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Scores
My output as a composer has largely been centered around providing music for modern dance works. Dance as creative partner and muse imposes certain structural constraints but also provides focus and and a tremendous source of energy. My recent pieces are electro-acoustic or electronic scores exploring the motivic possibilities that can be tapped by resampling existing sound. Barn (2004) paired recordings I made sifting through the wreckage of Mickie Geller’s collapsed barn with the wood and wind sounds of marimba and different members of the saxophone family. Doble (2006) is structured around the timbral, textural and canonic outcomes of applying delay lines to live performance, while in Tochter aus Elysium (2008) hundreds of short samples of LP recordings of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony are arranged to create new motives. John Cage, George Crumb, Steve Reich, John Zorn and Phillip Jeck are a few of the composers that have influenced me.
Dance Class Improvisations
Keeping a day job as a dance musician has also spawned a wealth of more spontaneous improvised material. I accompany on a laptop-based synthesizer system that allows me to record entire classes and build multitimbral textures from successively improvised loops. The following tracks, labeled by date and a quick title, are excerpts of unedited free class improvisations, all cases where the idea was formed and polished within a few repetitions of a dance combination. I scoff at pre-cut sample and loop libraries and quantization - and sometimes it shows. But it's an incredibly gratifying way to work.
After this being the fall of annoying surprise equipment failures, I've got everything working again and a lot of the results have been surprising in the good way. These six tracks came from two classes with SUNY Brockport guest Mariah Maloney and one with Travis. Most are heavily dependent on delay effects.
I produce ambient techno for fun sometimes. Xael was sequenced in GarageBand on the way home from a couple of Southeast Engine tour dates in New York.
Since high school I’ve enjoyed the challenge of attempting to figure out what makes a particular composer’s style tick. Semblances is an ongoing series of ballet pieces for piano where each aims to mimic a particular classical artist. Here is the one for Frederic Chopin.