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).
Category: events
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.
wulf show
aaron bresley – still: (sky/light) for two players and still: (blur) for one player: part of an ongoing series that seeks to explore a particular relationship between perception and determination, especially in terms of distance
john eagle (with andy young) – tuning #3: ear-training exercises in untempered space
Saturday, May 9, 2015
8 pm
the wulf
1026 s. santa fe ave. #203, los angeles, ca 90021
Chekhov in Vermont
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.
“Something about my Punctuation”
A new piece for two writers will be presented this Friday at the wulf, along with new pieces by Todd Lerew, Chris Schunk, and Danny Wood. The piece utilizes excerpts from Søren Kierkegaard’s diaries including an entry labeled: “Something about my Punctuation” (1847), which discusses something of K’s unusual rhetorical style.
7.11.14
8 pm
the wulf
1026 s santa fe ave #203
los angeles, ca
Dog Star Orchestra 10
Dog Star Orchestra returns in June for its tenth year of experimental music concerts. The fabulous duo Guthrie & Streb will be premiering my piece ‘groups, no. 2’ for viola and cello at the wulf on Friday, June 6, at 8 pm. The program focuses on counting, including Tom Johnson’s Counting Duets.
premiere: Isaura String Quartet
The Isaura String Quartet will premiere my string quartet, ‘rhythm color #3—fiction’ at a concert of new works by LA composers on Saturday, April 5 at SPACE Arts Center in South Pasadena.
Other composers on the program include: Morgan Gerstmar, Jules Gimbrone, and Gustavo Uribe.
Saturday, April 5, 2014, 8 pm
SPACE Arts Center
1506 Mission Street
South Pasadena, CA 91030
The rhythm color pieces explore harmony as a function of time. While the first two deal with the standard rhythmic metric, #3 deals with time as a function of counting/calculation (individual) and power dynamics (group). Dealing with the Pythagorean tuning relationships between the five pitch classes of the open strings of the quartet (C, G, D, A, E), the players are presented with a grid-like score of pitches/numbers; each cell with the instruction to be either played, not played, or left to the players to decide.
