CCCP Wet Ink Ensemble Residency

This Spring (2021), eight Cornell graduate composers are working with members of Wet Ink Ensemble, composing, rehearsing, and recording new pieces, each with a unique approach to the remote collaboration.

Wet Ink members Erin Lesser, Alex Mincek, Josh Modney, and Mariel Roberts will visit Composers’ Forum Friday, April 30 at 9AM Eastern Time (US) for an open discussion about their ensemble and the Cornell residency. The event is open to the public (register here).

The pieces will be live-streamed on May 15 at 8PM Eastern Time (US) here.

To supplement the Composers’ Forum visit, some materials for each piece are listed below:

  • Joshua Biggs: sound letters for wet ink
  • Laura Cetilia: fata morgana, for tenor saxophone and six speaker array
  • John Eagle: untitled (tuning series), for violin, cello, and electronics
  • Miles Friday: All the little spots in its Geography, for saxophone, violin, cello, sine tones, and live processing
    • All the little spots in its Geography is formed to create one large, constantly evolving drone. All electronics are made in SuperCollider and are synthesized from sine tones to create (1) small clusters to produce acoustic beatings and (2) large, granulated pitch arrays to produce difference tones and other otoacoustic emissions. DSP is used to make an fft feedback system. Otoacoustic emissions and phenomena, such as acoustic beatings and difference tones, are openly explored to lean into the possibilities, boundaries, ambiguities, tensions, and otherwise otherworldly conditions of their production. To create an interactive and dynamic performance environment, much of the score design in All the little spots in its Geography takes influence from the architecture of and conceptual frameworks in programming environments such as SuperCollider. From movement to movement, environments are built by defining data sets, parameters, paths, routines, and other behaviors.

      “Here, let the ear be the “mechanical” or instrument being played. Ear operates like fantastic instrument (Resonant Box). All the little spots in its Geography. We are playing, the ear and the mechanism is responding at its fullest capacity.” –Maryanne Amacher, Workbook IV

  • Piyawat Louilarpprasert: double shuttered splinters, for prepared violin and cello
    • double shuttered splinters (2021) is focusing on the exploration of strings timbres produced by shuttered technique and prepared strings (binder clips). The binder clips contain metallic/plastic material which transforms the sound timbres of string to become more mechanical (machine-like). The shuttered technique is produced by the physicality of the performer (arm-shaking) to create continuity/discontinuity of sounds as well as intentional/unintentional noises. The combination between shuttered technique and prepared strings creates double exposures and energy of sonorities between violin and cello throughout the whole piece.
    • score
  • Daniel Sabzghabaei: پشت-به-پشت (back-to-back), for violin and cello
    • about back-to-back
    • score
    • vocal technique demonstrations
  • Chuck White: Cordis Tempus, for saxophone and flute
    • Cordis Tempus (2021) explores the notion of time and contextualizes the relationship between perfection and imperfection, the work takes measured time simultaneously with the interpreted time and pulse of the human heartbeat, and through additive and subtractive process of layering, creates a work that is based on the different understandings of tempo and division of time. One of the most important concepts that is explored in the composition, is that time informs human perception of different events and our memory, and this is represented musically throughthe different polyrhythms and metronomic phasing that arise throughout the work.
    • score
  • Han Xu:

funded by the Cornell Dept. of Music, Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center, Cornell Council for the Arts, GPSAFC

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