john supko

by Maggie Molloy

If you’re looking for the latest in contemporary classical, it doesn’t get any more current than NOW Ensemble. The dynamic seven-member group is committed to pushing the boundaries of the classical chamber music tradition, often crossing into new genres and artistic media.

True to their name, NOW ensemble infuses traditional Western art music with contemporary music styles such as indie rock, jazz, pop, and minimalism—bringing classical music to new audiences in the here and now.

The foundation for their one-of-a-kind sound is their eclectic instrumentation: electric guitar, flute, clarinet, double bass, and piano. Currently in their 10^th year as a group, the ensemble is comprised of artistic director and guitarist Mark Dancigers, flutist Alexandra Sopp, clarinetist Sara Budde, double bassist Logan Coale, pianist Michael Mizrahi, and composers Patrick Burke and Judd Greenstein.

So NOW, what’s the latest?

The ensemble just released their fourth full-length album, an eclectic new music mash-up titled “Dreamfall.” The expansive new release features works by seven remarkable composers of contemporary music: Scott Smallwood, Mark Dancigers, John Supko, Nathan Williamson, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Andrea Mazzariello, and Judd Greenstein.

“It is a state of immense freedom,” Dancigers said of the album’s title. “The sounds on this record reflect this freedom, this sense of something a little out of our hands, and, beyond all else, the practice of making music that is NOW Ensemble.”

Scott Smallwood’s “Still in Here” is the first piece on the album, and it begins with low, grumbling piano trill—in fact, the graphic score denotes a “slow, drunken piano trill” throughout. The piece is atmospheric and dark, even apocalyptic at times. It swells in dynamics, periodically highlighting the unique texture of each instrument above a blur of musical vibrations. Listen for the soft crinkling of a foil stove burner liner amidst the ambiance. (According to Smallwood, “the handi-foil type 302 liner is a good candidate” if you’re looking to perform this one at home.)

The title track, written by Dancigers, showcases a more expressive side of the ensemble. The three-movement work explores an eclectic collection of melodic fragments, similar to a dreamland—one moment here and the next somewhere completely different. “Dreamfall” showcases the ensemble’s full range of timbral and textural possibilities, capturing the ever-shifting moods and melodies that we experience once we finally let go and start dreaming.

Speaking of dreams, John Supko’s “Divine the Rest” is nothing short of a mesmerizing daze. It immerses the listener in an ambient electroacoustic soundscape, with calm narration whispering over sparse instrumentation. Each and every note gently rings over the surrounding static to create a slowly shifting musical landscape.

The listener is abruptly awoken from this trancelike state with an audacious piano slide introducing the next piece on the album, Nathan Williamson’s vivacious “Trans-Atlantic Flight of Fancy.” Harmonies sprawl across the keyboard with rhythmic verve, restlessly pushing forward beneath bold and brash woodwind melodies.

The ensemble again switches gears for Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Pale as Centuries,” a musical collage which combines diverse, distinctive, and sometimes even mismatched melodic fragments into a single cohesive image.

Andrea Mazzariello’s “Trust Fall” has a somewhat more linear development, growing gradually in drama and expressivity, from its sparse and simple introduction to its climactic close. However, one thing remains a key focus throughout: lush, dolce melodies.

The album ends with Judd Greenstein’s “City Boy,” a colorful musical depiction of a free and fearless young boy, his eyes twinkling as he playfully explores the world around him. The piece moves rapidly from one melodic idea to the next, switching from a jazzy guitar groove to a circling piano motive to a flowing clarinet melody within a matter of minutes.

The piece serves as a reminder of the major themes present throughout NOW Ensemble’s musical ventures: experimentation, innovation, and above all, a genuine enthusiasm for pursing curiosity. NOW that’s what I call contemporary classical!

(NOW Ensemble’s November 2014 visit to our studios)

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.