Category: events

Dog Star Orchestra at GAS Festival in Sweden

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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

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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

Sound House @LAX

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A works-in-progress showing this weekend (Oct. 1 and 2) at Automata Arts as part of the Live Arts Exchange (LAX) festival. Follow the link for times.

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

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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.

harmonic space diagram

ISQ Premiere

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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.

Chekhov in Vermont

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I have had the pleasure of working with Randolyn Zinn and The Living Room Theatre on a few projects. They have developed their own type of site-specific theatre at the Park McCullough House in North Bennington, VT over the past couple summers. I have contributed music for this summer’s production of Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’. The score sets abstracts from Bartók, Scriabin, and Russian folk tunes against field recordings and various types of resonators and feedback engines.

Opens July 31. Reservations required.

Click here for tickets and info.