CONCERT PREVIEW: The Space Between Us: Q&A with David Jaffe

Posted on March 2, 2016 by maestrobeats

David Jaffe

What happens when a composer is also a programmer? He creates pieces that are at once surprising, mathematical and superhuman.

In almost all of his work, San Francisco composer David A. Jaffe marries music and math. He’s been experimenting with computer music since the late 1970s, years before most of us owned computers or understood what they were. In what has to be one of the greatest life hacks of all time, Jaffe and fellow composer Andrew Schloss used the sensing mechanism inside a three-dimensional mouse developed at Bell Labs to create a computerized instrument. They called it the radiodrum.

On Saturday, March 5 at Seattle’s Good Shepherd Center, audiences will be able to hear strategically-placed instruments created by Seattle artist Trimpin and controlled by the radiodrum in “The Space Between Us,” a landmark work Jaffe premiered in 2011 that also features eight (human) string players. Also on the program is Jaffe’s “Impossible Animals,” where violin riffs come together with computerized birdsong, Jaffe’s bluegrass-inspired “Cluck Old Hen Variations,” English composer Rebecca Clark’s “Poem,” and Shostakovich’s magnificent String Quartet No. 9. Joining Jaffe and Schloss onstage are the members of the Victoria, B.C.-based Lafayette String Quartet.

In advance of the concert, we chatted with Jaffe to find out how he worked with Schloss and Trimpin to create “The Space Between Us,” how he sits down (or doesn’t) to compose, and how he’s beaten the odds to keep on making music.

Jill Kimball: How was “The Space Between Us” born?

David Jaffe: Several different threads came together to make this piece. The first thread was the radiodrum. For years i’ve been collaborating with Andrew Schloss, who saw the musical potential of that 3-D mouse. If you have a pair of snare sticks, say, you can add wires and make them radio transmitters, each with their own frequency, so the device can know the difference between the two sticks. The drum is a radio receiver, and when you hit the drum with the stick or even just move it above the surface, the sound that comes out is completely up to the composer…it reads anything you code and interprets your gestures however you want it to.

Another thread was my interest in the work of Trimpin. I love his aesthetic, his nuts-and-bolts funky and sophisticated art. I wanted to work with him on a radiodrum piece for the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. It was all coming together.

And then, in 2008, my mentor [and Pulitzer Prize-winning spatial composer] Henry Brant passed away. He was one of the first American composers to use space as an essential aspect of his composition—it’s just as important as pitch and rhythm and timbre. He left me a bunch of vintage percussion instruments from all over the world in his will. I went down to his home in Santa Barbara to pick up and ship these instruments. Then as I was at UPS, I had an idea. I called Trimpin and said, “Can I just ship these directly to you?”

I started working with Trimpin on transforming these vintage percussion instruments into a set of robotic orchestral chimes, a robotic xylophone sawed in half and a robotic glockenspiel. I had previously worked with Andrew Schloss on transforming a Yamaha piano and I included that as well. And I also decided to bring in two string quartets.

JK: Why is the piece called “The Space Between Us”?

DJ: Partially because it’s written in homage to Henry Brant, who was so interested in spatial writing. “The Space Between Us” refers to my relationship with Henry and kind of conveys the idea that he’s gone but somehow still present.

There’s also the element of physical space between instruments. I’ve scattered the instruments all around the hall, which means I couldn’t write music where all the instruments play together—the speed of sound is too slow. The piece has a lot to do with making connections across space. The instruments begin together, wander off and converge again. Because of the location of the instruments, everybody in the audience hears their own piece.

I also thought a lot about the concept of six degrees of separation. Whether it’s true or not, I was interested in the ways people bridge distances between each other and connect.

David Jaffe with Trimpin.

JK: In this piece, you connect the ideas of two very different composers, Henry Brant and Trimpin. How did you find similarities between them?

DJ: Henry and Trimpin were interested in collaborating, but they never got to do so before Henry died. To me, the collaboration would have made a lot of sense. Brant was not at all a straight-laced academic. He broke a lot of rules, but he was also extremely practical. He worked in Hollywood, and back then he could get whatever instruments he wanted–Four contra-bassoons? No problem!–so he was able to experiment with different combinations of instruments. Trimpin is like that, too. He’s his own artist. And like Brant, he has an attraction to old junk. They both inhabit the same funky, artistic, creative, non-academic, imaginative world. I’d like to believe that i also inhabit that world. In reviews about me, people have said things like, “I don’t know what to make of him, but he’s definitely original.”

JK: It sounds like originality is really important to you.

DJ: It’s sort of the only way, as I see it. It’s hard enough to be a composer. The financial rewards are limited…the only reason to do it is because you absolutely believe in what you’re doing. I want to reach people in my music, but I want to make it accessible without compromising…without making it elevator music. I want to be really clear about what I’m expressing, whether it has to do with birdwatching, kung fu, or the craziness of having two kids under 3.

JK: Do you have a composition process? What does it look like?

I have a very definite process, and I can credit Henry Brant for that. When I started composing, I tended to start at the beginning of the piece, with the “once upon a time.” But Brant taught me to think of it like being on an airplane. You start at 39,000 feet, where you look down and see the general layout of the world, and as the plane starts to descend, you see a few more details. Then, finally, when you get to the ground you see each blade of grass.

I usually start by allocating some amount of time for free association, like a week or so. I write everything i have on index cards or a little notebook. It could be inspired by politics, history, looking at books at a bookstore or being in nature. There could also be musical ideas in there, some little riff or motive or orchestration idea or texture. Then—this is the hardest part—I lay all these ideas in front of me and find connections. I throw away things that don’t work. Eventually i start to get the view from 39,000 feet. I can lay out the piece on a single piece of paper. Then I’ll do another version that’s a little more detailed and takes three or four pieces of paper. I look at the part that seems most well defined in my mind and I write the other parts based on that. It’s sort of like Sudoku.

I don’t know how I’d compose without a structure and schedule like this. I’m usually working on a deadline, and at the same time I have a job doing music software at Universal Audio, so I only have a finite amount of free time.

JK: What’s your biggest musical accomplishment to date?

DJ: That’s like asking me to choose a favorite child, but I do tend to think about my bigger projects when I think about accomplishments. I did a 70-minute concerto for Schloss and his radiodrum, accompanied by an orchestra of plucked strings, where each of the seven movements was about a different wonder of the ancient world. “The Space Between Us,” frankly, is something I’m really proud of.

I think my biggest achievement is that I’m still composing after all these years and following my own musical path. Once I was sitting in a classroom of composers, and Karel Husa told us, “In 20 years, only a fraction of you will still be composing.” I’m happy I’m one of them. Sometimes I think of composing as a curse, because it’s so much work. But if I wasn’t composing, I’d have a huge emptiness in my life. It’s the most rewarding thing I do.

The Space Between Us, for 8 strings, and robotic percussion instruments was supported by New Music USA. To follow the project as it unfolds, visit the project page.

ALBUM REVIEW: Madeleine Cocolas’ Cascadia

Posted on January 4, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

Creating and recording a new musical composition in just one week is no easy feat. But that’s precisely what Seattle-based composer and sound artist Madeleine Cocolas did—every week for an entire year.

Week+29+photo The “Fifty-Two Weeks” project began when the Australian musician first moved to Seattle with her husband a few years ago. After settling into her new home, Cocolas challenged herself to write a new piece of music every week for 52 weeks and post it to her SoundCloud.

The result was a series of 52 pieces wrapped up into a year-long blog chronicling her artwork, her travels, her successes, her struggles, and above all, her music. To call it ambitious would be an understatement—the project is downright massive in scope. It’s got minimalist piano musings, dreamy and ethereal vocal soundscapes, melodicas and found sounds, glitches and glitter. It’s got recorded kitchen clatter, toy accordions, and tape cassettes. It’s got vintage radio clips, Capitol Hill street art, a dash of Christmas whimsy and yes, even a healthy dose of cat photos.

But perhaps what’s most inspiring about Cocolas’s project is the authenticity behind each composition. There are good weeks, bad weeks, silly weeks, serious weeks, and even a few delirious weeks. There are some missed deadlines, a couple of do-overs, and the occasional rut—but that’s what makes the project honest and relatable. Her willingness to experiment, to push herself creatively, and to get outside her comfort zone are what makes the series so candid, authentic, and genuine. Each piece is a part of the journey—warts and all.

Last year Cocolas took over the Second Inversion airwaves to share a bit more about her 52-week process and some of her favorite pieces—and this year, she’s revisited the project with her new debut album titled “Cascadia.”

“A big part of ‘Fifty-Two Weeks’ was to explore and better define my compositional style,” Cocolas said. “And to me, ‘Cascadia’ best represents my ‘Fifty-Two Weeks’ project and current compositional style.”

The album is a refinement of material produced for her “Fifty-Two Weeks” project, along with a couple of brand new tracks. The result is a beautifully amorphous blend of ambient, experimental, electronic, and contemporary classical sound worlds with plenty of Pacific Northwest whimsy.

“Living in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest for the past three and a half years has influenced my music immeasurably,” Cocolas said, “And I feel like the music on ‘Cascadia’ and my ‘Fifty-Two Weeks’ project is a direct response and reaction to my surroundings here.”

The album begins with an oceanic dream: “The Sea Beneath Me.” Composed after the completion of her “Fifty-Two Weeks” project, this piece was the result of a collaboration with Australian textile artist Monique Van Nieuwland on her exhibition “Ocean Forest.” Van Nieuwland recorded herself weaving, and Cocolas reworked the recordings into an entire oceanscape of sounds which went on to become the basis for “The Sea Beneath Me.” Ethereal vocals float along the waves to create a shimmering seascape, immersing the listener in its vast expanse and its softly pulsing echoes. Nostalgic and melancholy, each wave is a work of art.

“Moments of Distraction” takes the listener out of the ocean and into the clouds with its whimsical and weightless piano melodies circling above a minimalist electronic backdrop. “I Can See You Whisper” layers twinkling piano melodies atop ambient textures and subtle strings, while “Sometimes I Can’t Hear You” crafts its own minimalist sound world out of layered piano motives and textured echoes.

A warm and ethereal new realm comes to life in “When I Knew I Loved You,” with airy vocals floating above ambient piano and toy accordion—it’s like the aural equivalent of having butterflies in your stomach.

Accordian
Cocolas takes her electronic exploration to new sonic spaces in “Echoes,” an ethereal sound sculpture of vibration and reverb. Then her dreamy, washed-out vocals float through “If Wisdom Fails,” a lullaby brimming with tenderness and warmth.

“Static” shifts through dissonant piano melodies atop a textured drone, and the album comes to a close with a sweet and sincere solo piano piece: “If You Hear Me, I Hear You Back.” Cocolas’s tender piano melodies drift gracefully through the surrounding silence, accompanied by nothing but the vintage sounds of a tape recorder.

Simple yet powerfully poignant, it serves as a reminder of the humble beginnings from which this panoramic album was born. After all, with just “Fifty-Two Weeks” and a little imagination, Cocolas was able to create a musical map of Cascadia in all it’s sparkling and mystical splendor.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Bill Seaman and John Supko’s “s_traits”

Posted on December 22, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

In a world where you are constantly being bombarded by new styles of computer music, it can be tricky to get your bearings. Electro, electronica, electroacoustic—the list goes on and on. At times the possibilities are so overwhelming that you just wish you had a computer program to sift through all the countless sounds and styles and bring you something truly innovative.

John Supko created a music program to do just that. Supko’s bearings_traits is a generative music engine which is capable of creating new music from an enormous database of audio source material. Supko designed the program in order to sift through over 110 hours of music and sounds which he and media artist Bill Seaman compiled over the past three years.

The duo’s database included field recordings, analog and digital noise, acoustic and electronic instruments, old cassettes from Supko’s juvenilia, recordings of Seaman and Supko playing the piano (both inside and out), and documentary soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. Supko’s newly developed software then selected audio samples of varying lengths from the database and combined them in different ways to create new aleatoric, multitrack compositions.

Seaman and Supko took 26 of these computer-generated “first drafts” and transformed them into an ambient, otherworldly album titled “s_traits.” One artist shaped all of the odd-numbered tracks and the other shaped all of the even-numbered tracks—but they’ll never tell who worked on which.

“On its own, bearings_traits came up with things that were totally charming and strange and wonderful, but sometimes a bit too mechanical or impassive,” Supko said. “Our approach was to keep the computer’s crazy inventiveness but to refine it in ways only a human (at least for the moment) can. So, for instance, if I heard something that had some emotional attraction for me, I would enhance the effect. If I heard a ghostly melody, I’d try to support it in the texture. If there was potential for a dramatic moment of attack or climax, I’d try to bring it out.”

Another more human element they added to the album was a text written by Seaman. The full text appears on the CD cover, and each track opens with Seaman reciting a few words from it. These text fragments were assigned randomly by bearings_traits, and function as both an introduction and a title for each of the pieces.

The fragmented texts perfectly echo the album’s ethereal and experimental tone, at times even helping to shape the listener’s perception of the distinctive musical textures. Despite the vast range of acoustic and electronic audio clips incorporated into this musical project, overall the album is very cohesive in its wistful and contemplative soundscapes.

“The computer did things we would probably never do, because it was able to search vast amounts of music very quickly, and put together many fragments in ways that would have taken us many months to try out ourselves,” Supko said. “The results are both unpredictable—since it’s impossible to know which fragments from the 110 hours of material the computer will select and spin into melodies, rhythms, and harmonic accompaniments—and yet oddly coherent.”

The result is a collection of whimsical sound waves and ethereal static which washes over the listener and immerses them in the depths of mesmerizing new acoustic and electronic timbres.

Still, the exploratory nature of the ambient melodies and ghostly static give these pieces a distinctly human quality. The skeletons of these works may have been crafted by a computer, but the melodic and harmonic polishes that bring these pieces to life could only have been created by humans.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Portraits of Contemporary Polish Composers: EWA TRĘBACZ

Posted on July 7, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Stapleton

Outdoor locations in Washington (and all over the Pacific Coast, for some, like Nat Evans) have proven to be inspiring recording venues for new music. Ancient Lakes and the Dan Harpole Cistern are two such locations that inspired Seattle-based Ewa Trebacz (originally from Kraków, Poland).

Second Inversion’s Album of the Week is a collection of some of Ewa’s finished products which include field recordings from these locations. What makes this album so fascinating is that while much of it was recorded and produced in Poland, there’s a very special part of Washington state incorporated into some of these pieces (things lost things invisible, Errai and ANC’L’SUNR).

Furthermore, this album is part of a special annual project from The Polish Music Information Centre and Polish Composers’ Union to preserve new works and performances by living composers. Each year they publish 10 CDs, featuring a different composer In 2013, Ewa Trebacz one of the chosen composers.

Second Inversion was thrilled to talk to Ewa and Josiah Boothby (French horn collaborator on much of this disc) about each work:

The two have a longstanding friendship, which surely made the collaboration fun, but Ewa says, “Horn is AWESOME for processing or editing. You can almost make any instrument out of the horn sound… you can process it so many ways, create so many timbres, you will never be able to tell it came from the horn.”

On the method of composition, recording, and production, Ewa told us, “our method of work is somewhat like film production. We basically travel from one place to another and then later I create some basic shape of the piece that’s kind like a labyrinth of spaces. Later, in the concert performance the electronic part is reproduced by a surround speaker system at the same time the live performers bring the element of ‘here and now.’ Josiah ends up playing with himself from the past and at the same time creating the very direct
interaction of where the performance takes place.”

The Dan Harpole Cistern at Ford Worden is a large underground space with a 45-second reverberation time. Ewa recorded several musicians in this space to be used later in live performance. What’s it like to play an instrument in the Cistern? Josiah says, “It’s other worldly down there!… so often when we’re performing this difficult music by living composers, it’s hard. As a performer for me in that piece (things lost things invisible), I got to go into a resonant space, make big noises, and I got told, you know, do something a little less this way or a little more this way.. it was a lot of fun!”

Errai was another piece with samples (Josiah on horn and Anna Niedzwiedz, voice) recorded in the Cistern. Josiah goes on to say, “in a space that’s resonant enough to still sound while I’m playing another note, all of a sudden I can play chords with myself. Anna and I were not only playing with each other, we were playing with ourselves and there were several of us, simultaneously, and this is before Ewa starts doing anything with the electronics.”

Recordings from ANC’L’SUNR came from multiple locations, including the Cistern and also another Washington location, Ancient Lakes. What’s with the title? Ewa explains, “Funny thing, everyone keeps asking me what the language is, or what it means… but really, it’s an abbreviation for places where I made recordings. So, the word itself doesn’t really mean anything, but I think it’s inspiring.” This piece was produced with ATK, a software package developed by Juan Pampin, Joshua Parmenter, and Joseph Anderson at the UW DXARTS which preserves as much spatial relation in sounds as possible.

Ewa holds Masters Degrees in Composition, Computer Science and Econometrics and a PhD from the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) , where she currently works as a Research Scientist.

TOM BAKER ON THE SEATTLE MUSIC SCENE

Posted on April 23, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Stapleton

Seattle composer Tom Baker (not to be confused with any other reputable Tom Bakers out there) is a crucial contributor to the new music scene in Seattle. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, the co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), an instructor of Composition and Electronic Music at Cornish College of the Arts, and a performer alongside with many bands and ensembles, including the Tom Baker Quartet, Triptet, and Jesse Canterbury’s Vertigo.

He is also the founder of Present Sounds, a record label which celebrates new music by primarily Seattle-based composers and performers. You’ll certainly hear some of these tracks on our stream!

Tom stopped by the KING FM/Second Inversion studios recently to talk about some of his favorite tracks from a couple of these discs.

Stay tuned for more music and insights on our SoundCloud page from Tom! You can catch him live on May 2 at the Seattle Composers’ Salon, along with Seattle Composers William O. Smith, John Teske, and Keith Eisenbrey at 8pm at the Good Shepherd Center Chapel!