SUNY Fredonia School of Music faculty introduces ‘New Music Electronic Music’
KORI BARKLEY
Special to The Leader
Rosch Recital Hall was packed Tuesday night as Paul Coleman and Jeremy Sagala presented their anything-but-ordinary faculty recital, “New Music Electronic Music,” featuring both electronic and acoustic music alike.
Paul Coleman is a faculty member at Fredonia, teaching theory, composition and computer music. He is the sound director and engineer of Signal, a music ensemble involving renowned composers including Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon and Helmut Lachenmann. His music has been performed worldwide and ranges from computer-generated sounds to works for large orchestra.
Jeremy Sagala is a faculty member of the Music Theory Department and is the founder and director of the new music/electronic music group, Ensemble Ilusis. After publishing his book, “Form and Materials in Davidovsky’s ‘Flashbacks’” and recording his CD “ … through autumn into winter” he has received awards and honors from ASCAP, SCI, New England Foundations for the Arts and the Wellsley Composer’s Conference, among many others.
Electronic music is more of an “umbrella term,” according to Coleman. It can mean music created entirely by electronic or computer-generated sounds or music that blends electronic and acoustic music together.
Tuesday’s concert involved a little bit of everything.
“Please place your trays in upright position and buckle up for the ride,” Sagala said before the lights dimmed to nothing and the hall grew completely dark, save one red and one blue light reflected off the stage.
There was a quietness about the room as the audience suspensefully waited to hear something… anything.
Suddenly the voice of Allan Schindler was heard saying, “The only significance of this sound file is as it is post processed by various orchestra library instruments so that it becomes more interesting.”
“Allan Sitting in a Room,” a piece composed by Coleman, is a set of four variations made by chopping Schindler’s statement into bits” of sound so that each bit resembles a new shape. Some variations of the original file were recognizable while others were not at all. To describe the sounds as unsettling would be completely accurate.
“Unsettling sounds are caused because of the unknown,” Coleman explained. “If you see someone on stage with a violin, you have at least a vague idea of what sound you will hear, recognizing the instrument, when the sound will happen, seeing the gesture of a bow, and where it will come from, locating the sound source visually.”
“This is not always the case in electronic music,” he continued, “because the timbre can vary greatly from moment to moment, sound can happen at any time since you might not see someone or something moving to make the sound, and because a sound can seem like it comes from any location, especially if you are surrounding the audience with sometimes up to 16 speakers.”
Both composers sat at their computers and a mixer that were located in the middle of the audience.
“During the performance, both composers would cue what are called ‘events’ during their piece,” Tim Bausch, graduate composition and percussion student, said. “These ‘events’ cued different sounds and processes during the piece.”
Recovering from a serious illness in 2011, Sagala wrote the next piece, “Silence Hangs in Misty Layers.”
The imagery of the piece is that of “an empty room with a single window through which light shone. Floating dust particles fill the air, and they never settle,” as described by Sagala. He wanted to project a sense of “peaceful withdrawal” from struggle and “stillness.”
Slow, haunting bass clarinet passages resonated as Andrew Seigel – Fredonia’s clarinet professor – performed, echoing the decay of the instrument in the speakers and producing overtones. For this, all but the red and blue lights were still off, creating a reflective mood.
Continuing the program was an extremely thoughtful, algorithmic work that some might define as uncanny and even a bit strange.
“Triple Quartet” is work for twelve string players interacting with twelve different lines of music.
Featured in the piece were Kendall Carrier, Stephen Minor, Lucas DeNies, Nicole Pearson, Andrea Velasquez and Cassity Warnecke on violins; Katie Allen, Megha Nadig and Mary Porcaro on violas and John Chatterton, Emily Finlan and Hannah Kuhn on cellos.
According to Coleman, “‘Triple Quartet’ is an experiment of sorts … Most of this work uses the computer’s raw output, resulting in an acoustic performance of the computer’s decisions.”
The piece is based off a program that Coleman wrote in which the composer draws a shape (in this case it resembled the flocking pattern of birds), and the computer forms the actual notes. Conducted by metallic bell-like sounds, the strings played the notes creating slow moving, dissonant chords.
There were moments in the piece when all voices moved to, or from, a single pitch while one violin would move away from the “flock,” creating a tendency to pull back closer to the group again. As violins got too close, they repelled against each other.
“Durch den Spiegel”, translating to “through the mirror,” was next on the program. Composed by Sagala, this piece was a reference to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Very recognizable sounds, such as a jar rolling across a floor or laughter, were mixed and contrasted against the distortion of those sounds, again leaving the audience with an unsettling feeling. A sense of motion was created as the sounds leapt back and forth between speakers.
After the intermission, variations 3 and 4 of “Allan Sitting in a Room” were presented.
Tim Bausch was featured next in Sagala’s piece for solo marimba, “Stalking the Wild Moon.” In this piece, “the lush sustained passages, the dry staccato notes and the contrapuntal passages are distillations of what one might hear in a work for several instruments, yet the conception is merely ‘marimbistic’,” Sagala explained.
More simply put, the marimba resembled a chamber ensemble, treating the many registers and sound classifications as discrete instruments. The piece was very vivacious and contrasting in-and-of itself.
“It is the voyage, not the ever distant shore, that is important … ” Sagala’s piece, “The Farthest Shore,” incorporated two computer-generated graceful, energetic and later ferocious passages for pianos to depict a voyage across water. A sense of motion was created by the duet almost shaping a swaying sensation. The ferocious passages created an imagery of the chaos of being caught in a storm.
“Gathering” was a piece for instruments that require plucking or striking of strings or bars. The instruments Coleman chose featured Stijn de Cock on piano, Sonja Inglefield on harp, Jim Piorkowski on guitar and Karolyn Stonefelt on marimba.
The piece used the same algorithmic concept as “Triple Quartet”; however, “Gathering” connected musical elements, (such as dynamics, timbre, density, etcetera) in addition to pitch. Seven sections made up the piece: Introduction, Field I, Heterophony, Piano alone, Field II, Chords and Dispersion.
Concluding the program was “immer tiefer, immer ruhiger” meaning “becoming deeper, becoming calmer.” The piece explored the idea of human breath as a musical genre using a mixture of reverberated sounds and by spacing the time between the sounds to match that of inhalation and exhalation.
“The work, to me, is depictive of a series of breaths that leads one deeper into focused concentration,” Sagala explained. “As one descends into contemplation, extraneous thoughts separate from consciousness and ‘fall away.’”
His goal was to have the listener incoherently, at least partially, synchronize his or her own breathing to the sounds.
The concert was a true success.
Sophomore composition major, Evan Seickel, really enjoyed himself.
“I had never been to a concert with such heavy use of electronics before, and it was a great experience,” he said. “Dr. Sagala and Dr. Coleman reminded me of Daft Punk with the electronic music and their lighting choices in the concert hall!”