both scientific hypotheses and comic language. Like the unknowable, unpronounceable QfwfQ, who has experienced all of time and space, this piece explores multiplicities of being, paradoxes, and contrasts. The piece is scored for two alto instruments, or any treble instrument capable of reaching down to the G below middle C. The players read from a two-line score and can choose to switch parts at bar lines that demarcate sections of varying length. The two lines have contrasting characters and are each treated to different electronic manipulations that create multiple voices. The bottom line is lyrical, almost Romantic in character, and its electronics create a Bulgarian chorusing effect through time, pitch and timbre shifting. This chorusing effect can accrue up to 96 voices and is reset when performers switch parts. The top line has an angular, disjunct, and modern character and also includes occasional percussive sounds. The electronics loop some of the percussive sounds, and, by the end of the piece, these create a third drum line. In total, this single piece played by two instruments can ultimately evolve into as many as 99 possible lines, which can be in agreement or in conflict depending on the musical performance. Only at the center of the piece do the two instrumentalists play the same melody, in a “weeping” fado-like passage that briefly unifies the voices before they diverge again.

The multiphonic, indeterminate, and polystylistic character of this piece is best described in the story, “A Sign In Space,” a kind of parable of the postmodern condition. In it, QfwfQ makes a mark to note the revolution of the Sun around the Milky Way galaxy (the first sign ever made), only to find after many millennia that many others had also made similar signs and the original sign was gone. QfwfQ ruminates on the experience of looking at the marks of millions beings in space: “In the universe now there was no longer a container and a thing contained, but only a general thickness of signs, superimposed and coagulated… constantly being dotted, minutely, a network of lines and scratches and reliefs and engravings…”Special thanks to Matthew Blessing for his help with the chorusing patch and the reACT ensemble for commissioning / inspiring / workshopping the piece.