Composer Highlight: Nicholas DeMaison /  by and Play

Don't let this photo scare you away! Nick is great, and we are thrilled to share his music with you tonight! He is also a wackadoodle and we highly recommend chatting with him at the show--you are bound to leave with some fun anecdotes and a smile on your face. 

Read his answers to our questions, and savor them, for this is the last composer highlight of 2014! 

Also, today is the day that we have all been waiting for! The show is TONIGHT at 8 PM at Cloud City (Williamsburg, Brooklyn).  We will be on the first half at 8, and the lovely and brilliant Fragments Duo is up on the second half. They will be playing music by Eric Shanfield, Lisa Bielawa, and Gyorgy Kurtag. Definitely now to be missed!

Can you describe your piece in three words?

Actually, I think the title of the piece is three words: 

from perfect nowhere

That's rather convenient, wouldn't you say?

But wait - you were looking for something more insightful - so let's turns that into a haiku, because that has 3 lines, which is kind of like three words, and what better way to infuse a useless response with deep and profound insight:

it's so convenient

my title is three words long:

from perfect nowhere

Now you can use all of the words that you want!

The title is a part of a line of an e.e. cummings poem. Don't tell his publisher, please. Maybe he's old fashioned by now, but I still really like the way cummings treats language as a kind of raw material - introducing chaos into what seem to be structures intended to provide organization, using organizational structures to clarify and to confuse, the play between sound and meaning, etc. etc. He's like the Grisey of poetry, in a way. (Don't make me defend that statement.) I try to think about sound and musical organization in a similar way - a (hopefully interesting) play between familiar patterns of organization, bits of chaos, and toying with what it is that seems to be providing the organization and what it is that seems to be in chaos. 

The piece develops out of the idea of vibrato. It's just a sound that is a given part of string playing...one might say it's the first "intentional sound" that comes out the perfect nowhere of a straight tone drawn on a string. 

But that's a very "composerly" response. Probably I should say something about a supernova, or bending time, or the need for groovey-ness, or socioeconomic realities. Yup - all of that.  

What inspired you while writing this piece?

Why, the TWO OF YOU did, of course! 

Well, you two and the very regular calendar imposed on me by my teaching schedule that demands I work when I must. 

What are you listening to on repeat these days?

http://auroranealand.com/store/

Buy their CD! Yes! Buy it! 

What is your go-to midnight snack?

Corn tortillas toasted in the toaster oven and slathered with peanut butter. Or with cheese. But generally not both.

Any fun winter travel plans? Bundled up, bathing suited up, or staying put?

Troy, NYC, Rochester, NYC, Troy, NYC....just big circles on the New York State Thruway. Aren't you jealous?

 

Composer Highlight: Robert Honstein /  by and Play

It has been such a blast working with Rob on his new piece for us! We had a great rehearsal together even though he lives in Boston--Skype and the powers of the internet are so magical!

Read his words, have some chocolate and/or whiskey, and then come hear us play the entire dynamic spectrum in his piece Talking in Circles (Wednesday, Dec. 17th at Cloud City @ 8 PM)!

Can you describe your piece in three words?

fast, slow, fast

Now you can use all of the words that you want!

Do I have to? I kind of like the three word description. Ok, fine. So, Talking in Circles is a conversation that becomes an argument. Two characters are in dialogue, talking but not agreeing. They repeat arguments, making the same points in different ways. There is progress, but ultimately the conversation goes nowhere. In three movements –Give and Take, At odds, Agree to Disagree – the pieces traces this evolution. Give and Take features an exchange, a constant back and forth between the instruments. At Odds, is a standoff. Lines have been drawn. Each side pleas their case, but their cries fall on deaf ears. Finally, in Agree to Disagree the pair are at an impasse. There is some common ground. The musicians find a way to come together, but it is an obstinate unity, a begrudging acceptance of differences

What inspired you while writing this piece?

This is an interesting question because it was never really meant to be a 'piece' in the first place! Each of the movements were kind of homeless scraps, studies, or leftovers from other projects: the first movement contains material that later became a string quartet; the second movement was originally a violin/cello duo that never really had a home in the first place; and the third movement is material that became part of a larger ensemble piece. When I first saw you guys play a year or so ago I thought a) I want to work with these guys! and b) maybe I can find a home for music that I really liked but didn't necessarily have a clear place to live. Then I got to thinking about how/why/if the movements belonged together and I felt like they all had a conversational quality and that idea of dialogue seemed perfectly suited to a duo, so I got really into thinking about each movement as a different take on argument and disagreement, which I think makes sense and is definitely in the music. 

What are you listening to on repeat these days?

There is a three minute piece called 'Liebeslied' by Hans Abrahamsen that I've been obsessed with recently. It's really simple but extremely beautiful. I absolutely love the sound and color, particularly how he takes what essentially is a single-line scrap of melody but makes it sound like so much more. In a slightly different vein I've also really fallen for an album called 'Purcur' by these Norwegian guys Trygve Seim and Andreas Utnem. It's definitely a 'jazz' album but it's incredibly spare and hyper focused on melody and capturing really subtle expressive things like breath and release of notes. Everything feels so well placed and considered. It's also just beautifully recorded so you kind of feel like you are inside the sound at all times. Wonderful winter, headphone music.

What is your go-to midnight snack?

whiskey and/or chocolate

Any fun winter travel plans? Bundled up, bathing suited up, or staying put?

A little of both! Hitting up the family in New Jersey and then Florida. Otherwise it's all bundles and composing up in Boston. 

 

Check out more of Rob's works on his website! http://www.roberthonstein.com/

Composer Highlight: Clara Iannotta /  by and Play

We were introduced to Clara Iannotta and her piece, Limun, this fall and we performed it for the first time in the beginning of November. It was such a fun challenge to learn, and we cannot wait to share it with a new audience on Wednesday, Dec. 17th at Cloud City @ 8 PM! It is full of beautiful sounds and textures, and we will even be getting some help from the Fragments Duo who will be playing the harmonica parts!

Now, here are some words from Clara to get a glimpse into her life and mind. (We love the lemon story!)

Can you describe your piece in three words?

Not sure about it ...

Now you can use all of the words that you want!

Limun is a piece that I have written during the summer 2011 — half of it while I was in Moscow, attending a three weeks workshop with Bedrossian and Billone, and the rest of it in Royaumont, in a beautiful abbey, near Paris, where I spent three weeks working with Ferneyhough, André and Parra. I remember I was quite stressed out and tired — I finished IRCAM just in May and ever since I was copying an awful opera for about 18 hours per day (no kidding), and this was making my life miserable, also because in my 'free time' I had to write 2 pieces — Limun, and Àphones (an ensemble piece). I was so stressed, that when I finished writing the first 5 minutes of the piece, I noticed that the 2 musicians didn't have any time to turn the pages, and this is why I decided to add two page turners, that become essential in the last part of the piece. I went for a few days in Rome (where my family lives) and I visited my 89 old grandmother. I told her how tired I was, and she told me 'of course you are, you don't eat enough lemons!' ... Hmmm ... Ok, I said, I'll try that, and when I got back home I started eating 3 lemons per day. Now, I don't know if it was because of the lemons or simply because it was time to get better, but I actually got better, so I did a little research about lemons and finally I decided to call this piece, that I was writing in the meanwhile, 'Limun' (lemon, in Arabic). 

What inspired you while writing this piece?

The first part is just about tremolos — I remember I found about 30 different ways of having a tremolo. 

What are you listening to on repeat these days?

The last album of Foo Fighters.

What is your go-to midnight snack?

I wake up everyday around 5:30am, which means at midnight I sleep... 

Any fun winter travel plans? Bundled up, bathing suited up, or staying put?

I am writing these answers at Boston airport, waiting to fly back to Europe for the winter break. I think I will simply try to rest a bit, enjoying my family.

 

Check out more of Clara's work on her website (her piece for Ensemble Intercontemporain is a great listen)! http://claraiannotta.com/

Composer Highlight: Brendan Faegre /  by and Play

Hello, and we are back with our Composer Highlight series! We are rehearsing tons and getting really excited for our Permutations show that we are splitting with the Fragments Duo (Sarah Goldfeather, violin and Justine Aronson, voice) at Cloud City this Wednesday, Dec. 17th at 8 PM.

We performed Brendan's Four Koans on our first concert together on Fire Island back in the Summer of 2012, and it holds a special place in our heart. At that time we didn't even have all four of them, only three! We really wanted to give everyone a chance to get to know him better (and Maya just always wants to know what everyone is snacking on). 

Without further ado, here is the man of the hour!

Can you describe your piece in three words?

four musical koans

Now you can use all of the words that you want!

Great!  I remember when I was a teenager my dad told me about Zen Buddhism and the fascinating techniques they had developed for pursuing enlightenment.  Things like meditation, raking gravel, koans.  The idea of a koan--an irrational statement, story, or question designed to foil the logical mind and allow for an intuitive and spontaneous type of comprehension--stuck with me over the years.  I tried to meditate on a few koans in one of my dad's books, but I didn't have the patience to sit down and contemplate a mysterious question for a week.  However, I found that I did have the patience to sit down for that long and contemplate sounds and musical ideas.  So I composed these four musical koans as a way of translating part of the koan idea into a purely sonic medium, so that audiences, performers, I, and other sonically-inclined folks could all really grapple with the idea.

What inspired you while writing this piece?

Oops.  I think I just said all that in the last question.  I could also add that from the geeky composer side of things, Lasse Thoresen's ideas about "spectromorphology" were a big inspiration.

What are you listening to on repeat these days?

The Bad Plus's "Made Possible"

What is your go-to midnight snack?

Right now, these gluten-free crackers that taste kind of like Saltines, with some olives, and mint tea.

 Any fun winter travel plans? Bundled up, bathing suited up, or staying put?

Going with my wife to visit her family in Argentina for the holidays.  Bathing suited up indeed!

 

Check out more things from Brendan on his website! http://www.brendanfaegre.com