Offering “a tone so pure it is almost a sine-wave” (The Wire), ADAM LION is a percussionist/vibraphonist investigating enabling constraint, acoustics, repetition, surprise and coincidence. His experimental performances blur acoustic space, creating opportunities for new sonic frameworks to naturally emerge. Within this process new realities grow, encouraging listeners to investigate the hidden potential of reimagined sound. Based in Los Angeles, his work has been featured in The New York Times, Pitchfork Media, Artforum Magazine, and Bandcamp Daily.

His new vibraphone album When a Line Bends is a repetitious study on the possibilities of acoustic phenomena. Sound floods the room with music one would only expect from amplification or supplementary electronics. Bars are bowed for sustained durations producing an effect similar to a sine tone, and textural adjustments occur spontaneously. Slowly evolving ostinatos result in pulsating, dissonant overtones whose frequency beatings bring about scintillating clouds of polyrhythms. As bars are bowed, struck, scraped, and touched, Adam explores the vibraphone hoping to surprise himself.

SFSOUNDGROUP performs two iconic sound works for ensemble and tape:

ALVIN LUCIER'S Two Circles (2012)

ROBERT ERICKSON'S Pacific Sirens (1969)

PERFORMERS
Sam Weiser, violin
Monica Scott, cello

Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Hadley McCarroll, piano
Brendan Lai-Tong, trombone
John Ingle, saxophone
Matt Ingalls, clarinet
Diane Grubbe, flute

Jordan Glenn, percussion
Tom Djll, trumpet

Kyle Bruckmann, oboe

Pacific Sirens (1969) was commissioned by the Contemporary Group of the University of Washington. Ever since childhood I have wondered about the song of the sirens who sang to Ulysses and his men. I became more intrigued when I read an account of a certain cliff in southern Italy where passing sailors often hear quasi-musical moans and sighs. I decided to do something with the "whispered" and "half-voiced" sounds which some musical instruments are able to produce.

I set out to make a piece which used "singing" waves together with conventional instruments. The tape portion of the music was produced from a tape recording of the waves at Pescadero Beach, about fifty miles south of San Francisco. These natural sounds were electronically filtered to make sixteen different pitch bands, which were retuned, equalised and remixed to produce the performance tape.

The players play into the wave sounds, sometimes matching and sometimes counterpointing the sounds on the tape, to produce a continuous, seamless siren song. 

-ROBERT ERICKSON

Since 1980 I have made a series of works for soloists and ensembles in which players sustain tones against slowly sweeping pure waves. Because pure waves have no color, when they are closely tuned to rich instrumental sounds, vivid audible beats––bumps of sound as the waves coincide—are produced. The closer the tuning, the slower the beating; the farther apart, the faster. At unison no beating occurs. Tuning creates rhythm.

When I was asked to make a work for the Venice Biennale I immediately thought of using the image of the two overlapping circles (a symbol of harmoniousness) that Carlo Scarpa designed for the Brion Cemetery in San Vito d'Altivole. I roughly measured the proportions of the overlap and asked composer Ron Kuivila to design a circle with pure waves spanning 18 semitones ascending and descending from a center tone. The duration of the circle is 10:30 seconds. Its exact copy overlaps the first at 7: 30 seconds. The total length of the work is 18 minutes.

Because the pure waves are in constant motion the speed of the beating slows down and speeds up depending on where an instrumental tone crosses them. If a tone starts in unison with the pure wave the beating begins at zero and speeds up as the wave moves away from it. If it starts before the wave arrives in unison with it the beating starts fast and slows down to zero as unison is reached. If a tone straddles a unison the beats slow down to zero and speed up again. These three patterns provide the essential rhythmic gestures of the work.

In the summer of 1960 I arrived in Venice for the first time. I had received a Fulbright Scholarship to Rome and had elected to come to Italy early to attend a summer course in composition with Giorgio Federico Ghedini at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory. During that summer I heard a performance of Luigi Nono’s Canto Sospeso, a recent string quartet of Elliott Carter, and the infamous concert by John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown at La Fenice. Since that summer one of my life’s dreams has been of someday returning to Venice to perform my works. After 52 years that dream has come true. I am honored to appear on the 2012 Venice Biennale and to have the opportunity to present Two Circles, performed by the distinguished AlterEgo ensemble, based on an image by a great Venetian architect.

- ALVIN LUCIER