Mambo à la Braque (1990)
3’07” Stereo
Like words made out of cutting letters from a newspaper, I have used Mambo a la Braque (Braque-like Mambo) short musical segments which come from the well known mambo Caballo Negro by composer Damaso Perez Prado to whom this short piece pays homage. I have reassembled them into a sound mosaic and used a few other sounds to glue them together. My aim was to create a sort of cubist music, or put in other words, a mambo of my own invention made out of mambo cuttings.
Javier Álvarez Fuentes (1956-2023) was a musical composer, artistic creator, art promoter, professor and academic. He was born in Mexico City on May 8, 1956, into a Yucatecan family of architects. He learned the clarinet and began composing at an early age, playing jazz and traditional music during his adolescence. The artistic, literary and musical effervescence of Mexico and his studies at the National Conservatory with his mentors Mario Lavista and Daniel Catán helped him quickly achieve recognition as an emerging composer in the early 1970s. Subsequently, he obtained various academic degrees abroad at the University of Wisconsin, at the Royal College of Music studying with John Lambert, and at City University under the tutelage of Simon Emmerson. During his career, he had a sustained and relevant teaching, academic and management activity that permeated the educational and cultural communities of the different places where he resided, particularly in the United Kingdom and in Mexico upon his return in 2005. His extensive catalog of works includes concert, film and electroacoustic music. He received distinctions of great importance, among them the National Prize of Sciences and Arts, the Bellas Artes Medal, the Mozart Medal, the Mendelssohn Scholarship and the Prix Ars Electronica. He was a member of the Academy of Arts of Mexico, founding director of the Bachelor of Musical Arts of the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán (ESAY), dean of the Conservatorio de las Rosas, artistic advisor of the Morelia Music Festival, general director of the ESAY, and the first dean of Universidad de las Artes de Yucatán. He passed away in Mérida, Yucatán on May 23, 2023.
Sheep Drive (2021)
2’42” Ambisonic
This Ambisonic recording captures the sounds of a sheep drive that took place in Martinsdale, Montana in 2016. Approximately 3000 sheep passed through a gate to waiting pastureland near the Bair Reservoir. Recording excerpts were mixed in 2021 at the University of Washington DXARTS studio using elements of the Ambisonic Toolkit. Support for the recording was provided by the Acoustic Atlas at the Montana State University Library.
Jeff Rice is a Seattle-based sound artist with a long-standing interest in natural systems. His audio works have featured the wingbeats of moths, the collisions of cosmic rays, natural radio frequencies, and the roots of trees, all of which explore the importance of cause-and-effect and the fundamental connection between sound sources and their sounds. He is the co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University where he curates a collection of thousands of natural sound recordings from around the Western United States.
Okno (2020)
10’00” Stereo
Okno is an electroacoustic stereo piece inspired by the story "Okno, el esclavo" by the Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo. In the tale, the idea of the real and the fictitious is always present, at the uncertain border between dream and reality. It also describes the invention of the imagination... The story considers both identity and art as vectors of expression. Through this musical piece, the idea of the imaginary is expressed by sounds that may have a connotation already determined in themselves - an imaginary sound is then constructed outside its original context. Moreover, in the work, there are recordings of machine devices (tape recorders) questioning the relationship between human beings and automation. It is about this limit, where the tool ceases to have an entity of its own to become an element integrated in us? The fact that I manipulated the machine, doesn't that make it a human behavior?
[...] El ruido cambió de ritmo [...] que puedo imaginar. No hay nada que imaginar. Todo está ahí, ante los ojos y el oído que escucha [...] Yo, en la semioscuridad del cuarto, adivino las formas que me rodean [...]
The work was commissioned by Radio France for the radio broadcast "Création Mondiale" and was realized at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris, France. The premiere of the piece was on February 14, 2020 at the Festival Présences at the Maison de la Radio (Paris).
Rocío Cano Valiño, born in Argentina, is a composer and interior designer based in Lyon, France. Her musical production is dedicated to instrumental, mixed and electroacoustic pieces. She is a member of the artistic committee of the Ensemble Orbis, which is based in Lyon and she co-founded. Rocío is pursuing her Masters in Contemporary Composition at the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon (CNSMD, France), where she studies with François Roux. She also takes lessons with Martín Matalon and Luca Antignani. She did an international mobility at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz (Austria) with Franck Bedrossian. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in composition (CNSMDL) and a Diploma of Musical Studies (DEM) in electroacoustic composition with Stéphane Borrel at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Lyon. She has received various commissions: Aide à l’écriture du Ministère de la Culture (FR); France Musique “Création Mondiale”, residency at the Groupe de recherches musicales (Ina-GRM) and premiered at the Festival Présences 2020 at the Maison de la Radio (FR); Fondo Nacional de las Artes (AR); Studio Césaré CNCM (FR); Ibermúsicas (AR-Latin America); Bahía(in)sonora Festival (AR); SACEM (FR); OARA (FR)...Her works have received distinctions from: Destellos Foundation (AR), Banc d’Essai GRM (FR), Musicworks — First prize & Marcelle Deschênes Prize In Electronic Music (CA),, CIME (GR), TRINAC UNESCO (AR), Klang! (FR), Exhibitronic (FR), Rampazzi Prize (IT), Métamorphoses (BE), TRIMARG (AR), Prix Russolo (FR), among others. Rocío’s compositions have been selected and performed in various festivals around the world such as Festival Akousma, Festival Mixtur, CEMI Circles, Klingt gut!, MA/IN Festival, FILE, Phas.e, Festival Zéppelin…
Sublime, Subliminal (2023)
6’30” Octophonic
What is the sound of a tear in the universe? How does the sound start? Has it started? Voices from the swirling murk of our subconscious, from each species, from each aeon, at each evolutionary step are with you, are you, as you plumb the depths, and if you listen, you can hear what they are trying to tell you about infinity.
Kristin Miltner is a composer, sound designer and creative coder based in the Bay Area, CA. She creates music with her custom software, which she has designed to scan sound files and live input, allowing her to instantly restructure a single sound into tessellating fabrics of sounds. She applies this method to a wide variety of sonic endeavors, including immersive sound design, game sound design, performance, and her solo work.
Disturbed Waltz (2023)
6’22” Stereo
In Disturbed Waltz I use three waltz themes, as well as voice fragments of public figures. The short voice fragments of the men and women carry the essence of their unique personalities without carrying a clear meaning. With their different pitches and emotions, they interweave with each other and with the music to form a complex web, a mixture of reality and abstraction. The aim was to create a subtle tension in the composition and to lead the listener into a world of ambivalence and controversial feelings, a sonic journey marked by a mixture of familiarity and strangeness.
Bernadette Johnson lives in Basel (Switzerland). She is the author of sound pieces for the radio and other listening spaces. She has received several awards, including from Phonurgia Nova, the Soundscape Forum and the Karl Sczuka Förderpreis. Her sound work focus on auditory perception, as well as the auratic power of sounds.
Ukulele (2023)
6’22” Octophonic
Ukulele was composed using sounds from my daughter's ukulele and is guided by its familiar string tuning (G-C-E-A), a number of basic chords and extended soundworlds developed through transformations in 8 channels.
David Berezan has been composing acousmatic music for more than 25 years. He is director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios and MANTIS (Manchester Theatre in Sound) at the University of Manchester (UK). His work is published by empreintes DIGITALes (Montreal, Canada).
Intermission
Étude pathétique ou Étude aux Casseroles (1948/1971)
3’32” Monophonic
First performances:
Original version: French National Radio, Paris Channel; October 5, 1948
Revised version: Halles Baltard, Paris; February 16, 1971
As we might suspect from its alternate title, Étude aux Casseroles [Pathétique or Study on Pots and Pans] is the “kitchen ware” study. In this day, the work is often used as a model for students studying musique concrète—e.g., imagine the kitchen is actually a percussion store; what music is waiting to be realized?
We also hear “looped” fragments of voices; these have been described as cutting room floor fragments, left overs from other French National Radio production projects. One voice has been identified as that of actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry (1885–1957).
Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) is known primarily as the “father of musique concrète,” but he was also an writer, pioneer and veteran of radio, and founder and director of many special projects within the French national radio, in particular Le Service de la Recherche (The Research Service) which he directed from 1960 to 1975. He was a thinker and researcher whose ideas had applications in audiovisual communication and, most directly, in music. Although his compositional output was limited, some of the first musique concrète studies in 1948 are still as fresh and challenging as when they were produced. The 1948 premiere radio broadcast of Pierre Schaeffer's Études de Bruits (Noise Studies) serves now as it did then, as the best introduction to this entirely new musical form.
Pierre Schaeffer's theoretical work, the foundation of which he developed while working at Radiodiffusion Française, was published in 1966; his Traité des Objets Musicaux. It remains the seminal treatise of musique concrète. His goal and research was to define a “solfege” of the sound universe based on the perception of sound and to question many previous notions about music, listening, perception, timbre, sound, etc. In 1958, within the structure of the French national radio, he formed the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), which continues today. GRM was at first mobilized to conduct group research into its founder's ideas.
Tickle That Dinosaur! (2023)
13’23” Ambisonic
The effects of tickling a dinosaur are, well, exciting and downright scary. We are going to do that anyway.
This piece is part of the Dinosaur Songbook, an ongoing project of short and long-form real-time performances using analog and hybrid modular synthesizers (and exotic instruments like pianos or music boxes). The modular synth "El Dinosaurio", which I finished building in 1981 from scratch, is still roaring, but lately I have added to the herd two eurorack format custom synths that began to grow at the start of the pandemic (The "Applesauce Modular" and "Carlitos").
This performance, frozen in sound files, was created using the two new modular synths (plus the almost invisible Kastle), in one take, in real time, with no previously recorded tracks. Lots of big and microscopic fader and knob movements, button presses and more, with many synthesis techniques mixed together, tons of rehearsals and planning, and a lot of luck. Five stereo streams were mixed and spatialized in real time by custom software. Mezosoic mayhem.
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano was given a choice of instruments when he was a kid and liked the piano best. His dad was an engineer and philosopher, his mother loved biology, music and the arts. His background includes both music and engineering, and he thrives on a balanced diet of art and technology. He throws computers, software algorithms, engineering and sound into a blender and serves the result over many speakers. He can hack Linux for a living and likes to pretend he can still play the piano. For the past few years he has returned to his roots, and has been working on developing a performance practice that uses modular synthesizers for real-time performances and concerts.
So We Won’t Forget (Venice Lido Sunset Mix feat. Alex Ness) (2022)
4’00” Stereo
Messing around on the piano with the harmony (roughly) to Khruangbin’s So We Won’t Forget, I hit record on my phone, unaware that I had connected to a bluetooth microphone in another room. What resulted was an unintended filtering of the sound, and launched me on a musical exploration replete with extreme audio stretching (thanks to Alex Ness), and a field recording from Freesound of Venice’s Lido Beach. This track was released on Water Music, available through the San Francisco Public Library’s Bay Beats streaming service, and/or any commercial streaming service you enjoy.
Emil Margolis is a composer with interests in composing both electronic and acoustic music. He grew up with the privilege of attending the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire, every summer for 12 years as either a student, staff or faculty member. He currently works as a counselor in higher education in the Bay Area.
Cupboard Love (2022)
7’00” Stereo
Cupboard Love explores the memories found in cupboards, draws and cabinets. Scraps of paper, photographs and mementos come to life through sonic snapshots of earlier times. Opening and closing cupboards offers an inviting gesture to enter new sonic worlds; a cliche of the acousmatic genre, but reimagined here as an everyday action that frames the appearance of sound memories. This open/close action reveals environments, places and spaces, showing brief sonic glimpses of my past years. A key influence guiding the work’s construction was the concept of the interruption. Exploring interruptions in all its forms and how these impact upon continuity was an important step for developing the work’s structure.
Manuella Blackburn is a composer of acousmatic music. Manuella’s practice focuses on microscopic sonic detail and how these miniature materials can be organised within works of sound art. This process has led to new creations based on inherently small materials (clock’s ticking, ice cubes cracking, light switches turning on/off and electrical appliance bleeps). Manuella’s interests also extend to the world of sampling and intercultural exchanges that translate into music making.
OMNII POLYHEDRAL PARTICULATES (2023)
11’53” Quadraphonic
OMNII POLYHEDRAL PARTICULATES is a restructured 4-channel ambient inversion of sections from my latest solo effort, OMNII (deathbomb arc, August 2023). Shifting vermillion sands sweep across eons of spacetime, drifting into sonic-technicolor interference patterns, reshuffling/ruffling the ecstatic-miasmic voices of planets, planetoids, and planeteers. The fluffing of a far-flung interstellar feather.
Blevin Blectum develops sonic sci-fi fantasy in its most decadent technicolor forms, fueling the journey of OMNII (Deathbomb Arc records), her latest solo adventure. The soundtrack to a lost space opera that falls perfectly within the gaps between Barbarella, The Beast in Space, and Planet of the Vampires. Blevin (aka Bevin Kelley) is half of the classic early-noughties-era Bay Area duo Blectum From Blechdom (with Krisitn Erickson-Galvin), who recently returned from deep space hibernation with their album 'Deep Bone', also released on Deathbomb Arc. She holds a masters degree from the dearly departed Mills College CCM, and a PhD from the also recently deceased Computer Music and Multimedia program at Brown University. Currently she underwrites her compositional life by working as a Senior Sound Designer on Amazon’s customer robotics team. She recently relocated from Seattle, with two birds and a cat, to the wilds of the Mendocino Coast. She is delighted to join tonight’s program.
sfSound/SFTMF is an affiliate of and is fiscally sponsored by Intermusic SF, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the service of chamber music in California
Equipment kindly provided by The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and sfSound.
“Celebrating twenty years of service to the arts and culture communities of the Bay Area and the world."
Support kindly provided by The Prelinger Library & Archives
THE SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC COLLECTIVE IS:
Joseph Anderson, Thom Blum, Cliff Caruthers, Matt Ingalls, Kent Jolly, Douglas McCausland, Kristin Miltner, and Maggi Payne.
For more information on the San Francisco Tape Music Festival and other sfSound related events go to www.sfsound.org
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