Composer Highlight: Catherine Lamb

It has been such a pleasure and a new experience for us to work on Prisma Interius VIII by Catherine Lamb for our program, ‘Translucent Harmonies’. She has become an internet friend of andPlay’s, and what a joy that is! We cannot wait to share her beautiful work with you on Tuesday, October 23rd at 8pm at Scandinavia House! Get to know her a little bit in this mini-interview!

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aP: Tell us a little bit about your piece.

CL: It is the eighth in a series of nine pieces starting from 2016 under the same name, some of them containing modular orchestrations. The original version of VIII was a duo for violin and clarinet, with the addition of 4 highlighting instruments to “harmonically smear” as well as bridge the musical material to the outside; 2 acoustic instruments and 2 synthesizers filtering what is occurring in the surrounding environment. I think it is also interesting to simply listen to the duo as it is, but imagine how our perceptions in a listening environment might affect the duo’s timbre and vibrancy.

anP: How did you become interested in just intonation/non-tempered tuning?

CL: It was a very gradual process. First it was the growing interest in timbral overlays and spectrality, then the study of Hindusthani music in India, then meeting James Tenney who introduced me to Helmholtz.

aP: What is your relationship to string instruments? Has it changed throughout your compositional journey?

CL: I started to play the viola when I was around eight years old, so strings have been very close to my ears for a long time now. The viola taught me ratio tuning. It also helped me to listen inside an orchestra.

aP: What is a dream trip you would like to go on one day?

CL: Outer Space!

aP: Ideal snack food?

CL: Pani Puri

Check out more of Catherine’s work on her website!

Composer Highlight: Kristofer Svensson

We are so close to the premiere performance of ‘Translucent Harmonies’, and we couldn’t be more excited! Kristofer is in town and we have been workshopping with him over the weekend, which is a process that we really cherish. It has been a joy to work on this beautiful new piece, and get a chance to work with him a second time (we worked with him back in 2016)! If you are in NYC you can see a little pre-concert talk with him on October 23rd at Scandinavia House at 7:30pm in the concert hall. Now, get to know him a bit more before then in this mini-interview!

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aP: Tell us a little bit about your piece.

KS: The title in Swedish means  "by the stone wall, thought becomes flower". I wanted to create a similar kind of very simple delight that might appear when walking past a stone wall, seeing a flower, and at that moment leaving oneself and one's habitual passions behind to realize the non-separation between mind and flower. The last few years, I have been interested in musical listening experiences that are somehow related to how we might listen to sounds when not listening to music, such as when being in the forest, or being close to the water and listening to foghorns and waves through misty reeds.

aP: How did you become interested in just intonation?

KS: I arrived at Just Intonation (or 'defined intonation') from a few converging paths: I realized early on that equal temperament (or 'non-defined intonation') was the cultural and historical product of a set of particular aesthetic priorities that I did not share (I also thought it sounded rather poor); the movement and interaction of tones was one of the most important musical concerns of mine (much more so than, say, something like gestures); I was interested in meditation and intimate modes of listening; I was enjoying and studying various Asian traditional musics (most importantly the gǔqín). I guess I was also lucky that I met with Just Intonation (JI) early on in my compositional path, before I had developed a set of habits confined to the usage of non-defined intonation, and that I wasn't discouraged by the non-existence of other musicians working with JI in my surroundings, or with the mathematics involved. 

aP: What is your relationship to string instruments? Has it changed throughout your compositional journey?

KS: I try to, as many other composers, find a point where it becomes difficult to distinguish my own will from the will and intentions of the instruments themselves. For every piece I write and the more experience I get from the instruments, the more I move in this direction. I don't want to use the instruments for "my" purposes or to deliver my "Music" but rather the other way around: write music that delivers the instruments themselves. Ideally, this piece for andPlay is about the coming together of the violin-ness of the violin and viola-ness of the viola. Such an approach to instruments could, perhaps, be described as love. 

aP: What is a dream trip you would like to go on one day?

KS: It would be a blessing to one day be able to make a pilgrimage to the holy places of Tibet. I'd love to meet the mountain Gang Rinpoche (Kailash), approaching it from the Rakshastal lake. 

aP: Ideal snack food?

KS: I don't know about ideal, but I've just been spending six weeks on Java and have been snacking away on all the local chips called kripiks; I especially like the ones made from jackfruit (kripik nangka) because it's wonderful taste and because it's usually very dry so that I can eat it with my hands while working. 

aP: What is something that we must see/hear/taste in Sweden on our upcoming tour?

KS: I have been hearing all about Hannah's mania for zoos on previous andPlay trips, so I think a trip to the outdoors zoo Skansen in Stockholm to befriend some Scandi-animals (scandimals) would be fun. 

Check out more from Kristofer on his website (or take a look at some of dreamy pics on instagram @kristofer.svensson)!

Composer Highlight: Bethany Younge

We are so excited to finally bring Bethany Younge's new piece out into the world. It really challenged us technically with a tough vocalization + playing part, but all of the hard work has paid off and ing ing ing ing ing ing ing ing ing ing ing into has us feeling powerful! We cannot wait to share it on Saturday, April 21st at Areté Venue and Gallery at 7:30pm!

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What was your experience like writing for violin/viola duo? Was there anything unexpected about the writing process?

Strings are always harder for me to write for because I never learned how to play any stringed instruments and I'm very much a hands-on composer. With that in mind, I made a tape part from my vocalizations to serve as a guide for treating the strings as voices. All the actual string playing is very much secondary, serving mostly as an impulse or impetus behind all other sonic matter. 

What is your relationship to the voice in your compositions? How did you know you wanted to use speaking/singing in your piece for andPlay?

When instrumentalists use their own voices, I imagine their instruments are speaking through their bodies. The violin and viola instruments function as the mind behind the mechanics of the throat, tongue, teeth, lips to communicate. I also suspected that by having the string players speak, there'd be a strong connection to the non-spoken vocalizations in the electronic track. The disassembled words and vocalizations in both the tape part and the spoken text seem unnatural, processed, technological much in the same way that string instruments are a technology. Maybe I'm trying to break or challenge the barriers between technology and human voice. 

Is there anything you would like the audience to know before hearing the piece?

The many voices (strings, human voice, electronic voice) compete to be heard. Do you hear 3 voices, 2 voices, or 1 giant conglomerate voice, or no voices at all? 

What are some of your bucket-list travel destinations?

Chile, Ecuador, Japan

If you could only bring one snack for a ten hour flight what would it be?

bagel chips

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Check out more of Bethany's work on her website!

Composer Highlight: Leah Asher

Leah Asher is a long time bestie of andPlay, and we were so thrilled to finally be able to commission and collaborate with her this year on a new piece. We are all heart eyes over here!  Her piece, letters to my future self, is incredible, and we will be premiering it on April 21, 2018 at Areté Venue and Gallery on a show that we are splitting with the fabulous horn trio, Kylwyria. Come out out to hear some truly wonderful music!

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What was your experience like writing for violin/viola duo? Was there anything unexpected about the writing process?

Since I’m a string player myself, I’ve written a lot of music for strings and I feel very comfortable both writing in this sound world and having clear expectations of how the performers will interpret my graphic notation. This particular duo was very special to write both because I play violin and viola and because I’m close friends with the Maya and Hannah. Because of those relationships, I felt an extra freedom to try out something new. This experiment turned out well, I’m excited to say, and you’ll hear it specifically in the section where Hannah and Maya are reinterpreting words into sounds on their instruments with some spoken phonemes. 

What is your relationship to the voice in your compositions? How did you know you wanted to use speaking/singing in your piece for andPlay?

The use of speech and vocalization in instrumental parts is becoming more and more frequent in my work. With just a click, hum, whistle, or phonemes, adding vocalization to a piece can render abstract music immediately more relatable, because everyone or nearly everyone in the audience has experience with making or hearing those sounds themselves. The concept for ‘letters to my future self’ came pretty early on in the process. I knew that I wanted to ask a variety of people from different age groups to write letters to their future selves and that those letters would somehow be the foundation for the piece. I planned for at least parts of these letters to be presented in a way that the audience would concretely understand. So, there are sections in the piece where you will hear direct quotes, and other places where just fragments emerge. 

Is there anything you would like the audience to know before hearing the piece?

This is a piece about what people want for themselves and want to tell themselves. All of the sounds that aren’t text are written in graphic notation, which means that I have created a pictorial representation of the sounds that I would like to hear. 

What are some of your bucket-list travel destinations?

South Africa and Thailand are on the long-term bucket-list. More locally, Nashville! Maya and I are going to road trip this summer and it’s going to be rad!! 

If you could only bring one snack for a ten hour flight what would it be?

Endless chips and guacamole. In an ideal world, where this wouldn’t be totally impractical on a plane. 

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Check out more of Leah's music and projects on her website!