Entanglements

Victoria Cheah is an American composer and electronic musician engaged with boundaries, transitions and socio-performative rituals. Reflecting on the composition Regarding those objects of study, dedicated to the PinkNoise ensemble, she writes: “In learning how to position myself to you (and, I might assume, yourself to me), we change from subject to object, over and over again, whether you or I or we are the object of study. A conversation across time and space elides into memories of your warmth, your breath, until the memory of your being is inextricable from the exchange of our words. If a kiss can be a gesture to dance around breath, and words only made possible by shaping a breath, I would like to understand how one becomes the other, practicing an exchange of ourselves until I no longer care where you end and I begin.”

Corie Rose Soumah is a Canadian composer currently residing in New York. Her work focuses on fragmented sound components which she fuses into hybrid collages and visceral physical gestures. She explores sound textures through the overlay of acoustic, electronic and analogue technologies, connecting them to Afrodiasporic themes. States of Intermeshing is part of a suite in eleven parts exploring eschatological forces, the ecological crisis and self-discovery. The three movements (IV, V & VI) performed here explore the entanglements of our surroundings, our falls and our relationship(s) to land. For the past several years, Corie has been interested in our connection to the future, particularly in the context of the apocalypse. It seems that, in many ways, the world is telling us that a new becoming of our realities is imminent, cataclysms bigger than we could conceptualise are forming. But what if we are already living in that future? And what if the apocalypse has already been realised? Despite these nihilistic thoughts, Corie still believes that the future holds beauty, no matter what stage we find ourselves in.

Simon Kanzler is a German composer and jazz musician based in New York. Simon is the co-founder, co-artistic and technical director of the New York ensemble PinkNoise. He is interested in the organisation principles found both in nature and technology. He explores the dialectic between them and the impact of technology on our perception of the world. The piece STEREO takes shape through a kaleidoscopic form emerging from the juxtaposition of diverse materials, hidden gems of sound production idiosyncratic for the violin. These materials are derived from the performer’s body and physics of the instrument. The electronic part is based on duplicating these materials, while inserting random deviations into their rhythmic structures and building variations that transform their timbre through a process of timbre transfer. By using other instrument samples as a corpus, Simon creates a virtual ensemble that complements the violinist on stage. The instruments help to create rhythmical dissonance and consonance through a process of desynchronisation that ultimately creates a flow and eliminates the division created by meter structures. These polyrhythms come to life in their spatial disposition, reduced to the most basic spatial principle of stereo sound. The electronic segment is also extended by using orchestrations of the violin’s timbre – sustained sounds that get reflected into the room. Looking at the principle of stereo as an abstract concept, it is a manifestation of small temporal fluctuations, random deviations inherent in any self-organising complex system that is the foundation of life.


PinkNoise will also perform the works of the Masterclass participants. 

PinkNoise:
Johnna Wu, violin
Simon Kanzler, electronics
Iva Casian Lakos, cello
Roberta Michel, flute
Kaichi Hirayama, clarinet
Andrew Zhou, piano