Orography premiered on October 12 on the first Berkeley New Music Project concert of the semester, featuring special guest performers SoundGEAR (Toshiya Suzuki, Stefan Hussong, Satoshi Inagaki, and Kuniko Kato). We're very lucky at Cal in that our works are usually performed by some of the best new music interpreters in the Bay Area, but it's always exciting to get to work with a visiting group, and SoundGEAR was no exception. In addition to being gifted performers, they had prepared a great deal in advance, and so our brief time together was efficient and enormously satisfying. It was just a wonderful experience. The other graduate student composers and I are really indebted to the BNMP staff (Ken Ueno and David Milnes, the faculty advisors/directors; and Dave Coll and Amadeus Regucera, the student heads), the Music Department staff, and Keiko Harada (who is primarily a composer, and a wonderful one, but also acted as SoundGEAR's manager and primary contact throughout the planning process). David Milnes was also kind enough to step in and conduct my piece with relatively short notice.
Right now, I'm in the process of wrapping up a percussion quartet for the Iktus Percussion Quartet, part of a set of pieces being composed for a labyrinth installation taking place in the spring. The piece is based primarily on bowed tremolo effects used on tam-tams to produce high harmonics, and vibraphone used to emphasize and contrast with those harmonics. There's a strong noise component to these sounds despite the clarity of the pitch. I'm really excited about it.
There are other projects in the future, including Searchlight Songs, but after this I'll probably begin work on a larger piece, something that won't just be finished in a semester, maybe a work for orchestra or a set of pieces for choir. They're both projects that I've always meant to try, and I think now will be a good time.
You're also looking at my brand-new, re-designed website. The old design was starting to look like the Apple screensaver more and more to me, and it was kind of making me crazy. Right as I finished this redesign, I realized it looks just like a purse that I have. At least it's a purse that I like.
The primary new feature on this incarnation of the site is the blog. I've been finding more and more that I'm seeing interesting things I'd like to share, or reading things that I'd like to respond to, and lacking a venue to do it. So hopefully, this will be it. I'm not entirely sure what it'll be "about" yet. It may not be "about" anything. But it's there.
Leave a comment