Southland Ensemble: Something About My Punctuation
On a concert of new text and graphic scores, Southland Ensemble will be presenting a revised version of my piece “Something About My Punctuation” for four writers and sounds, consisting of text fragments from Søren Kierkegaard’s diary.
Saturday, February 9
Automata
504 Chung King Ct.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Tickets here
Dog Star Orchestra at GAS Festival in Sweden
A small cohort from Dog Star Orchestra will be performing at the GAS Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden on September 28 and 29. At the latter of the two shows a new piece of mine titled still life: North Puyallup River Bridge will be premiered for quartet (bass flute, horn, viola, guitar) alongside work by Erika Bell, Laura Steenberge, Michael Pisaro, and Yoko Ono. The piece is an arrangement of harmonies found near the origin of the North Puyallup River on Mt. Rainier.
More information about the festival and performances here.
lattice chains
short video from the performance on June 3, 2018. the piece consists of 9-tone ‘chains’ which must be arranged in a harmonic lattice structure (this performance uses the (2,3), (3,5), and (5,7) planes—an x,y graph where each axis represents a harmonic ratio).
video by Ian Byers-Gamber
Dog Star 14
The 14th season of Dog Star Orchestra begins Saturday June 2. On Sunday June 3 at Human Resources in Chinatown, I will present a new piece lattice chains for an 8 channel modular sound system designed with Janie Geiser, Eric Heep, and Cassia Streb. Eric Heep, Sepand Shahab, Stephanie Smith, and Cassia Streb will also be presenting pieces.
Info on all concerts can be found at dogstarorchestra.com
Sound House @LAX
SOUND HOUSE is a work-in-progress excerpt of a new work conceived and created by John Eagle, Janie Geiser and Cassia Streb. Sound House is a performance/installation centered on a series of tasks that shape the sound in the room. The tasks, based on a set of instructions, are enacted by a group of 8 artist/performers manipulating objects, controllers, microphones, speakers, walls, and wooden puppets. Their actions are specific and interdependent and emerge from several areas: the history of the Minuteman Missile project, bricklaying/construction, sound generation, time and its measurement, and object/task performance (the performance of the real).
Nine Bells
In June, I performed Tom Johnson’s Nine Bells, a nine movement piece which uses various patterns for the performer to walk through a 3×3 grid. The tuning system I employed placed the bells on a plane of harmonic space with one axis in fifths (3/2) and the other in pure major thirds (5/4). The image below shows my tuning scheme overlaid with Johnson’s hand drawing (first movement). This video shows the ninth movement, which has a triangular pattern that approximates a 45-45-90 triangle, which when reduced has sides of 1, 1, and √2. Using steps as the unit of measurement, Johnson represents this with a triangle of 5, 5, 7 (just short of 5√2). This movement uses only the 4 outer bells forming a square. As the triangle’s orientation changes, the exact dimensions remain intact while the resultant chord changes each time (a total of 4 possibilities).
Thanks to Janie Geiser and Automata for filming and hosting.
Dog Star 12: Math is Nature
Paul Muller with a nice writeup on one of the Dog Star concerts this past June.
New dates
Two new events planned as part of this year’s Dog Star Orchestra festival. June 4, I’ll be playing Tom Johnson’s Nine Bells on a specially-tuned set of bells I’ve built. June 14, Isaura String Quartet will perform ‘rhythm color #3’ alongside the Southland String Quartet performing works by James Tenney and Tom Johnson.
Check out the shows section for more info.
ISQ Premiere
Isaura String Quartet will be premiering my piece “parallel lines (do not intersect)” on their final concert of their summer series. For the concert they asked 7 different LA composers to reimagine Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”. My piece, which borrows its name from Blondie’s album title, begins with a chorale, of sorts, in two separate 3-limit harmonic spaces (4ths, 5ths, and octaves)—a kind of harmonic parallelism. The concert will be followed by pie and drinks to celebrate the final concert.
Click here for more info and email isaurastringquartet@gmail.com to RSVP and receive directions to the location in Eagle Rock.
