Composer@Large

NIRUSU III - CD preview!

2012-02-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

The return of the lethal improvising trio NIRUSU III! A full-length studio recording made at the legendary Maybeck Recital Hall is in post production and will be available before Spring! Watch for previews and samples here!

Improvised at the Maybeck Recital Hall, Berkeley, California June 5 and 6, 2005
Susan Allen harp, Korean kayagum, and omnichord
NF Chase laptop, turntables
Rus Pearson double basses
Produced by NIRUSU III.
Engineered, Mixed and Mastered by Nicholas Chase.

In Again w/IllCorr

2011-09-24T16:47:00.005-04:00

September 24, 2011
Illuminated Corridor Dept. of Public Works
Saturday
11:00pm
Oakland Underground Film Festival
NIMBY
8410 Amelia Street
Oakland, CA
www.oakuff.org

I’m re-joining Illuminated Corridor Department of Public Works at the Oakland Underground Film Festival to illuminate the stylings of PUNK FUNK MOB and OAKLAND FADERS. Live video, film projections and other strange lights by Nick Chase, Suki O’Kane, Alfonso Alvarez, and Wayne Grim. Performing with IllCorr is one of my alltime favorite things to do!

GREAT NEWS!

2011-05-27T14:15:00.012-04:00

I'm releasing music on VibeDeck!

Now you can buy my album releases directly from me through VibeDeck! For the same price you'll pay for low-bitrate downloads at iTunes and Amazon.com, you can purchase my tracks at 320 kbps - CD quality - through VibeDeck, a new, artist-managed digital service. When you purchase through VibeDeck, you're buying from me, directly, and I get a bigger cut of sales - so I can make more music (hooray!)

The music is available right here, right now, artist-direct!

Current releases:

The Velvet Watt Vol. 1: Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders)
The 4-movement electronic opus inspired by IDM, video-game music, and a few nightmares b/w the 28-minute bass+electronics work featuring Contrabass Goddess Cristin Wildbolz out of Switzerland. Partly recorded at Studio Grasland, Haarlem.

Blue Sky Over Buchenwald
Music composed for the German Alternativer Medienpreis nominated radio documentary Wie kann es so schoen in Buchenwald sein? by Gabriele Rabe. Includes additional studio tracks not included in the documentary, and live piano performances by N F Chase.

Preview the albums and buy artist-direct through VibeDeck.

Upcoming releases (2011/2012):
NIRUSU III - (Almost) Live at the Maybeck!
The swinging-enigmatic-improv-trio recorded an album at the historic Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, CA. Susan Allen on harp, kayagum and electronics; N F Chase playing laptop/electronics and turntables; Rus Pearson playing TWO - count them! TWO double basses! An eclectic collection of sounds and zany spontaneously composed works!

The Velvet Watt Vol. 2: Solifuge
In production - to be recorded at Jack Straw in Seattle: a collection of new, electro-acoustic works by N F Chase, featuring Solifuge for bowed music stand! (YouTube clip here - courtesy of Mike McDermott).

The End of Incarceration: True Intellectual Freedom vs. Academic Martial Law

2011-04-03T14:55:00.010-04:00

The practice of making art has been overlooked in favor of academic eulogizing over it. A problem always demands a solution; so what is the solution? Artists "practice" because the pure creative act is a pursuit of process. We practice because the outcome is always uncertain. And it's the uncertainty we're interested in.

"Creative research" in the academic institution has shied away from real creative practice because, in truth, no standard has been set for gauging what is 'advanced' creative practice. In academic terms, advancement is gauged in degree awards and progress in credit hours - or time spent in intellectual incarceration. Engagement with artistic practice, estimation of improvement or mastery of craft and execution, and eloquence within the chosen discipline or medium is ignored — for, the academic world is loath to define what is art (really), much less what is 'good' art.

Theory is assumed to define these things, and academics can, with moderately objective consistency, gauge what is a solid argument; and so theory can be qualified where the precepts of art cannot. [Theory can tell us how a butterfly travels; can it offer insight as to the quality of that travel? Or the reason a butterfly travels by air and not by foot? A butterfly has, after all, only two wings, but also six legs. What of the quality of the butterfly's walking? What is the butterfly thinking while it flies — or walks? What does theory tell us about these things?]

This is the foundation for practice-based study. It is grossly faulted, it is bogus, and more than anything, it is cowardly. What else can you say about the pretense of talking about the action, a pretense that never merges with action, never instigates action, and can only occur after the action is already in the past?

Art is ever-emerging, and is dynamic. It will not pause long enough to enable theory an effective means of assessing its effectiveness, its relevance, or its value.
Where talking about art and artistic disciplines and processes can be interesting, the real interest comes when something is done. The academic process alienating to the artistic process because it never — without exception — engages the process in action, and what's more, does not partake of the outcome of a creative process.

Such is the flaw of academia, and why it remains in universities and hasn't become something you'll find in clubs, theaters, or anywhere true social commerce takes place.

Theorizing about Art is eulogizing about action. Art is a process that is alive and dynamic, and resists the kind of stasis theoretical observation requires — and crucifies it with. Where talking about art and artistic disciplines and processes can be interesting, the real interest comes when something is done. The academic process alienating to the artistic process because it never — without exception — engages the process in action, and what's more, does not partake of the outcome of a creative process.

A Week on the Left Coast with Other Minds

2011-03-07T14:48:00.001-05:00

So much of music making is about community, lineage, legacy, and the living exchange of ideas. These also happen to be the things that excite me the most not just in music making, but in life generally.

Occasionally one of these moments of community opens up, expands and explodes, offering exponentially increased exchange along a continuum that seems to have no beginning and no end. One becomes aware that s/he is part of a much, much, larger picture, and is contributing to a conversation that has been going on, and will continue beyond the ability of her/his perception. Other Minds Festival 16 is one of these moments. Other Minds is a series of four concerts that takes place over the course of four days, preceded by four days of communion between a group of composers and performers.

Some have described the OM Festival as walking the 'middle of the road' in terms of its musical offerings. But if you have met Charles Amirkhanian, composer and founder of the Other Minds festival, you will understand the concert presentations as a happy by-product of the festival goings on. The real festival, the real action is in the making of these concerts.

OM inaugurated a new component to the festival this year. Coordinated by Adam Fong, they offered fellowships to four composers in addition to Festival Composers in Residence. The OM Composer Fellows were a younger group, in the explorative stages of our careers and respective creative aims. When I spoke to Charles Saturday evening after the festival's closing concert, I remarked on the spectrum of age represented in this expanded group of composers. As a result I think I counted three generations (there were festival participants at every age, from the early 20s to their 70s) of composers and performers represented at the festival this year, actively taking part in a vibrant, electrified, musical dialogue. The exchange was absolutely charged. In Charles' own words, "This has to happen!" He offered the comment almost casually, but with a profound understanding of how music works: music is the one of last creative disciplines in the world — and especially the United States — that is fundamentally rooted in oral transmission (dance would be another).

The beauty of this kind of artistic dialogue is that it transforms a hierarchical transference of information — from master to apprentice — into a flourishing exchange of creative ideas between colleagues. This is what Charles' festival has elegantly capitalized on.

Other Minds Composer Fellows Concert

2011-02-16T18:18:00.004-05:00

Other Minds Festival
Other Minds Composer Fellowship Concert
Wednesday, March 2
7:30pm
Toyoji P. Tomita Performance Gallery
Meridian Gallery
535 Powell Street
San Francisco
$20 General, $12 Standing/Floor
www.otherminds.org

Other Minds has added a special event this year in partnership with Meridian Gallery:
Emerging composers Nicholas Chase, Lisa Coons, Ben Hjertmann, and Zibuokle Martinaityte were chosen from over 100 applicants from across the globe to participate in a special 8-day residency. As OM Fellows they will participate in a series of events including lecture-presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and seminars, and have the opportunity to pick the brains of all of this year's featured composers. The experience will culminate in this concert featuring new works by all four composers, performed by the Other Minds and Navitas Ensembles.

Jill Heinke will premiere Chase's "Gin Blossoms and Broccoli Boutonnieres," a new work for flute+electronics as part of the Other Minds Festival Composer Fellowship. This is the 16th year of the festival, which features world-premieres by composers from all over, as well as panels, workshops and other exciting new music events. The Other Minds Fellowship and Ms. Heinke's premiere mark the posthumous fulfilment of the work written for the late Dorothy Stone, who commissioned it in 2004.

Read more at www.otherminds.com and www.nfchase.net

Slow Emergence

2010-06-13T23:30:00.007-04:00

As the dust finally settles from the academic year and I prepare for summer travel... I have to confess a profound internal distaste for a return to 'student life.'

Naturally, one is always a student. I can't help but recall the moment when Brother Yusef Lateef had just worked with the New Century Players string quartet out in L.A. toward the premiere of his first string quartet "Bismillah." On our way to lunch I asked him, "So, Brother Yusef, what did you think?" I fully expected his response to be something along the lines of a conversation I had with Pierre Boulez a year before - you know, 'bla bla bla, the players could use more time with the piece' or 'the players sound terrific, I think they really have an idea of what I'm after...'

But Yusef, a well seasoned composer, gave the most elegant response. He said, "Well, Brother Nick... I learned a lot."

In that moment I realized I'd never be entirely comfortable in my composing. And in that moment I realized, it's probably not a bad thing to wear that skin a little askew. Shouldn't a composer engage her/his art in a living manner? Shouldn't one's art evolve with one's person?

Soon after that I realized that where I was [creatively] is not where I would end up. And I began to get really excited by the journey from 'here' to 'there.'

I was dinner tonight with a group of people who have deeply engaged music and the performing arts as part of their lives - as composers, writers, performers... and someone quoted my own advisor to me: one would go to graduate school for one of two reason: to qualify for university positions, or for the time to work.

For me, it is the latter. I knew that going in. I still hold firm to it. But the situation hasn't accommodated that ideal in the best of fashions. This writing isn't going to be about that particular glich, but it sets the tone for a lot of how the summer will unfold. For starters... the summer is now bookended by academic enrollment..! So the summer becomes something more urgent than it is when one is out in the 'real' world. It's also going to be a time for me to set the stage for the next year of academics. I'm only in residence one more year, which means I need to accomplish a large amount of work both academically and creatively. Academics are formalities, they're conquerable, particularly with good advisement. The creative part... that's something else.

In 2008 I premiered Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (for Lucky Mosko). A friend of mine who saw the US premiere in Berkeley said, "This is a new direction for you!" and I laughed and stomped my foot, shaking my head: "Absolutely it's not!" And yet... it did indicate something, a change.

I've been writing a lot this year. I'm not happy with everything I've done, and much of what I've worked on has been, for me, truly experimental - unlike previous compositions, I have actually been entirely unsure of the outcome. Since school's out for summer, I've also been thinking, refocusing what I've learned. The tragedy of losing my best friend/companion, Lucifer - a 12-year old part-siamese cat with a personality bigger than most human beings (just ask my friends!) - has had a huge impact on me. I've been introspective and, passing through the grief, have finally been able to begin bringing my attention to my year's work. I am considering each musical event in a much vaster, yet more microcosmic sense. Put another way, the works are larger, more epic in a sense, but obelisque-esque if I may; subtle, but strong. In the recent works, I'm not working through a lot of small, fillagreed ideas, for instance what you would hear in Woad for Indigo for piano (which is in fact three compositions layered into one and played simultaneously - a LOT of detail!). I'm working with one, simple idea. Elegant I think is the word I'm searching for - I think I mean to say that I'm meaning to make elegant music. And I find simplicity elegant. Like a dress without lace.

Toward the end of his life, Lucky Mosko took up gourmet cooking. One of the things he believed in strongly was the use of the same ingredients in all courses of a meal. He said, "It unifies the dinner." Well, that is elegance.

This Thursday (see below) Cadillac Moon Ensemble will premiere Street Song No. 1: New York Above Ground. This piece embodies an idea I had several years ago spawned by Morton Feldman's statement "The concert hall is a mausoleum." I wondered, where should go to hear music, then? I wondered further if Morty would have approved of, say, his 2nd String Quartet performed on Canal Street during rush hour.

So I decided to take it to the street - and that's what the Street Mixes are. Each one focuses on a different city location and should be performed there with the understanding that the environmental sounds are part of the orchestration. I've made field recordings as studies for these pieces and the works are tuned specifically to these kinds of places. The work Thursday is the subtlest of all of them because the sounds of the street are so fleeting. I should add that the music doesn't ape the urban sounds - the music is compositional. These are difficult elements to balance.

And I've been working on some other things, not all of which I will reveal here. I am working on the Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part 2 which will have some other fine name - right now I'm calling it "Bone Totem Dog" - anyone who knows my history gets a beer on me if you can figure out where that comes from...

The thing that I'm finding really interesting is that my notation has suddenly changed. When Morton Feldman (always a great case study because he was so engaged with composition as a practice, and his musings are well documented) wanted to 'free the music,' he came up with the graph pieces. When I wanted to free the form, I developed a highly refined modular style for my scores - you can view part of the score for 7th Sense in the latest issue of Shifter Magazine. I thought, foolishly, that would be the way I wrote forever. It's really very flexible and exciting (to me).

Strangely enough, as my composition has become - strikingly simplistic - ? of late, I've returned to traditional notation. In reality this started a couple years ago with Ouistitis for viola and 'cello. It was the first in a long time I'd notated traditionally. I thought it was an anomaly. But I keep going back to it, that is, to the staff that devours the page like a railroad track. I feel let down almost by the graphic representation of my idea in such a traditional form, but ... it also looks correct. Am I getting conservative in my time??

Not likely.

Listening: Yuji Takahashi, traditional Japanese Music, NIRUSU III [I'm mastering the new CD this summer/fall], The New Pornographers, KWVA Radio.

New Work

2010-04-29T15:25:00.005-04:00

June 17, 2010
 Cadillac Moon Ensemble: World Premiere of Street Mix No. 1
 8pm
 Issue Project Room 
232 3rd Street Brooklyn
NY 11215 
(718)330-0313 
$15 general, $10 Students and Seniors 
www.issueprojectroom.org 
www.cadillacmoonensemble.com

  Cadillac Moon Ensemble presents a concert of works for a traveling quartet. Brand-new works by Nicholas Chase, Matthew Welch as well as works by Wolfgang Rihm, Pawel Szymanski, Christian Wolff, and Jay Batzner.  

Chase's Street Mixes tune the music of the composition to the urban environment and include every day street noise as part of the orchestration. Premiering will be Chase's Street Mix No. 1: New York Above Ground tuned to the intersection of Canal and Centre Street, New York.

I Wasn't Drunk When I Wrote This (But I Wished I'da Been).

2009-12-30T19:00:00.001-05:00

Kraft (TM) Cheese. It's like looking at Kraft Cheese - with a loaf of locally produced Tillamook (R) in one hand, artisan cheese from the local dairy in the other, and someone is offering me Kraft Cheese. Not only that, it's not really cheese, it's processed, cheese food (a term the US military uses to describe fabricated food stuffs issued to its employees and servicemen-processed-cheese-food does not melt) and consists largely of emollients (sic) binders and filler. Instead of reinventing the wheel, wouldn't it be simpler to just make-you know-cheese?

This is my experience looking at large record labels online. I haven't thought about this in a while, not since I realized that the 'Music Industry' as we knew it was on the decline in the 90s and I decided that pursuing a label deal was a stupid idea. In the 90s, conglomerates picked up all the small independent labels that made their money releasing alternative acts. The conglomerates started backing stars more than ever, monopolizing the market using ruthless financial strategies. it was in the early 90s when Billboard Magazine stopped its regular, fairly democratic polls of music retailers to devise its hit list, and started exclusively referencing Tower Records' sales figures.

I laughed the other night talking to a fellow artist who told me, after hearing Funky Dawg (Got My Sexy) (a funk single I recorded a couple years ago) that he'd buy a record if I released one. I said, "well, the music may be good, but I left the scene when it got so overrun by media/market manipulation - I mean, I simply can't compete with Madonna, even though she's completely uninteresting these days." Uninteresting and not relevant. She wasn't really interesting in the 80s either (although relevant in that, she posed a much sexier alternative to Feminism, effectively dislodging 20 years of revolution! Does Madonna even vote?). But... she elbowed her way forward using marketing and media strategies. I always bring her up in my classes because she is an amazing phenomenon - she is a media experiment gone horribly right. Sort of like Twinkies-in a world of gateau. Well... as I have always said, Madonna: there's no better music to clean house by.

That aside, I can't have sympathy for the Music Industry, who claim to be losing money left and right in the age of digital distribution. The Music Industry has become about as sexy as a bunion on my grandmother's foot. I'm not talking about the talent (sic) or the music, I'm talking about the labels themselves. Kraft Cheese. As I peruse their websites I'm learning a lot about who runs these megaliths. These companies have failed to keep links on their websites current, the sites themselves look less inspired than the standard, daily edition cover of the New York Times (which really defers to the daily news it displays), and list hosts of artists they're promoting - not one of which has any name recognition whatsoever (did any of these people ever think to post 'if you like SO-AND-SO [i.e. our biggest name artist], then why don't you try listening to 'SUCH-AND-SUCH.' I thought these people did market research??). It's not very inspiring, not to me as an artist and not as a consumer. I feel like I'm looking at an Annual Financial Report-pie chart anyone? Have a few graphs and some statistics for good measure.

The revamped Industry is mishandling its talent. Market popularity can be contrived through media monopoly and a little manipulation (licensing! You go Moby, the man with the biggest little career in history). Music is a social idea and pop music capitalizes on that. For that to work an artist has to be 1) relevant- that is, speak to some aspect of current social interests 2) current (i.e. doing something either new, progressive, or, well, artistic!) and 3) unique. For instance, I can't tell the difference between 2/3rds of the artists I hear on the radio. I'm also completely disinterested in hearing another song about heartbreak or new love or whyjacheatonme? The music and the talent are mass produced and churned out in order to fill 'dead air' in between advertisements. In the 'golden age' of rock, the single was a promo for the album, the tour promoted album sales. Now, the single is cash-cow for the conglomerate: how many movie titles can we tack this track onto? How many car commercials can use this in? How many television promos can we run over this track? Moby is the New Madonna. He wins a gold, pointy bra.

In the 80s and even 90s (and of course before) a unique sound was absolutely a given. It was considered a benefit to sound like no one else. Siouxsie and the Banshees played right alongside Frankie Goes to Hollywood and neither of them even tried to sound like each other. Now, it's all homogeneity. Hard pressed, I can't tell the difference between Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige, even though there is a huge difference between them.** But on the radio, they might as well be the same Fembot. Worse than that, all the other "Grade B" artists are worked and reworked to sound like the money-makers.

**And now with the white kids taking over the RandB scene, who can tell what's going on? Let's see... Eminem or... no, I choose Christophe Willem-who won Frances "Novelle Star" over all the would-be, wannabe, generic RandB/Gospel singers in his season. You go Tortue! (He got the nick name "La Tortue" when one of the judges exclaimed 'he looks like a turtle!' - but he sang like and angel, and by the way, he's adorable, in fact kinda hot, and you know why? Because he doesn't look like a damned cookie-cutter football player!)

bleh.

There was a period in the early 2Ks when I refused to buy a commercially released album (with a very few exceptions) and thanks to the now-defunct 'mp3.com' I bought some of the most exciting music made at the time instead - directly from the artist (at 99% profit to them!). And it still holds - I go back and listen to that stuff and think, wow, this was really happening! What a great time for music! So many styles, so many artists, so many great ideas!

It was such a joke when the Industry closed down mp3.com (actually purchased it, then closed it down) claiming that it was a playground for Music Piracy. Mp3.com had some of the most stringent copyright practices around at the time. Each song had to be cleared by them to be sure that artists weren't in danger of lawsuits. No commercial artists had work posted on the site, although I think there may have been some pages with links to 'official websites' there.

No, the real threat was in the popularity of the website and artist-direct purchasing. Access to independent artists is infinitely more sexy than pre-packaged microwavable TV dinners. I mean, 'music.' Why buy some lackluster commercial formula music when, for a fraction of the cost, I could buy something really interesting, new, exciting and refreshing - direct from the artist?

I bought music almost strictly from mp3.com for a little over a year, maybe longer. I purchased a very limited number of CDs from commercial resources at the time and I can tell you exactly what they were: Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Talvin Singh. Squarepusher and Aphex Twin are both on Warp Records, who are one of the only labels who have really come into the 21st Century - and who are sexy. Talvin Singh was on Virgin if I recall, but they went belly up and he went super-producer (and lost his edge). That's about it. Everything else I listened to was artist-direct from mp3.com.

It's to imagine the panic while a significant percentage of the market bought artist direct - yes, what a threat; no one paying the clearing house for over-produced-caca. Buying home-recordings direct from the artist?

When you boil it down for the consumer, what could be the benefit of a more artist-driven industry?

Isn't that how Punk happened? As just one for-instance. If you look back further, you'll see that this kind of home-cooked music has always been the prime interest of the music consumer: fresh sounds, not mass marketing. Nirvana, not Madonna. I'll make up t-shirts and sell them (that phase is copyright 2009 N F Chase - hands off!)

Things have come around now with services like CDBaby and TuneCore (thank goodness for those!).

But the Industry is still very clearly out of touch. Just take a look at these websites:
www.chordant.com
capitolrecords.com
www.bluenote.com
www.manhattanrecords.com - (note the missing graphic on this site)
www.mute.com
and the one that wins the Best Annual Report Likeness Award is:
www.emi.com

I apologize in advance if any one of these companies (all of whom I know of because of their ground-breaking AandR portfolio from days past) maintains a good rep for artist management. Some labels are lackluster, but artists flock to them because of the great deals they get. This may be true of any one of the above listed labels. And I hope it is true of all of them.

But back on topic-Is this really how we think of music? I thought that commercial music was all about packaging - and this is the best they can come up with? (No wonder Madonna is no longer relevant. Poor gal, struttin' her pointy bra in a sea of suits and attache cases).

Of course, there is a certain percentage of the 'market' that responds to mass media. These are the lazy ones, the people who take what they're given without thinking twice. These are the same people who do actually buy Kraft American Cheese (? What differentiates other cheeses from American Cheese??? Darling, don't buy the chevre - get that American cheese!) without reading the label, buy instant food, white bread, canned soup, microwave diet dinners (because they are overweight from consuming all of the other highly processed foods they eat) and typically watch a lot of Reality TV. Not to slight a vast cross section of the public-but are these really the *majority* of consumers? I'd like to see the figures. REAL figures, not just the narrow margin of figures supplied by the (corporately owned) Tower Records to the (corporately owned) Billboard Magazine. And, if this is the densest part of the music-buying demographic, why spend millions on no-name bands that sound just like the band you're currently promoting?***

***(it's absolutely no wonder that the Black Eyed Peas are in such heavy rotation - those spots are purchased, conveniently, as an in-house trade: the record label is attached to the broadcast company, so they promote the single; I noticed this when Warner Studios began promoting Warner recording artists, featuring a new artist each week on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - and slotting in a plug for the current CD; and as a marketing strategy, I can't criticize it, it's brilliant - but Warner took to promoting their entire catalogue of artists, not just plugging a single. Is CBS really riding on that one single by the Black Eyed Peas - and what about album sales - as opposed to single sales?)

Significantly, Richard Branson (Virgin Records) has all but left the music industry in search of more lucrative business ventures. He made his music profit by selling the two Virgin labels he founded. In some ways - bravo Richard! - for keeping your eye on the prize (i.e. profit) and not mucking about torturing artists in order to make an extra $.0002 on sales per-unit. I know a lot of really terrific artists have suffered under this profit-culture. So, Music Labels, if you really are *just* about making a profit, maybe consider a more lucrative field, or a more assuredly lucrative field. And leave the rest to those who actually... well, heh, dare I say - love it.

For the rest... well... have you listened to the radio lately?

I didn't think so.

Listening: Hariprasad Chaurasia.

Janitor.

2009-12-02T23:00:00.000-05:00

Satie published the Gymnopédies in 1888. He published the Gnossiennes in 1893. Ravel published Gaspard de la Nuit in 1909.

I have been working concretely on Voluptuous (Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part II) since around October and it's been kicking my ass. I keep feeling the specters of my teachers, who were very aggressive about the sincerity of my work; they instantly knew when I wasn't being honest with myself and never hesitated to point it out, sometimes brutally - I've had poor work called 'stupid' and been beaten by my own fist at the hand of mentors who take my work as seriously as I do. Often the zen shock led me to a breakthrough and I would compose something substantial within a day of the confrontation.

Lately I've been struggling with a certain kind of intellectualism that I find impotent. More than that, I've been confronted with a past that indicated and laid the groundwork for a present that hasn't yet unfolded. A few weeks ago, as though I was taken over by by some demon, I began writing in a way I didn't expect. The outcome was disastrous: instead of working through my idea, I layered it with frosting. It was a wild, wrong turn. Wrong turn, there is no doubt about that. The result was haunting, it was energetic, familiar, nostalgic, clean. It sounded like a club remix of any one of those piano works I mentioned above. It sounded absolutely soulless.

It sounded sterile and contrived. All of the life sucked out of the piano by droning machines. I like droning machines, but this was the wrong context. My chops as a producer overshadowed the composition, making the machines the point, not the music, not the composition.

But in the back of my head I kept hearing the dying gasps of Gaspard de la Nuit: Le Gibet and wondering why what I was doing wasn't enough - how come it wasn't right. I was composing the way I did about 15 years ago, in a style and using a method that I studied composition in order to lose. Not lose. Not reinvent. I studied composition so that I could compose instead of merely 'writing.' I studied so that I could expand my vocabulary. Sure, I've heard this before, it sounds great! It sounds like Ravel, or Satie - I love Ravel and Satie! What a load of dookie. What a load. It sounds like...

No, you know what, no. NO IT DOESN'T SOUND GREAT. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR COMPOSING MUSIC THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT'S 100 YEARS OLD!!

And what's more, Le Gibet is a masterpiece of 20th Century piano literature. In fact, it surprises me that atonality didn't come into being much sooner given the modal complexity of Le Gibet. The overall complexity of Le Gibet also makes New Complexity as a genre seem absolutely flaccid. Don't get me wrong, I adore Michael Finnissy, but he's a composer first and is completely concerned with the details of his works. I'm not sure I can say the same about Ferneyhough, at least not with the same conviction; I respect his works as the efforts of a great intellectual. However, having corresponded with Michael Finnissy, I can tell you, he cares very much what his music sounds like - from the perspective of a listener.

But to consider New Complexity as if it's... actually new - new!? And of course, at this point we're talking about an idea (as a genre) that is nearly 40 years old. So now it certainly is not new. Even so, Le Gibet is about as complex as it gets; to give you an idea, it's written on 3 staves for one pianist.

So where does that leave me?

The last few days I've fallen deeper and deeper into depression. Last night I was ready to hurl myself out of a window, positive I would never compose anything again (and this is not the first time I've thought this). This morning I woke up with an idea that was simple, elegant and I was able to pull myself together and give it a try. I ended up working from the very moment I got up until well into the evening without taking any breaks. I had found the solution and unlocked the music I was hoping to make.

This piece, Voluptuous, is inspired by Lucky Mosko, who taught me how to put my wrestlings, musings, thoughts, perplexities and ecstasies about a composition into the compositions itself, to document my process by leaving evidence of the process in the work. The breakthrough this morning came when I thought, "I feel like banging my head through the f*@#ing piano!" and then I heard Lucky's voice saying, "Put THAT in the music..."

There it is. The first movement is a document of me trying to get started, over and over and over and over and over and over and over then bang my head through the piano, then start over and then start over and then start over...

This piece has led to a little bit of an existential crisis. On the one hand, 'art music' - who listens to it? I do, but I'm part of a rarified group who are interested in hearing things that are not just new, but surprising or at least worth intellectual consideration. On the other hand, I'd like to compose music that a larger group would be interested in listening to.

So... if I write 'pop' music - or write in a 'popular' form, does that ensure a larger listening audience.

No, it doesn't.

I won't go into the lengthy details about how I arrived at the conclusions I did, but in the end I had to ask myself - "What do YOU [Nick Chase] want to listen to?" In other words, if only a few will listen to the end result anyway, why try to create something that aims please a group of people who aren't listening (and won't anyway)?

But I aim to compose music that maybe I haven't heard before... Not for the sake of style, and not because it's shameful to compose the way you've heard someone else compose, but because I want to propose a different perspective. It's both an intellectual as well as an aesthetic pursuit, with the aesthetic ruling out in the end (yay).

My close friend S. writes - so why not compose the pop/dance music you, yourself would like to hear?

I agree wabout composing that music. And I'm not scrapping the original versions of Voluptuous. Just moving it aside to see what it becomes later. I would like the luxury of focusing (and being paid to focus) on a pop record. But the thing is the road to (financial) success through the pop route is long, less gratifying and more competitive just by numbers. At least with concert music it's expected that I be completely singular - with the pop there is an expectation that I *should* fit into *some* market, into some 'popular' context. (Oh for the days of punk and glam when genre meant nothing and every artist sounded completely different from the last!).

If you look at Ngoma Lungundu (and the forthcoming Velvet Watt 2 which will feature Voluptuous) these are in fact pop albums. They're packaged that way and they make use of so many popular devices that are usually over looked. For one thing, I did not go with a dance beat. I went for sheer production style. I chose specific sounds, specific kinds of reverb, and contrived specific forms that are fictional and so unfamiliar.

Ngoma is produced like a dance record, but it's not. Voluptuous will follow suit.

So in a sense, I am writing the pop music I want to hear. I am definitely writing the music that I want to hear.

I'm much happier with the simplicity of what I've done today than what took me nearly four weeks to work out before that. It is a far more delicate, abstract form.

The new first movement leaves off the haunting melodic material that (recalls Satie and Ravel) I was working with but keeps some of the fundamental concepts about repetition in tact - and in fact exaggerates them. The new work is more honest, and more immediate.

It might answer the question I have been asking myself about painting and music, about opacities, densities, light, shadows and veils. It has all the things I need music to have right now.

Listening: Gaspard de la Nuit (Ravel), Magic Position, Bachelor (Patrick Wolf), Abracadabra (ABC)

*I wrote the passage above on Monday. Now, Wednesday, I'm having more second thoughts about the revisions. The revisions are better, but are they good enough - do they go far enough? I'm realizing that my situation isn't feeding my compositional work in the way it should and I'm unhappy about it. I am rethinking everything...

Nick Chase @ The Brick Elephant October 3

2009-09-19T13:32:00.000-04:00

October 3
2-9PM
Re:Soundings' A Festival of Firsts
The Brick Elephant
12 Emily Street
Valley Falls NY 12185
Admission by donation
Potluck dinner from 7 to 8PM
Chase performs at 3pm on the Festival roster

Nicholas Chase gives the World Premiere of the newly revised Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko) as part of Re:Soundings' A Festival of Firsts at the Brick Elephant in Valley Falls New York.

Chase's interactive visual work with the improvising trio NIRUSU III has been acclaimed by the LA Weekly as "pushing the edge of audio/visual improv", and his interactive audio/visual composition Transmission was featured with the Illuminated Corridor's NOVA at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. This concert circuit, Chase continues his exploration of dynamic, spontaneously composed visual narratives and music with the World Premiere Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko) for solo piano with interactive electronics and video. For more information visit www.nicholaschase.net

Re:Soundings is a non-profit 501c3 organization dedicated to the arts.

A Festival of Firsts is a music and multi-media extravaganza featuring 8 premieres and more, facilitated by Damian of Kalvos and Damian and Mary Jane Leach

The concerts are held in the Brick Elephant, formerly an old church, in Valley Falls, New York.
12 Emily Street, Valley Falls, NY 12185

For more information about Re:Soundings visit www.resoundings.net
For details about A Festival of Firsts visit www.resoundings.net/Oct2009.html
To learn more about Nicholas Chase visit www.nicholaschase.net
and to read about Songs of the Thirsty Sword visit www.nicholaschase.net/ngoma/ (then scroll to the bottom of the page)

Directions to The Brick Elephant:
Valley Falls is in northern Rensselaer County, 20 minutes north of Troy, 25 minutes west of North Bennington, Vermont.

From the west: at the intersection of Routes 40 and 67 in Schaghticoke, drive 1.5 miles east, turn right just as you get over the bridge, then drive on State Street (117) two blocks and turn left. The Brick Elephant is the red brick former church on the left at the next corner - it's the biggest building in the village - you can't miss it.

From the east: when 67 branches off to the west from 22 (Eagle Bridge), continue driving for 11 miles,turn left just before the curving bridge, then drive on State Street (117) two blocks and turn left. The Brick Elephant is the red brick former church on the left at the next corner - it's the biggest building in the village - you can't miss it.

Used to Please Crowds, Now Eats Spaghetti

2009-08-20T18:08:00.001-04:00

When I started composing, I was very concerned that the aesthetic quality of my compositions retain an universal sense of 'beauty.'

After studying composition I became only interested in absolving myself from beauty, perhaps even being so bold as to redefine it. Compositions dated from about 2001 (although these will have been begun in 2000) to as late as 2005 reflect this search very clearly: Rugosa Rose, Woad for Indigo, Crush. But as I eschewed the obvious forms of prettiness in my work, the work itself became alarmingly pretty, as my audience attested.

Now I don't think about beauty or prettiness at all, I couldn't care less about those things.

I'm more interested in the form than in the content: John Cage said that it's form that will define composition, or music writing, of the future. The future he spoke of was, is, in fact, the present.

Ngoma Lungundu has already been both hailed and criticized for what it is - hailed for reaching in new directions and teasing the aural palette in an unexpected, but pleasing way, criticized for not actually being what its form claims it is: pop music.

Creating something wildly new, while adhering to a form, doesn't guarantee its universal (i.e. popular) success. The ears trick us when we perceive the content, which, no matter how we order it , or mould it to or within acceptable forms, will betray our true intent [or the true intent of the music.]
--
I've started composing for The Velvet Watt Vol. 2. I am conceiving my new compositions in context of albums, collections, or groups. The compositions I am working on form a trilogy of albums/collections that haven't been formed yet - I understand more or less what the content is, I might even know what the result will be, but the fun is remains in getting there and seeing where the projects lead me next.

For the second round I'm thinking of the pieces simultaneously in two ways: the material needs to be engaging as a live performance - all of the pieces on Vol. 2 will be for acoustic instrument and supporting interactive electronics. I'm also thinking of the pieces theatrically, but more in terms of an iconic narrative than a dramatic narrative. That means to say that these works refer to forms that may be familiar, but will appear expanded or even distorted. In other words, Vol. 2 is, predictably, an extension or further exploration of what I began in Vol. 1.

Right now I'm entertaining the concept of the pop/club single and the remix. There is always the danger of hyper-intellectualizing popular forms. The fact is, they are simple for a reason, and imbuing them with content beyond their gravity is pompous (and pointless). But these forms, ideas and devices are pointers for me, since it's where I began. I've been fascinated by interchangeable music from the start, the remix and the re-edit, going back even more, the arrangement. I started out doing vocal jazz arrangements and my teachers were always astounded at the ease I took in complex chord structures voicings and voice leading.

In the 80s, the 'extended remix' was a great invention (actually, it was invented in the 70s, but didn't take off as a commercial form until the 80s when the '12" maxi single' became a viable retail item, effectively replacing the 45 single), but the most exciting part to me was hearing the song broken down into its various parts as a device to extending the song's basic structure. Occasionally a DJ would do something really radical to a song - I remember when Eric 'ET' Thorngren remixed Eurythmics' 'Would I Lie To You' - the rock-n-roll breakout hit for the formerly all-synth act. (Factoid: Eurythmics are the duo who made it absolutely clear to me I wanted to make music: their early studio work still stands as some of the most exciting, forward looking recorded work around. I'm particularly fond of their lesser known B-Sides, the off-mixes, early mixes, demos, variations or just weird improvisations in the studio that still sound like they come from an eerily displaced future). I remember saving my change to buy the album having only heard a clip from 'Conditioned Soul' on MTV, even though when Eurythmics made the shift to acoustic-rock, my friends were all convinced I wouldn't like it.

Then the single, 'Would I Lie to You' came out. It was a smash, yet in one of those weird pockets, somehow I missed hearing it for nearly 3 days after its release (unusual for me, especially given I was such a devoted fan). I was warned, forewarned and discouraged from seeking it out by friends who were convinced I, the techno-guy, could love nothing with guitars - apparently my obsession with Sam and Dave had gone overlooked!

But look, Eurythmics as a duo were a strong act, and they made the transition with real sparkle - they managed to do things that were just not-quite-right to keep the pop form fresh. Listen to 'Would I Lie To You' and you'll realize you're only listening to the reference to a genre, not to something directly out of the genre. It's this twice-removed coolness that makes the singles so interesting. They moved from the haunting strains of 'Love Is a Stranger' and 'Here Comes The Rain Again', accompanied by an orchestra of fantom electronic instruments and tape effects, into a realm where the instruments were real, but the songs were just as weirdly disconnected. 'Would I Lie To You' has very little in the way of melody and its drive depends hugely on the percussion and horn riffs pulled along by the David Stewart's roaring metal guitar. The organ is mixed too loud, as are the backing vocals, devices that made the s trademark ong stand out as very contemporary while others, like the Fabulous Thunderbirds who covered Sam and Dave's 'Wrap It Up' managed to sound status quo - relying on the the strength of the songwriting as opposed to a new, interesting and dynamic arrangement that provided a fresh listening experience. When I heard 'Would I Lie to You' I had to ask - where's the melody? And the hook? Annie Lennox sings her choruses almost too close into the mic, feigning calm coolness years before Neil Tenant made it his in the Pet Shop Boys, and juxtaposed that to her full-belt during the verse, the exact inverse of a typical pop format.

Naturally Eurythmics popularity banked on club singles. As a club single, 'Would I Lie To You' probably wouldn't have cut it, at least not in the gay clubs. So ET (Eric Thorngren) stripped it down to the percussion and instead of horns and guitar, sequenced an organ loop with a weird slap-back reverb that made it bounce all from speaker to speaker. He punched up and detuned the bassline and put a similar echo on it, making it sound bizarrely out of place. Lennox' vocals were placed right in front, making them sound cool throughout, the sort of detached performance Lennox was known for in singles like 'Who's That Girl.' The mix turned the hot, top ten radio single into experimental B-Side material - but it was perfect to slide in on the club floors of the 80s, right between Chaka Khan's 'I Feel For You' (rife with samples, synths, drum machines and similar echo effects, produced by dance-floor guru Arif Mardin) and the Tom Tom Club. And it retained all of the things that Eurythmics were known for before they changed styles.

The slightly adrift form of the B-Side has always fascinated me too. Many of my favorite bands best, or at least most interesting material was to be found on the B-Side. Pet Shop Boys, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tones on Tail, Bauhaus (and Eurythmics). It's a lesser known fact, but 'White Horse' by Laid Back was in fact a B-Side. If I'm not mistaken, Laid Back was a reggae act (or the A-Side was a reggae influenced single; I had it - never listened to it). And who can forget Prince's 'Erotic City' - if ever there was a testament to the power of the B-Side!

Going back to Eurythmics, I remember reading that early in the band's formation they had conceptualized themselves as 'a futuristic cabaret act.' Or an act from a cabaret of the future. For those who remember the imagery, that's where the wigs, costumes and masks came in, remembering that this was post-glam/post-punk London. That image and idea has always stuck with me.

I remember listening to the sound track for the film 'Liquid Sky', a film that has still got reverberating effects on my work, and thinking, I wish all music sounded like this. The sound track to the film was highly experimental and was realized on an early fairlight synthesizer. Many of the tracks were baroque compositions sequenced into the Fairlight and played back with odd voicings. Other material was atonal, arhythmic and simply odd - but absolutely captivating!

After thinking a minute, I looked at my record collection and realized - most of the records I listened to (which included recordings by my mentor, Morton Subotnick), did sound like that, or at least close to it. (Factoid: the Art of Noise realized their first recordings on a Fairlight synthesizer as well - one of the first sampling keyboards. Although it offered seeming limitless possibilities, it was in fact very limited. The splashy effects that resulted in the exciting explosive layered sounds were the machinations of studio engineer JJ Jeczalik, who, according to Ann Dudley, was a kind of mad man running from control to control, knob to knob, flipping switches on and off to make things sustain, cut short, explode, disappear). Pop music had become pleasingly fascinated with new forms.

Now, you have to dig to find artists in the pop bins who embrace this idea. Even Art of Noise doesn't quite fit the bill there. Eurythmics became a little banal (although David Stewart's side projects have been interesting). But new artists, Alva Noto, Oval, L'Uomo - these are the ones who have continued making that oddly mechanized, but warm and exciting music that I crave to hear. It's music that takes me out of the possibilities of this world into the possibilities of another world I didn't know could exist - even if it's only the suggestion of a world like that.

These are the ideas I'd like to explore on the next CD.

I'm not saying more than that, but suffice to say the new folio will be a surprise when it comes out, and I am confident that as material for live performance, it should kick things up a notch or two.

Listening: everything.

Available on iTunes - Ngoma Lungundu by Nick Chase

2009-07-17T15:47:00.001-04:00

Summer's Twin Recordings

2009-06-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

AVAILABLE NOW EXCLUSIVELY AS DOWNLOAD* ON iTunes: two new studio albums of my work, the first full-length commercial releases since 1993. These feature my most recent musical explorations, brand new material premiered and toured last fall in Europe and the US.

Ngoma Lungundu (voice that thunders): the Velvet Watt Vol. 1

Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders), features the studio premiere of the epic 4-movement title track, originally created for live, multi-channel electronics, mastered here for home stereo and iPod, and comes alongside Seventh Sense, the half-hour opus for bass and electronics featuring a tour-de-force performance by contrabassist Cristin Wildbolz. Seventh Sense was originally released by STV/Unit records in Switzerland on 5.1 Surround Sound DVD, but is available in the US for the first time in this specially re-mastered stereo edition - and includes 3 minutes of material not issued on the Swiss release!
Get it on iTunes.

Blue Sky Over Buchenwald: Original Music Soundtrack

Also appearing this Summer, Blue Sky Over Buchenwald, the electronic soundtrack to the Alternativer Medienpreis nominated documentary Wie kann es so schoen in Buchenwald sein? by Gabriele Rabe. The recording features original tracks produced for the documentary as well as a selection of originally composed and performed acoustic tracks that provided the basis for the electronic soundtrack.
Get it on iTunes.

Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) and Blue Sky Over Buchenwald are internationally available digitally only on iTunes, and other online music stores. Hear what's new - buy yours now!

*Hardcopy CD of these recordings is NOT available - purchase your music online, download it now, play it instantly!

Mumbo Jumbo

2009-05-11T23:54:00.001-04:00

I'm in the final stages of mastering 2 releases - Ngoma Lungundu (Songs of the Thirsty Sword) and Blue Sky Over Buchenwald: Soundtrack to the Documentary. Both are very different from each other and both raise some interesting questions. For me, as I prepare to engage a Ph.D. in Electronic Art, I am thinking of how these works and the other projects I have piled on my desk, relate to my general, eh, um... ethos - that is, the overall morality of my work (and its intent) as a whole.

Well, the truth is, for good or evil, I create intuitively. It was only years after completing e1>3ktr=∆ that I began to understand it in sociological terms, or anthropological terms, or semiotic terms. And viewing that from such an analytic position, how can I move forward and outward from that idea, and/or develop those ideas into new, equally or superlatively stronger and relevant works.

Is that the role of the artist - to continuously provide the voice of conscience to humanity? Well, it's not the sole job and with abstraction came the idea that Art can offer something beyond content. It can offer form and retain its social value, for, as our culture becomes more and more abstracted and fragmented, form is nearly equally as important as content.

The Medium is the Message.

(Marshall McLuhan)

Semiotics. I want to look at my work from a position of semiotics. But I don't know how, so I'll have to think about that. But certainly some of my older work was poised under that veil - sp!T, tW!tCH, OPUS, and less obviously crush (diversion) [composed from the cast-off scraps of a much longer composition], they link to semiotics in unusual, but certain ways. Rugosa Rose- ? Same thing, I think. Connecting to post-modern pastiche, engaging both the performer and the listener to collect fragments and position them in a way that forms a meaningful, cohesive whole.

Work immediately following that, maybe not so much. These are more personal works. I suppose conceptually Woad for Indigo with it's dual and triple-layers of composition falls into a category similar to Rugosa Rose and probably 7th Sense. It was composed specifically for the recording, and the happy byproduct is that it makes for an exciting live performance. But the illusion is that at least 4 hands perform the work, and for that to take place, the listener must be blind, so the context of recording is ideal.

I had an inspiring conversation with an emerging (visual) artist the other day who I asked to review the latest CD for technical flaws. He asked to hear a short retrospective of my work so that he could place the new recording in some sort of context. Of course, there is no context - the new work came from the ether. But the retrospective provided MW with some insight and his feedback provided me with some inspiration. He clearly understood my aims - the less-than-obvious pop iconography, buried or gilding the concert/avant-garde genre of music composition and performance, and the anti-linear composition that results from, I don't know, being part of the MTV Generation - who have a notoriously short attention spans.

I remember my classmate, composer Roger Allen Ward had a conversation with our then-instructor, composer Morton Subotnick about composition and Mort was complaining that young composers didn't understand the musical importance of transition. Roger exclaimed, "because it's not important - we grew up with a remote control in our hands, there is no transition for us! It's either on or off, this or that!" I tapped into that idea deeply when I composed e1>3ktr=∆. It was my aim to use the benefits of the 'electronic orchestra' to its fullest - in fact, to realize that the voices in an electronic orchestra are truly limitless. That means that, as I wrote, the entire instrumentation of a piece could change in an instant.

Traditionally one might add a voice, or use a combination of voices to change an orchestration, or to offer a new sound or sonic insight. My intent with e1>3ktr=∆ was to disorient the listener by continuously changing the psychological and metaphorical location of the music (now we are inside/now we are outside/now we are someplace else entirely). It required a deep understanding of styles, and more than that, a good understanding of the process by which drill and bass (the overlaying style of the opera) is made. Many DnB artists are untrained in traditional music, or at least undisciplined in the basics of music composition - and so have no inhibitions about making sudden and unexpected changes in the finished product. It is a trademark of the top artists, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, for example. True, DnB roots itself in dance, so there is a need for consistent tempo and 'groove' - but the ability to change an entire musical instrumentation instantly is a massive power that I needed to tap. No transitions, Mort.

But what about now, what is the context of this new work, what is the ethos?

I'm working on it, I'm not prepared to say. The work will reveal itself as I create it. But there are, without doubt, some strong links to things I have linked to in the past - just in very new ways.

Listening:
Freemasons: Unmixed (specifically Rain Down Love featuring powerhouse vox by the amazing Siedah Garret, and When You Touch Me featuring an equally exciting performance by Katherine Ellis), Alva Noto & Riuchi Sakamoto- Insen; Sam Sparro- Sam Sparro, Thompson Twins (the two albums preceding Into the Gap), Japanese traditional shakuhachi music.

-- 2 hours later: I think I have figured out the connection. But I'm not sharing. (!!)

Welcome To My Mind...

2009-03-25T01:27:00.000-04:00

You want to know what it's like to live in my head? Here's a taste:

I dreamed last night that I had a meeting with Amit Goswami, a well known quantum physicist who has appeared pretty extensively of late talking about spirituality and science. You may know him from his interviews in the documentary What the Bleep Do We Know and from his books, the most popular of which is the Self Aware Universe.

As fate would have it, Professor Goswami was my physics professor in college (this is true, not part of the dream) and he taught the class with a great deal of humor, much of which was sadly lost on the overly large lecture hall. I learned a lot in that class and had a good time in the process. Goswami began writing ages ago as a Sci Fi writer and he often shared his and other authors' stories with our classes then quizzed us on whether or not the technology described in the stories would work (or not) based on what we learned about physics. He also joked a lot (seriously lost on this sadly stoic class) saying things like, "Of course the larger the mass, the greater the gravitational attraction. However, if you have a large friend and a small friend and the small friend says to your large friend, 'I'm attracted to you' - I don't think they are talking about gravity!"

Anyway, in my dream, for whatever reason, I was having lunch at Amit Goswami's house. He was a gracious host and we sat down to have a cup of tea before we were to eat lunch. He informed me at this point that another guest, a good friend of his would be joining us, but was delayed at the auto mechanic getting his oil changed and he thought we should wait until his friend arrived to eat. That was fine with me.

It turns out the friend was Ru Paul.

Apparently Amit and Ru were great friends, and so, needless to say, we had a wonderfully glamorous lunch.

I bet you wish you were me!

Photo taken by MS just off of Canal St. NYC

When Words Fail, Make Noise

2009-03-23T17:57:00.000-04:00

It's interesting being a one-man band. I'm learning and devising all kinds of ways to make myself sound like an orchestra. What happened just less than a year ago with the creation of Ngoma Lungundu and then Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I was only a ground-breaking for something new and more complex.

It didn't occur to me to do it this way - of course, the technology didn't exist then, at least not like I have it in my hands now. Furthermore, once you've got the technology, there is a learning curve. It's easy to create what's immediately obvious and to be honest I think that Songs.. part I is exactly that.

What I am working on right now is the next step - now that I know the grammar and syntax, I can use those to make my own sentences. This last few days has been exciting, working on the mastering of the recordings from last year. And to simultaneously be working on the work that I will premiere next, and these works consist of a complexity that is unusual for interactive work of this kind. I'm not revealing any 'secrets' at this point. But the initial workshopping of the pieces is alarming, surprising, gratifying.

It has been my goal for four years or so now to create work that is as complex and difficult as Ferneyhough's compositions, but executable by someone of limited or no musical ability. That is what I'm achieving right now. What's more exciting is that the work is still accessible and isn't in any way compromised. As a composer, it allows me to write in my true voice while making the work practical on a performance level.

Listening: Pnau, Empire of the Sun, Paul Horn (still!), Japanese Traditional Music, Andrew Poppy.

Oh, Woe is Me

2009-03-21T12:56:00.000-04:00

Been looking at local art galleries - I've joked that it's somewhat like bird watching; I'm hoping to see some Art but there are no guarantees! I've been surfing the 'net for inspiring new music as well - not much luck there either. Seems like the Arts are floundering in a sea of confusion and mediocrity.

This is feeding a sense of malaise and frustration with the World@Large here in my Studio as I am so close to finishing a new recording.

What seems to pass for 'new' and 'cutting edge' is generally 'cute,' 'kitchy,' and unchallenging, at best. Check out Chuck Amirkhanian's Otherminds archive at www.radiom.org. I'm listening to Daniel Bernard Roumain's Angelou string quartet. I've avoided it for some years, quickly understanding Roumain to be a faddist, and yes, I stand by my critique. He's not the best of musicians for starters, his composition is lacking in any sense, and the gimmick-ridden Angelou suffers profoundly from a lack of ... composition! There's simply no interest in it, no development, no quirks, no surprises, it's exactly what I expected - that ol' New York 'I Wish I Were a Rock-N-Roller' fluff. This is the stuff that the Europeans, when they ask for American Music, specifically pin-point and say, "NOT this. Something new." I guess I have to ask, what is the point of this piece of music? How is it expanding the art, or confronting a genre? What does it accomplish musically on its own? Does it have a context beyond the moment in which it was created? Was that context relevant at the time? Does the music accomplish what the composer intended? And, at the most superficial level, how does it appeal to craft? Is it well crafted? Well executed?

I will give Roumain kudos for energy, but not more than that. It frustrates me that audiences respond to this kind of work with any enthusiasm whatsoever. Forgive me for being a curmudgeon, but I'm weary of hearing the same old thing over and over again.

So how does this have an impact on what's happening in my studio? I've been dialoguing with a group of local artists, visual artists, who are all suffering the same malaise. One put it so well in our field-trip to investigate local galleries yesterday. At this point in history (this also apply to music) is understood as a commodity, and so is taken to be a luxury. But we all know that's not the case, that Art is a valuable expression of the Times, of Ideals and Ideas and Philosophies; it's the Conscious expression of the Collective Unconscious, and the means by which we find self-identity as a culture, a community and a people. I'll elaborate on this further (on another website - keep an eye out for it). So the work that an engaged artist creates is not a commodity, but the expression of an idea, a point of view. That is to say, the physical manifestation of work, i.e. painting, photograph, sculpture, is not the end itself, but is a byproduct of a tracing of thought and idea. This makes the work valuable beyond its physical materials and gives it the uniqueness that makes it valuable. And important to the times in which it is created.

The same goes for music. Concert Music in the US suffered from the fear of an inattentive audience. So it turned to popular forms, pop music, electronics, rock. That was cute at the moment and I won't deny it opened some doors, even for myself. But it quickly outlived its necessity when it didn't progress. By reducing Concert Music to the lowest common denominator, it didn't achieve the status of pop iconography, but retained the same low listenership, the same limited audience that it had before, and became dated. This is the kind of fad that we will look back on and groan about with an embarrassed sigh. It's not the stuff Beethoven based his work on.

So, this is my statement and pledge to continue to look forward, to hope to expand some ideas and present some challenges and ask for thoughtfulness on the part of my listeners.

The Attentive Listening Lab (watch my home page and the MAS-Lab home page for updates) is in the process of germinating and will begin to take form in the next 12 months. My own work... well, it's a step-by-step process and I'm not going to make any pretense about succeeding - I have to be fair and honest, because I don't know if I'm succeeding. If you've ever heard Chuck Wuornin talk, my gosh, he really has an axe to grind about the state of New Music. And he is 100 % right, but, unfortunately, he doesn't have the solution. He's only identified the problem. That's a first step and maybe the best one can hope for. I'm ambitious though and believe with a little self-application that more can be accomplished.

In the meantime, I need to sit with my pencil and paper in my studio and tackle the issues that have been rolling around in my head like marbles in a tin can...

Listening: Sam Sparro, Jean-Michel Jarre, Paul Horn.

Where the He!! Have you Been??

2009-03-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

I've been working on a new blog on WordPress - yay! Or not. It will be a place where I offer my very opinionated voice about recordings, performances, other-people's work.

Where have I been - I've been working at the Art Gallery and getting up-to-date with my own production company and non-profit .org MAS-Lab. We're reforming, re-naming. More on that soon.

Also madly working on Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders), the recording of the concert I toured last fall and will be touring the next few months. Yes, there is new material on the way too, but one thing at a time!

Meanwhile I've become hopelessly addicted to Graham Norton... Graham, take me away! (No, really, Graham - take me away...)

Listening: James Bond sound tracks, Jean-Michel Jarre: Oxygène Live In Your Living Room, Carl Craig: Landcruising, Diana Ross: Diana, and anything by David Bowie, plus a smattering of Philip Glass. Watch my WordPress Blog for my thoughts on these!

Useless maaahhheeeaaaaaaannnnnnnn

2009-01-18T19:33:00.000-05:00

Catching up on past work; outlining new material; prepping commercial release of concert music from last fall.

A peep into my studio below (rehearsing):

Ngoma Lungundu (for electronics and interactive video) - 3rd Movement.

Current listening: Minty (Leigh Bowery)- Useless Man; Klaus Nomi- Klaus Nomi; Shankar- Raga Aberi: Luomo- Convivial

World Premiere of "Considering Light" in Los Angeles

2008-11-21T05:20:00.001-05:00

Friday December 5
8pm
The Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra
Murphy Recital Hall
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045
$7-10 donation
www.poortommusic.com/index/NEWS
www.wholesaleorchestra.org
(see bottom of this posting for the program note on Considering Light)

Radio Feature
Wednesday, December 3
9pm
Trilogy hosted by Emily Hay
KXLU 88.9 FM
www.kxlu.com
www.emilyhay.com

Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra gives an evening-long Tribute to late Los Angeles composer Stephen "Lucky" Mosko. The concert will feature works by Mosko and several of his former students. The event will take place at Loyola Marymount College's Murphy Recital Hall and will feature three world premieres introduced by Los Angeles expat Nicholas Chase who returns courtesy of Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections. In addition, Emily Hay will talk with Chase and his colleagues on her KXLU program Trilogy 9pm Wednesday, December 3 on FM 88.9.

The Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra (LAWO) is a cooperative of professional experimental musicians who are dedicated to performing music by new and emerging composers. LAWO is also devoted to investigating the influences and directions of modern experimental concert music, through performance and dialogue. The group is committed to expanding the audience of this genre of music, utilizing such avenues as pre-concert talks,and educational outreach.

Nicholas Chase returns to L.A. from Europe and the Pacific Northwest, having just completed the successful touring premieres of Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) for electronics and interactive video and Songs of the Thirsty Sword - Part I for piano, interactive electronics and video. Dubbed by L.A. Weekly as an 'Eye/Ear Explorer,' and described by the L.A. Times as "flamboyant" and "the Rite of Spring meets Metallica," Chase's solo and chamber works have been performed internationally by the likes of the California EAR Unit, Southwest Chamber Music, New Zealand's 175 East, Long Beach Opera and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. His electro-acoustic work has been featured at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland and as part of the Weimar-New York festival in Weimar, Germany. Chase is founder of the Musical Art/Sound Laboratory (MAS-Lab) whose trans-disciplinary work has been exhibited in festivals across the US and Europe. Chase's work with the improvising trio NIRUSU III has been acclaimed by the L.A. Weekly as "pushing the edge of audio/visual improv" while his interactive audio/visual composition Transmission was featured last Spring with the Illuminated Corridor's NOVA at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. The recently toured Ngoma Lungundu and Songs of the Thirsty Sword - Part I will be available on commercial release early in 2009. (www.nicholaschase.net)

Stephen "Lucky" Mosko was for ten years the music director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and was principal conductor of the Griffin Ensemble of Boston. He also served as music director of the Chicago Contemporary Players. He was guest conductor on numerous occasions with the San Francisco Symphony and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic appeared regularly as conductor at numerous festivals and events world-wide. He was music director of the 1984 Olympic Arts Contemporary Music Festival and the 1987 Los Angeles Festival (John Cage Celebration), and was the conductor of the Fromm Music Week at the Aspen Music Festival. Mosko was the music director of the 1990 Ojai Music Festival. He recorded for New World, Crystal, Mode One, Robey, CMP, GM, Nonesuch, New Albion, Newport Classics, Chandos, OO Discs, and Cambria. Mosko was an expert in the field of Icelandic Folk Music, having received two Senior Fulbright/Hayes Fellowships to Iceland, and was a founding member of the Repercussion Unit. He was Associate Professor of Music at Harvard University for two years, but spent most of his career as a member of the composition faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. Stephen "Lucky" Mosko died at his home in Green Valley, California, on December 5, 2005, of natural causes. His music publishing is handled by Leisure Planet (www.leisureplanetmusic.com).

Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra
Conducted by Dr. Running Bear Bunch
Trevor Berens
Ellen Burr
Danny Holt
Frances Moore
Mike Robbins
Derek Stein
Jessica Tunick
Sarah Wass

For Morton Feldman - Stephen "Lucky" Mosko
Sirius (World Premiere) - Running Bear Bunch
Labyrinth 2: Kesaputta (World Premiere) - Trevor Berens
Considering Light (World Premiere) - Nicholas Chase

With Nicholas Chase facilitating an open discussion of Lucky Mosko's life and work.

This concert is funded in part through Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections program.
Your donations help us continue to produce our concerts.

Considering Light
(dedicated to Dorothy Stone)

Light is defined in science as an electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye and exhibits properties of both waves and particles. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light). Owing to this 'wave-particle duality,' light remains enigmatic to the sciences. Light's resilient behavior is uncommon to any other waveform; for instance, light can exist in a vacuum. In 2004 it was shown that pulses of light traveling through a refractive material, such as water or glass, will cast off secondary pulses that travel in advance of, and outlive the initial light pulse. These light 'precursors,' as they are known, consist of the various frequencies (i.e. colors) that are manifest in the initial light radiation, and change spontaneously and continuously; while the primary light wave will diminish and eventually disappear over distance, precursors continue traveling indefinitely, altering their frequencies repeatedly. (focus.aps.org/story/v13/st20).

Mid-way through composing Considering Light it occurred to me I ought to call it 'Re-Considering Music.' This is the first non-vocal, completely acoustic, ensemble composition I have written since Crush, which premiered now almost eight years ago. Crush was a first, terrified step into a hugely conceptual realm. It raised many issues, most of which I thought I had conquered through a series of solo-works that were commissioned over the three years following Crush's premiere. Early in 2004, however, while at an artists' retreat in Florida, I realized that I hadn't conquered anything - I had only mastered a musical vernacular that had quickly exhausted itself.

Later that year, I was invited by a friend, a visual artist I had met at that same retreat, to attend a drawing workshop at the ranch of sculptor/painter Jane Rosen in San Gregario, California. Jane and I made a unique (and cherished) connection as we discovered together that composing music (giving form to sounds) and drawing (giving form to shadows) are very much the same process. In fact, the physical action of drawing notes on the page, for me, a former graphic designer, is profoundly connected to the act of drawing. I imagine both notes and visual images in the same way: as multi-dimensional existences, with backs, sides and fronts, exposed by light and defined by shadow. That weekend in San Gregario Jane talked extensively about the three opacities of light - transparent, translucent and opaque. I immediately recognized these measurements of intensity as being directly applicable to layers of musical sounds and can think of a hundred times when Lucky Mosko, my first composition teacher, talked about Mel Powell, his own mentor, and Mel's musical approach to the concept of translucency. He called it density.

I am an avid science and math fanatic and have always incorporated systems and complex mathematic equations into my work. In Considering Light I have utilized the mathematic structure of light to generate rows, pitch groups, rhythms and other serial materials you are hearing. I have isolated the numeric structures of each color of the spectrum and, in the tradition of James Tenney (with whom I also studied), I used math to generate specific scales and systems. In the tradition of Lucky Mosko, I ignored all of my own rules and attempted to create a piece of work that simply 'is.'

I Left My Heart in Brno...

2008-11-07T16:09:00.001-05:00

I'm madly working to get my land-legs (ha!) back. Been very busy at my day job, and very unfocused about getting my work on track - the trip, although it was fantastic, incredible, I can't find the right words to describe it - exhausted me. I have so much post-production work to catch up on...

There are factors beyond my control in this scenario... Only hours before I left San Francisco my laptop went dark - I was going to do some additional recording at the Maybeck Studio, but apparently my Mac HD had other designs. I was able to schedule an appointment for the Genius Bar in PDX, my next destination, and as soon as we landed I headed straight for the Apple Store. Thankfully, my hard drive was in good health and I had an external drive with me - (thank you LaCie for the phenomenally reliable and compact Rugged Drive!!) and I was able to back up the 5-hour recording session of Songs of the Thirsty Sword Pt. I I had made at the Maybeck a few nights prior (yes, 1am to 6am, then I performed the piece for the public that evening). It's was 9 days before my laptop was back in my hands and thankfully the hard drive was in tact (I was warned that the replacement of the logic board [gasp!!] might cause problems) and I am up and running - but 8 days behind.

They are waiting for the first movement and all parts of Considering Light in Los Angeles. I made some massive revisions during my short time in Vienna and on the ten-hour flight back to West Coast US. Nothing like being trapped in a metal tube hurtling through the air for an extended period to help concentration. I don't know why, but I enjoy composing when I'm flying. It's relaxing and somehow I can really focus - even though it seems completely ridiculous.

So I've made the edits, I've made more edits the last few days and now I only have to copy these changes, additions and specifics into Finale and email them south. I can't believe it is so close to the premiere - this is awful~! But this is often how premieres are done in the US. I was told by Pierre Boulez that an ensemble generally spends upwards of 6 months, usually a year, with a new piece of music in rehearsal before they even consider a premiere. Then they have multiple performances. I can't even comment on that. I know that Gubaidulina works that way, with an ensemble to workshop her ideas even - imagine having your players there to actually aid in the process of creating the work (instead of doing damage control during a dress rehearsal!).

I am grateful that I will have a week in LA working with the ensemble and of course, I know the conductor well and we have been in communication. I am hoping there won't be any changes necessary, but if there are, I am confident this group of players will be able to switch gears quickly and easily. Any changes at this point should be minor anyway - considering I'm on the 15th draft of the first movement... my gosh, 15th draft - that is a record even for me!! And you should see the pile of edits on the cutting-room floor... the 'cellist and violinist will thank me for that!

Maybeck Recital

2008-10-26T16:26:00.000-04:00

After an enigmatic performance of all electronic media at the Luggage Store, I had the opportunity to perform at the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley. I recorded and performed there with NIRUSU III about two years ago, so I know the space well. When I was booking concerts earlier this year it occurred to me that Songs of the Thirsty Sword 1 was pretty much designed to fit into that hall. I'd also heard from my close friend and NIRUSU III co-veteran, Susan Allen, that Gregory Moore (proprietor of the Hall) had recently performed an amazing vocal + electronics work - so I had the idea to split the marquis with him.

Greg was stellar. his performances were exciting and dynamic and I'm eager to hear more soon! I didn't know what to expect, but I knew, considering we were both educated in the same place and share many of the same musical philosophies, he'd be a sure bet. I also have to credit Susie for her endorsement - I trust her taste implicitly.

Songs was performed on the 7.5 foot grand with my back to the audience. I projected the video ambiently (sic) across the entire end of the hall so that the images became more surreal and environmental than distinctly recognizable - which proved to be really effective and dramatic. It cast shadows across the music and across my back, hands, onto the keys and through the inside of the piano while I played the stoic, melancholic strains of the piece. Greg complimented me on playing the specific instrument, as opposed to simply stroking the keys of a piano - I was up until 6am the night before recording Songs and had, of course, spent as much time as possible rehearsing and running the piece on that piano before hand. The truth is, I'm not a pianist, but I want certain things out of this piece when I perform it. In order for that to happen, I have to become very intimate with the instrument I play it on. I'm glad that carried.

Other un-official, verbal critiques were:

Pretty/Devastating! -Suki O'Kane

Different than any thing I've heard you do... a new direction! -Stephanie Lie

and

Like a really morbid Eric Satie! -John Benson

Glad to please! It was really tough to play, but the space was really accommodating and I think the listeners understood it environmentally as I intended. I have to say, they were the kindest, quietest audience I've ever encountered. Usually in an extensive, quiet piece of music, you will hear much scuffling, program waving and often coughing where the music is at its quietist. Last night, as I was sitting there sweating, holding my breath between infinitely soft and slow phrases, I could have heard a pin drop - I was tempted to turn around just to see if anyone was still there (or awake)! It's so hard performing with those eyes right on the back of your neck from just a few feet away. In Brno, I performed in a darkened hall on a small stage with the video blinding me from the gaze of the audience. I could just float away in that little pool of light on the stage, and I think I gave a great World Premiere for that reason (I was told it went over very well).

But last night - wow, I was in the room, just feet away from the listeners, I'm sure they could see the sweat on the back of my neck and I could watch the projections from the same angle that they could see them, spewing across the room, across my back and the piano onto the wall... it was a very different experience, sort of like driving a very large bus full of people on a very steep, windy, mountain road...

Luggage Store under the belt

2008-10-24T16:09:00.000-04:00

After repeating Ngoma Lungundu - with some basic revisions - last night at the Music By the Eyeful opener, Luggage Store, San Francisco, I was tagged by Jimmy Howe for an on-street interview. He's got a great Blog, check it out at theatreoftheblind.net. You can also hear Keith Evans talk about his compelling live-analogue-video-sonic collab with Dylan Bolles. It was a great evening, well-attended, even if the general audience seemed a little at sea. It was a pretty esoteric exposition, come to think of it.

Thanks to Suki O'Kane, as usual doing an outstanding job of curating, hosting, introducing and generally Illuminating (sic) all our lives!

One thing not mentioned in the inner-view, Ngoma (as well as Thirsty Sword Pt.1) are really uncharacteristic works for me. Kadet Kuhne, who was in attendance last night (thanks for coming KK!) immediately noticed it and commented - "this is much different than anything you've done!" which is completely true. There are creative issues I'm still wrestling with, the first is - I have noticed that people who hear Ngoma without seeing the video have a much stronger response to it than those who have seen it mediated by the video. If the video is compromising the work, I'm inclined to axe the video for future performances; on the other hand, the video wouldn't go wasted because I am trying to collaborate with my friend Francesca Penzani, choreographer, to expand the piece into a dance work. The video would then become part of a complete performative construction.

I'm not worried about Thirsty Sword Pt.1 because any of my creative issues with that work will be addressed in Thirsty Sword Pt.2.

I will be recording Thirsty Sword Pt.1 tonight at the Maybeck recital hall (where I'm performing it tomorrow night) on the Yamaha 7.5' grand. The finished recording will be released with Ngoma sometime in early 2009, probably January. Watch my various websites for details on that.

Again, I have to thank Suki and also a big shout to Ivo Medek who was such a fantastic host at the Janacek Academie.
Cha

Aloha from Vienna... Aloha?

2008-10-21T20:14:00.000-04:00

October 20, 2008

My last day in Europe this trip and I am finally getting a chance to sit still and write. The tour has been phenomenal.

I’m writing from Vienna, and even though today is a prime tourist day, I have out-touristed myself and so am staying in (mostly) to catch up on work, composing, small technical revisions of the tour material and to take time to rehearse Ngoma and Songs in San Francisco.

Firstly, my time at the Janacek Academie was superlative – the students were stupendous and Ivo Medek, my host, was absolutely wonderful. Brno itself is a city only two hours from Vienna, built and designed by many of the same names who fashioned Vienna. For this reason, the city bears a marked resemblance to Vienna, but with a contemporary sincerity not apparent in Vienna. I will elaborate later.

Brno is stunning to look at and what’s more, the people are kind, the city is thriving and alive. Pubs are open late, serving food, every night of the week. Seated in the south of Moravia, it is situated within some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen in my life. An unscheduled/unpublicized concert in the city of Uesthti Rsheshti at the opening of a retrospective for artist Ludmila Karikarova offered me the chance to see some more of that country-side, and let me tell you – it’s not matched anywhere. I absolutely love the Czech countryside and the people fit it well. I won’t be shy in admitting I also drank my fair share of slivovice, a locally/regionally distilled plum brandy, and with that I think I could spend many happy days in Southern Moravia, drinking the local wine and eating at the local pubs.

The students at the Janaceck Academie – I must mention them again: they were wonderful, attentive (both my seminar and my concert were packed, the latter yielding standing-room only and running short on printed programs) and eager to share their work. The compositions I saw showed excellent skill and prescience and a desire toward innovation in whatever steps can be taken. I haven’t seen US students producing much that is more interesting. At least not more that remains in the realm of notes to which the composer is committed. This is something lacking in much experimentalism these days, leaving so much to theatrics and spectacle, the musical experience is very literally out-the-door. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person to espouse traditionalism, by the same token, I think a composer has a responsibility to compose (damnit) not simply to stand on a stage and … well, much of what is happening in the most ‘experimental’ halls of academia (read between the lines here) is a pale imitation of the worst ‘art-happenings’ of the late 60s and early 70s. That was an important time for Art (with a capital and scarlet letter ‘A’) but that time is also past – let’s get on with the music! Bearing in mind that my definition of ‘music’ is extremely broad.

In addition to all that, I had the unbelievable pleasure of improvising (video) with the incredibly talented composer/performer Lenka playing piano, for the Czech public, the press, and the Czech Minister of Culture. I accompanied her at Ms. Karikarova’s opening and I can tell you, it was absolutely simple to provide dynamic visuals to her improvisation. She was truly inspiring! It seems a very strong possibility we will work again together in the not-too-terribly-distant future.

So here I am in Vienna. I have enjoyed Vienna tremendously, I find it lacks the vitality that I require of a large city. Vienna owes its current opulence to its outrageous plethora of museums. I have seen so much Art here it very literally began to hurt my head yesterday. I would love dearly to wander down to the Belvedere and gander at a few more Klimts, but to be honest, I simply couldn’t stand to see another thing. I certainly paid my due, however: I spent nearly 45 minutes with “Life and Death” the other day and at least as much time contemplating the Beethoven Frieze, if not longer. These are things I have both read and written about and whose reason for being are the same reasons I create. That is to say, the men of the Secession were very much about departing from tradition and finding new means of expression. I think it would please Klimt to know that, of all the many museums in Vienna, the Secession House is the only one exhibiting non-conservation-oriented work – they are showing experimental, out-of-the-boundaries work with which one may or may not agree, and that in itself is exactly the point. It was the perfect palate cleanser to the extensive, but under-explained Van Gogh retrospective that I saw at the Albertina immediately prior.

It seems to me that Vienna is very much a City Under Glass, resting on the laurels of past glories. It is a beautiful city, but everywhere I go I am reminded that I am in a case, a vitrine, a picture-perfect, scrubbed and polished monument to eras far long gone. Although visiting Vienna is fun, I cannot imagine living here, for the same reasons I can’t imagine living in Berlin: the past weighs so heavy on the present, there is no sight of the future, or at a future that is a thriving, dynamic thing.

This is my perspective coming from the West Coast of the US. Everything is still so incredibly new there, and we are still innovating, researching, finding, fighting our way in the wilderness and pioneering new standards. Remember, Morton Subotnick, Harry Partch, Terry Riley, John Adams, John Cage, Kronos Quartet, Lou Harrison all came from the West – and that only names a few.

I have taken a small eating break and now have much, much work to do before I pack up to catch my 7am flight to San Francisco. I will write more from there…

Nicholas Chase - World Premieres of Ngoma Lungundu & Songs of the Thirsty Sword

2008-10-11T18:37:00.000-04:00

October 14 - SETKAVANI NOVE HUDBY PLUS: International Festival of Contemporary Music Plus - Brno, Czech Republic
October 23 - Music By The Eyeful - Luggage Store, San Francisco, California
October 25 - Maybeck Recital Hall - Berkeley, California
October 31 - DIVA Center, Eugene, Oregon

Nicholas Chase embarks on a debut solo tour premiering Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) and Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko). Chase's interactive visual work with the improvising trio NIRUSU III has been acclaimed by the LA Weekly as "pushing the edge of audio/visual improv", and his interactive audio/visual composition Transmission was featured last Spring with the Illuminated Corridor's NOVA at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. This concert circuit, Chase continues his exploration of dynamic, spontaneously composed visual narratives and music with the premieres of Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) for 4-channel electronics and interactive film/animation/video, and Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko) for solo piano with 4-channel interactive electronics and video. For more information please visit www.nicholaschase.net.

October 14
SETKAVANI NOVE HUDBY PLUS: International Festival of Contemporary Music Plus
7:30pm
Janacek Academie of Music and Performing Arts
Brno, Czech Republic
Chase will be in residence at the Janaceck Academie of Music and Performing Arts from October 13-17 as part of the Academie's month-long 12th international music festival. Chase gives the World Premiere performances of Ngoma Lungundu and Songs of the Thirsty Sword.
This residency is funded in part through the Foundation for Contemporary Arts

October 23
Music By The Eyeful
8pm
Luggage Store
1007 Market Street at 6th
San Francisco, CA 94103
tickets: $6-10 Sliding Scale
www.myspace.com/musicbytheeyeful
Nicholas Chase, Dylan Bolles and Keith Evans will open the Music By The Eyeful audio/visual performance festival at San Francisco's legendary Luggage Store. This performance will reprise Chase's premiere of the epic Ngoma Lungundu for solo laptop in 4-channel sound with interactive video. The Festival hosts a bevy of cutting-edge aritsts through April, 2009, all at the Luggage Store.

October 25
Nicholas Chase and Gregory Moore: New Works
Private Concert - If you would like to attend RSVP rsvp@nicholaschase.net
Maybeck Recital Hall
1847 Euclid Avenue at Buena Vista
Berkeley, CA
www.handprintseries.com
Nicholas Chase and Gregory Moore present an evening of New Works. Chase reprises Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I for solo piano and interactive video and electronics

October 31
Nicholas Chase and Spark Applied to Powder - An Evening of Electronic Mu(sic) and Video
8pm
DIVA Center
110 W. Broadway, Eugene
$5-7 suggested donation
www.divacenter.org
Chase and Eugene sound-artist Spark Applied to Powder share an evening of eclectic and unusual non-synth-pop electronic music. Chase reprises Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) for multi-channel electronics and interactive video after premiering Ngoma in Europe and San Francisco. Spark Applied to Powder (aka Kevin Spahn) offers his signature analogue-artistry with new sonic expressions and ambient drone works.

BASIC DUMPLINGS

2008-09-23T02:50:00.000-04:00

This must be a quickie, a shortie, a nooner, a fast one, on the stairs, in the car, in the alleyway...

I've been pulling all-nighters to be sure that the material is ready for premiere in Brno. I only just finished the electronics for Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part 1 (For Lucky Mosko) last night. There is mixing and audio-routing to do (i.e. programming work to make the live production 4-channel surround-sound) and then of course, rehearsing. I don't play piano - so it is a little nerve-wracking to think I will be sitting in front of an international audience in 3 weeks, premiering a new solo-piano work. Of course, there are the interactive video and electronics to distract from the fact that I don't play piano. I'm making light of a situation that I find pretty terrifying. An LA Times critic complained (in an otherwise glowing review) once that I was slow to prepare between movements for OPUS when I performed turntables with the California E.A.R. Unit. Yeah... well, he couldn't see the sweat dripping off of my forehead, down my nose and onto the platters while I switched out the records... I figured, better take my time and make it sound right than to screw it up and kick myself forever... ! I think I did the right thing and in all honestly Songs is composed with the idea that even a non-musician could perform it, so, it's fail-safe. I just dislike performing.

Strangely enough, I am looking forward to performing this short tour; it's all me, I'm the only variable, so there isn't much to freak out about. And I do pretty well once I get started. I guess I shouldn't gage nervousness by that performance with the E.A.R. - they are my great friends, but I really was terrified to stand on that stage with them. I was, after all, barely out of grad school and they'd been performing some of the world's most difficult music for twenty odd years. And well, I should add. What a trip to have come from nowhere and end up on stage with these amazing musicians!

The two years of touring with Susan Allen helped too. Improvising. My absolute worst fear. I'm a composer and the idea of getting up in front of an audience with nothing planned is hair raising!

But Susie is an outstanding improviser, and incredible human being and she asked me to join her on the stage because she sensed I could do it. The trio NIRUSU III we had with Rus Pearson was knock-out. I felt really secure working with those two, because no matter what happened, we were skilled enough at listening to make some great sounds together. I have listened to our recordings and am never disappointed. It sounded as good as it felt.

So here I am, out on my own. Not improvising, but performing composed, electronic works. This is exciting! I'm excited! This stuff is really new, it's fresh, in fact, it's stuff I wouldn't have considered composing a year or two years ago. It's just completely new terrain and whether or not people like it, I guess that's a factor, but the truth is, it's a travelogue of where I've been the last ten years. I think that both pieces, particularly Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) really show the skill I have honed in listening. Listening is the most difficult part of composing, because when you listen, that's when you realize you need to shut up; or maybe, maybe you need to go on just a little bit more. Or maybe that doesn't need to be said at all. It's like writing out a sentence and taking out all the extra words so that only the strongest, most important words stay in - that way the meaning will never fall into question.

So, for the last weeks I have been absent, working round the clock on these compositions. I'm wearing a wrist brace because I've developed tendonitis; in spite of that, I am ploughing ahead. I only just finished the complete arrangement for the fourth movement of Ngoma today. I have to tackle the video. I have to remix it for 4-channel. I have to press my shirts for five concerts!

Concert dates:
October 14: Brno, Czech Republic, Janacek Academie New Music Plus Festival: Debut Solo Concert of 2 World Premiere works: Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) for 4-channel surround-sound electronics and interactive video and Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko) for solo piano and interactive electronics and video.

October 23: Opening Music By The Eyeful festival at the Luggage Store in San Francisco with Ngoma Lungundu

October 25: Private Concert of Un-Characteristic Compositions with Greg Moore at the Maybeck Recital Hall, Berkeley, CA where I will perform Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko).

October 31: Ngoma Lungundu (a surprise concert at a surprise location - details TBA!)

See my website for details about all events www.nicholaschase.net.

(Ngoma Lungundu will be for sale by digital download after the premiere performance in Brno, Czech Republic)

Good Lovin' Messin' Up My Mind

2008-08-14T17:53:00.000-04:00

Oooh woo woo weee?

Umm, those lyrics are the profound uttering of Grand Funk Railroad. Ok, so Rock-n-roll has its weak moments!

Lots going on, confirming tour dates, looking for holes to add more. More than likely this tour will involve two trips to Europe and several flights to the Right and to the Left Coasts of the US taking place over the course of the entire year. Well, idle hands are the devil's playthings.

I finished a draft of the documentary soundtrack and am waiting for comments and ultimately approval from the producer of the program before I finalize and master the tracks. There will be revisions and expansions, I am certain of it. I've heard most of the voice-over for the docu and it's really nicely done, very well conceived. I wanted to treat that with respect as I composed.

Initially my producer pointed me in the direction of the German band Console for inspiration. My producer is in her early 20s and perhaps didn't realize that Console are profoundly influenced by the pre-ambient work of Brian Eno (Before and After Science, for instance) and the collaborative work of Robyn Guthrie (Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd, a California composer who was at CalArts in the 70s and is noted for his ambient compositions - which include collaborations with Brian Eno. Knowing this, I went to the source and began work composing.

Well, weeks later, new software, new gear, and I had some really lovely recordings and some compositions that were composed on the piano. I haven't composed on the piano (and by this I mean by placing my hands on the keys and improvising) since 1998. I incorporated brief improvisations into the solo work Woad for Indigo in 2004, but only very brief moments, maybe a measure here and there. What have I learned since 1998? Well, the compositions are simultaneously more complex and simpler. More complex in my level of playing and in the nuances I eased out of the piano, but simpler in that, there is no proper score: instead, I sketched out an idea (see snaps this post), sometimes maybe as much as a melody with some suggestions for rhythm and structure, and then improvised around that.

My 'ensemble' then consisted of both live recordings of my performances on an old upright grand piano and midi-recordings that I translated into various instruments and sounds. After about two weeks I had roughly ten to twelve minutes of music and some decent demos.

My producer patiently waited; after initial review, she then firmly pointed me in the direction of her preference for glich/loop-oriented music. It was a logical step. I felt strongly that the original compositions were somehow old fashioned; the producer is looking for something new- she is 20-something, as I mentioned, but the subject of the documentary is the Buchenwald concentration camp, located only a few miles outside Weimar in eastern Germany. My producer interviewed the natives of Weimar, a town that boasts both fame and infamy in terms of who and what has come through - Bach and Wagner and Liszt (composers), Goethe, Schiller and Nietsche (writers), Feininger (painter) and Walter Gropius (architect) founded the Bauhaus University there before he moved it to Dessau under pressure from the Nazis. The question this documentary poses is "how could a concentration camp be situated so close to this small, thriving town, and go either un-noticed or un-challenged?" It's a tough subject and the people who are interviewed are all older and seem eager to elaborate on the personal angst they have suffered over the subject.

Musically, it seemed really important to support some fundamental concepts. I didn't want to make judgments about the interviewees with the music, so I intentionally composed modally, emphasizing the emotional ambiguity of the subject. Furthermore, although the interviewees are speaking from experience and really searching their memories, which was the foundation for my original compositions, the producer (who also acts as first-person narrator) presents the documentary from her personal perspective- a young person in a new century. So it made sense to translate all of these ideas into a contemporarily relevant musical style.

As a result, I used my original compositions as the source for a loop-based soundtrack that I hope supports the documentary successfully, drawing from the contemporary and the 'new,' while still conjuring up a sense of memory and poignancy. I plan to offer the soundtrack for resale on iTunes as soon as the tracks are finalized. In addition, I will post the broadcast dates of the documentary when they become available...

Listening: Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, Eagles, Carly Simon, Amina.

未濟 (You Know How Men Are)

2008-08-05T01:44:00.000-04:00

(Waiting for the flesh...)

In case anyone ever wonders, those odd lines of text are nearly always quotes from various songs, yes, out of context. If you follow the hints and clues, you might discover that they aren't very deep, but usually what's playing in the background as I type The above is from "How Men Are" by Heaven 17, in my estimation one of their absolute best albums: I always liked Heaven 17's lyrics, for instance: "My clothes are too big for my body / my body's too big for my mind / I don't like humiliation / I can change my clothes, but I don't think I'll change my mind!" Somehow this brings back images of David Byrne in his Noh-inspired 'Big Suit' in the fantastic Talking Heads concert-movie Stop Making Sense. I recently watched this film again, and I think it's an incredible piece of film-work, not just a simple concert recording. It reminds me that pop music can really stretch the boundaries of whatever discipline it touches - film, video, rock-n-roll, pop music, at least the stuff I like, strives to surprise and catch you off-guard. Some of these moments are worth revisiting, as in the case of Heaven 17 and the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense.

I did it again, I disappeared. I simply submerged into whatever it was I was working on. I think last I wrote I was working on an animated sequence for N-L and I made headway, then discovered that some of what I want to do is profoundly detail oriented; not that I don't have the patience to do it, there are larger parts of the thing that need taking care of, for instance, the fourth movement needs finishing. Actually, needs creating! Yes, I have sketches, but I haven't executed a single note. Shucks.

Then there's the ongoing battle with Considering Light which is really challenging me, largely because I've been working with electronics and solo instruments for the last few compositions. I have to constantly remind myself that this is an acoustic piece and of the many, really incredibly wonderful things that 'regular' instruments can do. It's coming along and, although I like much of what I've done, I don't love, at least not yet. I was advised by compatriot Michael Finnissy at one point to "love every note to death" - this follows the line of thinking that I learned from Lucky Mosko, who taught me to really look at the detail of what I'm creating: you can make a quilt - or you can make an incredible piece of lace. Certainly a quilt gets the job done, but the lace... that's refined. I'm in the early stages yet, so it looks like a quilt, but when I'm done it will be lace. Of course, Lucky always talked in cooking terms, so maybe I should too: it will be like an incredible seviche, with many, many layers. Right now, I'm just getting the ingredients ready. Lucky made me seviche on my birthday once and I haven't tasted anything that compares since. So I have a standard, cooking or composing, to live up to!

So where did I disappear to? I have been sketching the 3rd movement of Considering LIght and revising the first movement. I was gifted a Reiki alignment, and wow, the very next day I had a pretty successfully revised first movement; I can't emphasize the effects of that session enough. All those who don't believe, fine, but I'm telling you, I didn't expect the floodgates to open quite like that. And the Reiki-ist (?) immediately pointed out that I had blockage in Chakras 2 and 5. Well, 2 is procreative and creative - it is the energy point where ideas, passion and creativity are generated from. Color: orange, also the sex center, but that's pro-creative, correct? And what is the 5th - it is the throat chakra, baby blue in color and is the energy center for self-expression. When we are upset we say, "I'm choked up" because we can't talk, we can't express ourselves. Have you ever been in a situation where you have something you need to say, but for whatever reason it's inappropriate - and you start coughing? You don't have to believe anything I'm saying, but just consider it for a moment, not in an esoteric sense, but in a practical sense. There is energy flowing all through our bodies, physical energy, kinetic energy, heat carried by blood - and certainly the muscular constriction of the throat could be the physical manifestation or unconscious response to psychological discomfort. Next time you're in a quiet room, notice who coughs and who doesn't - how is it that we can go entire days without thinking about our throats but the minute the lights go down in a concert hall and we're not supposed to talk, that's when we feel the urge to cough. Hmmm... as a composer, it's something I've really thought about - and even considered offering pre-concert meditations prior to performances for audience members who are uncomfortable in silence! Wouldn't that be a hoot!

I've also been more deeply involved in my yoga practice of late. I have a strenuous Autumn up ahead and I want to greet it with tremendous strength and deep health so that I can put my absolute best foot forward. I attended a yoga workshop with some friends and was amazed at how far I've progressed since I began about a year ago; the instructors were supportive and encouraged me to try a hand stand - and I was successful (with help, but have been able to achieve it since at home in my own practice). This progress has given me incentive to really up the anti and challenge myself more - I see these instructors wrapping their various limbs around their necks and, where last year I thought, "wow, that's just not possible, I'm perfectly happy with my arm outstretched over here..." now I think, "that's a beautiful pose... I look forward to doing that!" Nothing is impossible.

I also disappeared into the sketches for the soundtrack I'm working on for a German radio broadcast. It's a docu about the Buchenwald Concentration Camp outside of Weimar, Germany, in what was Eastern Germany. I won't go into details now, but that has been a rough experience - the subject matter calls for a lot of consideration for a lot of different things. I feel the director is taking a unique and interesting approach and we are agreed on many aspects of the music. I composed and recorded some sketches- I got the director's feedback and I've been waiting for some new gear and software to arrive in order to begin refining my work. Snaps are of the old, upright grand piano I recorded for this soundtrack.

Listening: Ryoji Ikeda, Heaven 17, The Luxury Gap (Original US Release), How Men Are, Japanese traditional Gagaku music (wow, this stuff is simply fantastic!)

Altura Do Sol - (Donuts Make My Browneye Blue?)

2008-06-30T17:42:00.001-04:00

It feels like Sunday.

The last few days have been really fruitful; I've gotten the script and voice overs for the documentary to which I'll be composing the sound track and have begun dialogue with the director of a second documentary about that sound track. Both projects will reflect each other in strange ways and I'm excited about composing and compiling the ensemble and music that will be created for these pieces. I think both subjects require a specific kind of approach, but one that will provide an open venue for my creativity in the recording studio. That's exciting, building a project in which I will have control over the building of the sound/s that ultimately create the performance of the music.

So much of composing is thinking and rethinking and thinking again, then taking the ingredients and making a pie when you'd maybe intended to bake a cake. But you never know what's going to happen, you just need to know how to use the tools in your kitchen. I recently had this incredible coffee cake from Marlow and Sons in Williamsburg; I came in late on a Sunday and found their baked goods to be in low supply - so I bought what was on the counter: cardamon coffee cake. I love cardamon, the Arabic coffee I grew up on is infused with cardamon seeds, finely ground into the darkly roasted coffee. When I was a kid, we lived about 500 feet from the local coffee roaster and I can tell you what the mornings smelled like.

My gosh, there is nothing in the world like freshly roasted and freshly brewed Arabic coffee. Business meetings are always conducted over coffee - in fact, I was taken as an adult to one business meeting with my uncle at an old fashioned market. We were invited to sit in the courtyard behind the workshop, in the shade of some trees. The men all sat in a circle and discussed business, while the local coffee meister, a youngish man with a large coffee brewer made of engraved steel strapped to his back and a single, porcelain coffee cup. These brewers are different than the dolé that you make coffee with at home, so the brew is different, smoother somehow. The cups are about 1/4 of a US coffee mug and shaped sort of lotus-like, usually with small patterns in vertical stripes running from the narrowed base to the open lip.

This man brewed his coffee and each one of us in turn took the filled cup and slugged it back in one or two gulps, like a shot of espresso would go down in Italy. Wow! What a flavor! And the vendor went around and around until we'd had our fill of coffee.

How did I get here from there? Oh, well, my point is that, although I love cardamon, I wasn't so keen about it in my coffee cake. But Marlow and Sons doesn't usually make a mistake, as my friend M pointed out to me that afternoon as we greedily ate the incredibly delicious coffee cake, washing it down with the specialty tea she'd just brought back from Paris. So, composing is like that. Sometimes it seems like a bad idea, but if you know your tools and you use the spices in just the right way, you can muster the most amazing flavors.

The flavor of Considering Light has changed considerably with the new ensemble. I have purchased two of the instruments I'm composing for and am really pleased with the sounds I have come up with. These instruments will comprise my future ensemble and also form the basis for the music in the two sound tracks I'm starting work on.

I am a little stuck on the second movement of Considering Light, but the third movement seems to be writing itself. As of about a week ago I had the beginning and the end, both compiled from notes I'd made about the piece a year ago, when I thought the piece was a single movement. That material has gotten so distorted and refracted in what has now become the first movement, I feel free to recycle it in the next two movements. It will provide both continuity and cohesiveness, which is a little unusual for me in terms of a multi-movement piece. Usually I work with different movements as though each movement were a uniquely different expression of a musical idea - so my movements tend to sound as though they don't belong together. Considering Light is different in that the movements will definitely sound related. I'm glad to be working this way, because I feel l can really exhaust the possibilities of the material.

Last night I realized that I want the 3rd movement to have some kind of thematic or melodic sinew. Yesterday I began sketching on that and I think I put down about 5 notes and gave up; I just couldn't see the form that I want to hear. So today I picked up my sketches for the beginning and the end and looked again - then I realized that, in an early draft of movement 1 I had composed a long melodic section, originally a solo-istic line, but then democratically dispersed throughout the instrumentation. Of course, all that is now lost or obliterated by the re-orchestration, not to mention the fact that I've foregone the idea of creating melodic material in the first movement, although it's there, it's now greatly fragmented.

Well, that is my answer! I reconstructed that melodic line, about 10 measures long, and tried it out with my opening material; atmospherically it works just fine, but it needed transposing to make the material feel connected - but wait, those five notes I wrote yesterday - well, what do you know, it turns out that those work beautifully as a transitional bridge between the materials! Ta dah! Oh, and the melodic bit dovetails just perfectly with the end that I've sketched. And so Bob's your uncle. Cardamon coffee cake anyone?

The images are from an animated sequence I'm working on for the interactive film that goes with a key piece I will premiere on my tour in the fall - I still haven't determined if that piece premieres in San Francisco, New York or Brno. The primary material of the composition here is, incidentally, coffee.

Listening: Yusef Lateef Live at Cranbrook, Mary Lou Williams Black Christ of the Andes, Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Daniel Lanois The Pearl.

It May Not Be The World's Most Esteemed Profession

2008-06-26T01:23:00.000-04:00

...but it sure beats law or Politics!
(Quote from Stephen Schwartz' Up To His Old Tricks from Magic Show, 1979)

Good comments from Shoister regarding Illuminated Corridor in Manhattan - I recommend checking out youtube.com/illcorr.

I'm back at the drawing table, in a literal sense. I've spent the last week/s regrouping and assessing Considering Light (dedicated to Dorothy Stone, while she was living) which will premiere in late September.

The piece has undergone a large revision and reconstruction. What you see below is the sort of old-fashioned graphic production table method of cut and paste- no kids, in the old days, we really used scissors and glue to do our layouts.

I wasn't satisfied with the first movement, so I changed the instrumentation- I boiled it down to its bare elements and extracted some instruments I'm not comfortable with timbrally to replace them with alternate instruments. This new configuration (Flute, Piano, Violin, Cello, Percussion) has been the best remedy; I feel like the ensemble, now about half the number of instruments I was working with originally, is manageable and I can imagine how the piece sounds.

I was never satisfied with the length either, and with the piece suddenly springing into focus like this, I've begun a second movement and have sketches for a third. I think all in all it won't be longer than 15 minutes, each movement shorter than the last.

I had the craziest dream last night - I dreamed that I was at an art school wandering around somewhere. I turned around and saw this lovely young woman and suddenly said, out loud - "DW." The woman said to me, "I'm not DW and please don't call me that, although, it is a beautiful name." I said, "Well, actually, I know you're not DW, but your face made me think of DW. I went to high school with DW and - I think I need to find her!"

Someone in the room turned around and said, "DW? Well, you know she teaches summer classes here." I was impressed and mentioned that last I'd heard she was starting a production company in New York. The person I was speaking to said, "Yes, that's right- she's been really successful. In fact, she's leaving today right after class orientation to fly to Den Haag to tell them she's not going to do the Rauschenberg exhibit."

Well, this is where it gets weird. Yes, I knew DW in high school (in waking life) and I believe she did start a theater production company; but what was implied in this conversation is that she had somehow gotten into installation design as a sideline to her theatrical endeavors and had been approached by a museum to do this exhibit for a Bob Rauschenberg retrospective. I realized, in my dream, that she shouldn't turn it down, that she should hire me to do the job for her!

I ran out of the room to find DW; but somehow I ended up at the front of the art school, which turned out not to be an art school at all, but a community center that hosted a series of advanced art classes, bringing at risk kids and high end artists and art students together. At the entrance to the complex someone I apparently knew grabbed me and offered me a job as a guard for one of the installation spaces. I thought - well, I need a job, so why not? So I started working and the first thing that happened was that I went into the space while a family wandered through the installation. When I left for my break, my new supervisor came by and said, "I hear you weren't outside guarding the space and some people came through." I told him that I had been there in fact, but I had gone into the space while that small group had come through. There was some dispute and disbelief and I suddenly thought- my gosh, what am I doing working as a security guard at a community center art installation??? So I quit. I didn't so much as quit as I just left and didn't come back. I went to find DW.

In every room there were evening classes, but I couldn't find DW. I was worried she'd already left for Den Haag- I had to give her my hard-sell pitch! I thought, well, I'll have to find her on the internet, or go to the office and get a cell number for her.

Then it's a blur, I don't know what happened, but I remember looking at the space and saying to my crew, "Yes, this is good, this space is perfect..." and the next thing I know, the show is open and Bob Rauschenberg (whom I've met in waking life) is shaking my hand telling me how great he thinks I've done in designing the retrospective. Then I'm winning awards for the installation design.

How cool, how weird. It's stuck with me all day. Oh, and I did look up DW- she's acting in New York, although there's no sign of her production company or that she does any work beyond theater.

Listening today: Deadmau5 (various singles), Morton Feldman Patterns In A Chromatic Field.

Illuminated Corridor Closes the Whitney Biennial

2008-06-21T01:41:00.000-04:00

I've taken my time posting this because I simply had to think about something else for a while. I intend to post new revelations about the work I've dived into since I got back in the next couple days, but I couldn't justify that without posting something about the Illuminated Corridor convergence on Manhattan.

Weather in New York has been fantastic- oh, except for May 31st, the day of the Illuminated Corridor. Please note in the background of my day-shots, the large puddles of standing water. These shots were taken when I optimistically believed the rain had passed for the day. Oh how wrong I was!

It rained, but it didn't rain us out, as you can see. But there was one moment there when I thought I was going to throw up on my shoes as I realized that, although I'd covered everything in plastic, the street was so wet (and getting wetter during the final downpour of the day) that I was going to blow it all up, or electrocute myself, and I wasn't certain which I preferred.

About 15 minutes to Civil Twlight, the rain had stopped and the pavement was 'dry enough' and we began on schedule.

The guys from Neighborhood Public Radio supplied each of the 24 artists with a mini-transmitter that sent a signal on a low-frequency FM wave to anyone passing by with a radio tuned to the correct station. People showed up with their radios and listened. It was a great idea of theirs and even though it was technically glitchy, conceptually everyone seemed very enthused.

The amazing and cool thing about these events is the collision between artists. It's difficult to tell from these tiny films, but it was really dramatic to see all of these projects interacting on the outside of these buildings. My favorite moment was when my projections collided and surrounded with the projections of another artist standing about 50 feet away from me; we were the only two (that I could tell) who were projecting live images from the street, although he altered himself to project his image and I was taking live input from a surveillance system, processing it on my laptop and projecting the result. The two projects together couldn't have been more elegant! And neither of us could have planned it.

For sound I took white noise from a radio I brought along, tuned in-between stations, and modulated that noise through a series of filters in an ongoing, ambient composition. I'm going to recycle the idea for something else, because the sound was really elegant, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on it. I will also be recycling various more subtle aspects of the project to go into another, more concise installation/performance piece as part of my upcoming tour this fall (details TBA!).

It was exhausting, but it was absolutely a blast and I will do it again. I have plans for future performances and street happenings, some with perhaps a little more control. One thing that made this event difficult was the amount of ambient light on the street. But, as my friend B always says, 'Next time.'

Current listens: Daft Punk Interstella 5555, DJ Samim (VA mix), and a little Big Boss Man Winner! on the side.

Nicholas Chase with The Illuminated Corridor at the 2008 Whitney Biennial

2008-05-25T18:06:00.001-04:00

Saturday, May 31 (Rain or Shine!)
8:53pm (Civil Twilight)
Gansevoort Plaza, Manhattan
At the intersection of Gansevoort, Little West 12th, 9th Ave., and Greenwich
Admission: Free
www.illuminatedcorridor.com

Nicholas Chase with NOVA: The Illuminated Corridor at the 2008 Whitney Biennial
Chase joins the San Francisco based Illuminated Corridor for the 2008 incarnation NOVA, creating a new film-sound installation on the streets of Manhattan. Illuminated Corridor joins forces with Neighborhood Public Radio to re-light Gansevoort Plaza in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan in a one-night-only outdoor performance of watchable radio. One of the culimating events of NPR's "American Life" exhibition at the Whitney Biennial 2008, this Corridor explores all manner of NOVA: heavenly event, (ir)rational inquiry, cataclysmic variable, and rumbling imperative. A dozen or more artists will set up projectors in Gansevoort Plaza to project original, experimental film and video onto plaza surfaces and selected facades. The projections will be accompanied by a live radio broadcast, hosted by Neighborhood Public Radio. You are invited to bring a portable radio to listen to the live broadcast and to walk among the artists, musicians and projections as they infiltrate and illuminate a city street with experimental outdoor cinema.
More about this event here illuminatedcorridor.com/20080531.html

Nicholas Chase NOVA: Street Transmissions

Chase's contribution to the NPR/Illuminated Corridor NOVA event channels the presence of passers-by through television and radio and re-organizes and re-interprets them into a surreal, sceneographic composition entitled Street Transmissions.
More about the project at nicholaschase.blogspot.com
Street Transmissions is made possible by a generous grant from the American Composers Forum of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Dubbed by LA Weekly as an 'Eye/Ear Explorer,' Nicholas Chase's audio visual work has been acclaimed as 'pushing the edge.' Chase's electro acoustic musical compositions have been performed internationally by ensembles and soloists alike, featured at venues such as Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland and as part of the Weimar-New York festival in Weimar, Germany. Future events include the opening of Untitled: An Installation with Xiaoping Zhen and the BauhausFM Experimental Radio in Berlin, the world premiere of Considering Light by the Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra in Los Angeles and a tour of solo audio/visual performances culminating in a residence at the 12th International Festival of New Music Plus at the Janaçek Academy of Music.
Details about events at www.nicholaschase.net

The Illuminated Corridor
The Illuminated Corridor is a next step in outdoor cinema: a nomadic public art project that creates site-specific illumination of public space, drawing on local traditions of film and live music. Working with unlikely natural and built spaces, The Illuminated Corridor has convened six times since the Summer of 2005, catalyzing site-specific work,showcasing diverse collaborations between performative projectionists and musicians, and covering a vast territory of film and music genres.
Project co-oridinator Suki O'Kane
More about The Illuminated Corridor at www.illuminatedcorridor.com

Neighborhood Public Radio
NPR contributes 'American Life' to the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has has installed a broadcast point inside the Whitney Museum. In addition NPR has been transmitting live talk, music and experimental sound shows created by gallery visitors, artists, activists and community members, from a storefront adjacent to the Museum on Madison Ave. in Manhattan. Going one step further, content gleaned from NPR's Portable Radio Instruments (or PRIs) placed in cities across the US has been rebroadcast from the New York hub. NPR's motto is "If it's in the neighborhood and it makes noise, we hope to put it on the air" and its mission is to provide an alternative media platform at the community level - "access in excess."

Named by San Francisco Magazine "Best Super Local Radio Station," Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR) was founded in 2004 by multimedia artists and educators LeE Montgomery, Jon Brumit and Michael Trigilio. Acting as a traveling band of guerilla broadcasters, NPR personnel have hosted thematic broadcasts far and wide including in numerous galleries in San Francisco, at Chicago's Version 5 Festival (2005) and San Jose’s Zero1 Festival (2006) as well as various projects in Europe.
View the project in progress at www.neighborhoodpublicradio.org
Listen live here

Whitney Museum of American Art 2008 Biennial
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is the leading advocate of 20th and 21st Century American art. Since its founding in 1932, the Biennial has evolved into the Whitney’s signature exhibition and with its history of exhibiting the most promising and influential American artists and provoking intense critical and public debate, the Biennial has become the most prominent exhibition of modern American art in current times.

The 2008 Biennial, the seventy-fourth in the series of Whitney Annual and Biennial exhibitions held since 1932, presents eighty-one artists working at a time when art production is above all characterized by heterogeneity and dispersal. Many of the projects presented in the exhibition explore fluid communication structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political, and economic contexts, often aiming to invert the more object-oriented operations of the art market.
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
March 6 through June 1
www.whitneybiennial.org

Gettin' Groovy with the Evolution Revolution

2008-05-13T16:28:00.000-04:00

A little success: my output devices came today, or at least several of them arrived - enough to beta test.

I beta tested the large-projection output the other night and it worked and accomplishes what I want; that is, a visual comment on spatiality, on living space. It should work at Gansevoort Plaza very nicely.

The ground-level outputs wrangle both audio and video, which add a lot to the project- specifically giving the piece a location. A bonus: the audio output happens in real-time and in stereo- noticeable stereo.

Now what's left, aside from ongoing details of programming (this is a two-hour performance), is to continue programming my instruments and to compose for them. This is to preview in Weimar this coming Saturday. I'm going to be awake for several days.

In the meantime I'm distracting myself with Lancelot Link. I'm a sucker for three things: puns, wigs and chimpanzees. I don't know why. But Lance Link covers two out of three - chimps in wigs - are you kidding? This is comedy paradise!

Carpal Tunnel

2008-05-10T22:17:00.000-04:00

My hands and wrists are aching from programming. No kidding, I think I'm developing carpal tunnel and/or various other horrifying ailments related to long hours in front of the computer.

Have worked out many visual issues, some audio, but very behind. Preview in Weimar in one week, no material for that- panicked? Yes.

3 weeks until the Biennial closing with Ill Corr, not so panicked with visual under control, but still at a loss for what the audio should be. I know what I have, which isn't much. Not what I'd planned and not what I'd hoped for, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get that, but... until I have a crew to realize it, I am going to set it aside and wait for the next time.

So what happens now? I am giving the visual a beta test tonight, locally. We will see what comes of it. The difficulty is balancing spatial considerations with medial, with context. This is a live event, I won't project screen savers. This is a media event, I want to emphasize the live aspect. This is an event in public space, I don't want to contain the result or restrain the result within the limitations of the media I am using.

It's a balancing act, but I've found my footing.

It's good prep for The Thirsty Sword which will premiere either in San Francisco or Brno, Czeck Repub. this November, depending on when I finish it. Somewhere in there I will be composing the soundtrack to a documentary about Buchenwald.

This week's music picks: Christophe Willem Inventaire, mediated by Yuji Takahashi Real Time 8.

Nontoxic, Conforms to ASTM-D4236

2008-05-02T20:25:00.000-04:00

Big progress. Have conquered the audio output issues, in multi-channel no less (!) using a series of analogue devices: clock radios.

Working with the analogue transmission of digitally manipulated/digital audio files

Quand je s'rai Bee Gees...

2008-04-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

Today's work is punctuated by D.O.A and the incredible (call me a nut for cheez) Christophe Willem. Wow. Vive la Tortue!

Bigger progress. All gear arrived. Still wondering about the audio, however have composed some interesting electronic stuff in the meantime, meandering around the idea of... whatever the idea may be.

It looks like the gig will take place at Gansevoort Plaza in the Meat Packing District of lower Manhattan.

The video is shaping itself into something wonderful and cinematic, as is my intent...

--
Everything keeps crashing. I have a preview in Weimar on the 17th of May and I will lose a week of work traveling to Vancouver BC. I'm slightly panicked, but more annoyed than anything.

Things have degenerated into a Stooges frenzy... there is NOTHING better than TV Eye.

True Love is the Devil's Wishbone.

2008-04-23T20:52:00.000-04:00

Progress. In small stages.

My projector came yesterday. I got great deal on it, but still, I'm a little disappointed with the quality. I thought it would be better resolution and a smaller unit. It's plenty bright though - I powered up in daylight with the blinds open and got a fantastically bright projection. I still have to grapple with the audio and how that will happen. I'm tracking down a local group in Queens who will ultimately provide live sound support.

The piece is a continuation of my ideas on media and narrative, this time taking the viewer and placing them in the heart of the film narrative itself. What you see here is a prototype. The music and actual video and interactivity are ultimately not what will happen May 31, but these are the building blocks. The music here may premiere in Weimar, Germany May 17 - it's generated in realtime, based on a series of triggers, timers and grossly manipulated audio-bites. Seventh Sense, commissoned by Cristin Wildbolz uses a similar process to generate sound, however in the case of Seventh Sense the interactive 'tape' part is altered by the sound input of the bass performer. What I'm working on now is basically an electronic juke box that creates the music in realtime. What will happen May 31 will be much different, hopefully relying on sound input from the event itself. These are the things I have to work out now.

It's been rough the last couple of days getting this thing off the ground. I'm not certain of the product, only because I'm still not certain of the gear. What a pain. I have taken my spare moments to work on revisions for Eleven... which are coming along very nicely. We will screen the revisions late in the Spring or sometime during the summer at various locations in the US.

In the mean time I've been rocking out to X. I spent months tracking down a copy of More Fun in the New World, but only found a copy of the CD last week in a really unlikely spot. It was worth the wait and worth the small amount of cash I put out for it. It's definitely a tight album and one of my all time favorites. I love all the other X albums, how can you not, but this one is special somehow. I've also been listening to a lot of Deep Purple and today I'm dosing on Queen. I don't care what people say, The Game is a truly fine recording. It shows an amazing maturity for the band, who were - focused in their un-focused-ness? They never did anything half-assed, that's for sure, and this is no exception, including the surprising disco (?!) single Another One Bites the Dust. When I was a teen I never associated that song with disco - it certainly didn't fit in a set with Donna Summer or the SOS Band or other funk-oriented disco acts of the time, but damned if it doesn't get branded with the Scarlet D. Must be the 4x4 kick. In all fairness, I've mixed it in DJ sets myself with other disco classics, my favorite head-screw being Good Times by Chic, tripped out with Rapper's Delight (thank-you Sugar Hill Gang) and cutting into Another One Bites the Dust. My DJ sets are not for the light-hearted. Dance-floors beware...!

I'm glad to reconnect with this music. It's something, believe it or not, I've long incorporated into my composition, but have found that the "New Music Ethos"* usually kills it by the time it gets to the concert hall (*most New Music premieres are performed grossly under tempo - or worse, are composed at agonizingly slow tempi - to accommodate careful and precise playing of difficult music. My personal ethos demands that the performer play harder, faster, louder and forget precision in favor of energy). My understanding is that Guthrie and Streb premiered Ouistitis with spunk and gusto: I was unable to attend the premiere, but the feedback I got from friends and colleagues was really positive. The rehearsal recording the duo sent me for comment was outstanding, it isn't difficult to believe that they nailed it in performance.

Does the Dalai Lama Wear Orange Underwear?

2008-04-20T17:04:00.000-04:00

It's snowed the last couple days; this afternoon there is snow on the foothills in the distance and just as you catch a glimpse of the snowcaps, the hills shrink into a dark, grey and foreboding shroud. The snow clouds have hung threateningly in the sky for the last four days, but are constantly and comically interrupted by episodes of bright blue sky and golden sun. Springtime seems confused.

I've been working with media theory, reading up on my McLuhan, who is recently back in fashion. I think that the only reason McLuhan was out of fashion is because no one really understands him, or, because people are afraid to understand him. There is a denial - do we embrace McLuhan or do we hang on to the luxury of our gadgets? McLuhan, although he disdained technology, didn't judge it. He accepted that technology is part of our lives and talked about how it has changed us and infiltrated our psychology and even shaped our culture and behavior; but he also felt that, like any new tool, it has to be adopted with prescience, and this is something that is lacking in our culture right now. We live in a culture of denial, like it or not.

This is grossly apparent in art, in post-studio visual art (or conceptual art), which has fascistically taken over the fine arts, and does so according to the precepts of thought and the segregation of senses in the post-printing-press age, as McLuhan outlines in his writing.

Is it enough to take a group of people, put them in a room together, let them go about their business and say, "your behavior is my (art) work"? (Relational aesthetics). I can't follow this train of thought, because the beauty, power and relevance of the artistic gesture, in any medium, in any epoch, is the singularity of view - the unique perspective of the narrator who tells the story. In this context, setting the stage is not enough: even in Reality TV the drama is highly orchestrated off-camera. I am interested in stories, but I can't be interested in the story of another person told by a disinterested party who absconds with a narrative that isn't her/his own. Somehow this has become permissible, but what's lacking is that unique perspective, the thing that makes telling that story interesting, even the possibility of why that story might be interesting to the narrator is missing.

I have run across projects where the artist has co-opted an entire community's narrative and codified it, so-to-speak, relating it directly back to that community. It is as if the artist were repeating a man's life history back to the man who lived it. What makes that special? If anything, the experience is objectified and devalued by its objectification - and where is the artist's perspective? Isn't that what makes the artist valuable?

In an age of blind acceptance and personal denial (look at US domestic politics for instance!) the artist is terrified of putting her/himself in the center of the narrative and giving her/his own perspective, her/his own view that may reveal something, not about the community, person, or object being observed, but about the artist.

I don't think that every artist has the gaul, audacity, or outright courage to show us what, for instance, Mapelthorpe showed us. Would you reveal yourself like that for your own work? Mapelthorpe was ultimately brave, not only showing us images we wouldn't or couldn't (except in certain contexts) normally have access to, but framing them aesthetically and what's more, showing us his unique cultural perspective on them - and having the courage to put himself in that picture too, as in the instance of the photos with the bullwhip.

I don't think those images were about shock - they were a cultural reveal. And there is no denying either way that Mapelthorpe was an outstanding photographer - so these small reveals were beautifully executed. That's what should be apparent in every piece of art.

It's funny how science has been dictated for ages by the empirical, and now with quantum sciences we are admitting that we are at a loss to explain things; there must be more than lineal chronology and cause and effect. There must be something more, right?

It's true, and there always has been something else. Quantum physics demands now that the individual observer become an integral part of the equation. Shouldn't the same be true in art?

But art has become rarified and only appeals to a small audience of, heh, artists. And if you don't get it, many artists will dig out that old chestnut, "You just don't understand - you're not an artist."

Rant. As I work on these new pieces of music and particularly on the piece for the Illuminated Corridor at the Whitney Biennial, I am considering all of this, and how technology is going to add a layer to the experience - it will not mediate unfortunately, because of the context. Technology rarely if ever actually mediates anyway, but it's up to me, the facilitator, to realize that from the get go and work within that limitation. It's ok, I think I have a handle on it, but I don't want anyone to misunderstand the work and believe I am trying to 'say something about X' when in fact, there's no commentary, and there's no mediation of the observer's perspective. In fact, it is specifically my perspective and I will take responsibility for that, as I should, as any artist should. Right?

Earth Wind and Fire write DOA a Fan Letter

2008-04-19T16:39:00.000-04:00

I've been fighting the technology for the IllCorr project. I feel like I should give up on it and strum a ukulele and put out a change cup as my contribution.

I have done an immense amount of research on what works and how and after purchasing a lot of the wrong gear (returnable) will be able to achieve what I want finally, with the new gear on order. My original idea, it turns out, is executable after all.

I'll be using a 4-camera surveillance system as part of the project, as well as the built-in audio input from this system. Expect to see me on the streets of manhattan with several small TV-monitors, backed by an immensely large projection of the convergence of all of these elements. I am holding off on saying too much about the sound, since it is still in question, but a preview of that (in recorded form) will take place in Weimar at the Altenburg in Weimar, hosted by Anne-Katrin Altwein, my good friend the sculptor, aided by my other good friend Casey Mongoven, a terrific composer.

I've been working on 11 Ideas... and though it's slow, progress is excellent. There are 7 of 11 scenes in the works, several of them near completion. It seems like the projection of a premiere in the next 9 months is... inevitable. The Egg Ensemble is collectively excited. The work we did last summer was really quality... whew!

Speaking of work, I should get back to it.

What's going on? (or) What's Going On!

2008-04-15T17:25:00.000-04:00

Things have been rough and tumble for the last 6 months, taking off in wild new directions and hurling me willy nilly all around the globe. I will post progress on each of these projects as it develops, sharing my ideas and my resources.

In December 2007 I finished a draft of Considering Light for Los Angeles Wholesale Orchestra who will premiere this coming September as part of the 3-concert Lucky Mosko Festival. After making it through twelve or so minutes of composed ensemble music, I'm really unhappy with it. The ideas are not fully executed, so I will give it a massive overhaul before it goes to the ensemble. The overhaul will include: reconsideration of the instrumentation, expansion of the structure, and some fleshing out of conceptual ideas that really need to be executed in this work as a prelude to other works I have on my drafting table. I don't feel like this piece can maintain its relevance in any context if it is simply a 'new chamber work' - it has to expand and exploit some of the ideas I've had about chamber music this last year - many of which will displease composers who are comfortable with the current concert-hall status quo.

Meanwhile, I'm madly working on a project for the Illuminated Corridor's Whitney Biennial closing event. The Illuminated Corridor will join San Francisco's Neighborhood Public Radio somewhere in the streets of Manhattan for a massive media frenzy called NOVA. In best form, Ill-Corr at the Whitney Biennial will feature between 30 and 60 invited artists to exhibit their work, projecting and making noise from Civil Twilight until 11pm.

What is the Illuminated Corridor? You can read about it and the artists involved at www.illuminatedcorridor.com or better yet, you can look at it on You Tube

For that project I'm collaborating/sharing audio and space with friend and fellow compositeur Jean-Luc Sinclair. We are both looking forward to the event and to collaborating in some respect, something we've been trying to get to since JL and Séverine Baron worked on e1>3ktr=A back in 2000. It will happen - if not this time, in the very near future as I become rooted in NYC and space compliments tim-ing.

I'm also working on a series of short piano pieces. They run about 2-4 minutes each and will be compiled under a single title to be performed separately or as a multi-movement opus. These are exercises in composition and are meant to keep my discipline strong, like lifting weights in a gym. They are expansions of the musical Journals I began writing after Lucky Mosko three years ago. So far, they're fun, they are bobbles. They will be available for purchase at publishing.nicholaschase.net, and it is likely one or more of them will premiere next year some time in Los Angeles.

I've consolidated my studio to some degree, not out of choice, but out of necessity. In spite of the inconvenience, I am working on a series of electro-acoustic and electronic audio-visual pieces that will be compiled into a touring concert within the next few months. All of the pieces use interactive video as a contrapuntal musical voice. To be self-referential, the first steps in full-interactivity will be included in the project at the Whitney Biennial, May 31. I'll explain the project in detail when I have a real grasp on what it actually is!

New LA Ensemble to launch in August!

2007-07-14T00:25:00.000-04:00

Trevor Berens (www.poortommusic.com) has founded a new performance ensemble in the greater Los Angeles area. Bravo! The performers are an excellent mix of CalArts alumni. It will be exciting to see LA enlivened by a new group beginning in the footsteps of the EAR Unit, who are still doing their finest.

What is exciting about this particular group is that they are looking at filling a specific gap - when LACMA closed its doors on the Monday Evening Concerts (and Dorrance Stalvey, an LA mainstay in New Music, passed away shortly thereafter), a massive gap was left in LA's music scene. Some argued that LA didn't need the 'Old European Stick-up-the-butt Composers Set;' I argued that, in order to contrast what is 'new and cutting edge [in LA]' against what is 'stick-up-the-butt' that stick-up-the-butt needs to be present! Besides which, what was truly lost were not the Elliot Carters of Europe, but the Scodanibbios and Arditti Quartets - the people who are carrying forward with Experimentalism in music/composition. In my estimation, much of what is considered 'cutting edge' these days isn't much but status quo. Composer/performers such as Scodanibbio are really carrying on in the footsteps of Luigi Nono, Gyorgi Ligetti and others. I could name a few Americans too, but I'll save that for another time.

So - Trevor has asked me for a piece of music to premiere in January on a concert of works by the late James Tenney and Lucky Mosko. I had the privilege of knowing both men personally, studying with each of them and drinking with them too. I was very close to Lucky and to be recognized as having a connection to either one of these composers, let alone both, in this context, is a notable honor.

I'm composing the work now, as it will go into rehearsal late in October. This is a feat for me: my most recent compositions have taken me a year or more to complete. But I seem to be off to a running start (having made a dramatic geographic change and as a result, seemingly having cleared the cobwebs from my brain) and I have a good amount of pre-comp (that is, pre-composition: the outlining of structure and compositional concepts not excluding what notes to use when and why) already complete and I drafted a program note today that pretty-well explains the piece. Here it is:
--
Considering Light
As it turns out, light has properties that we are only just discovering - properties that make it far more enigmatic than previously considered. For instance, being comprised of both electric and magnetic energy/waves, light comes to us in a kind of entwined wave-on-wave form; this complex wave could be described to resemble the double helix of the DNA strand, only with each strand constructed of a different set of unique properties and existing at different wave lengths from one another.

Furthermore, light's resilient behavior is uncommon to any other waveform; light can exist in a vacuum for instance. A trait that is most notable and important to this sonic portraiture of light is the existence of the precursor of light in water: when light is flashed through water, or other matter with refractive qualities, light sends out a series of mini-pulses prior to reaching its destination. These mini-pulses, the precursors, do not resemble the light source, but take on not only the varied individual aspects of the spectrum (i.e., colors) but change color and intensity independently as they travel. In fact, these precursors live longer and travel farther than the light source itself. Unfortunately for us, most precursors are not visible to the naked eye, although they have been proven and seen in carefully controlled laboratory situations.

This is the subject of this work entitled Considering Light, which I dedicate to my close friend Dorothy Stone. For those of you who are familiar with my past work, you might be surprised at the seeming tonal emphasis of this piece. In fact, I have almost strictly utilized the mathematic structure of light to generate rows, pitch groups and serial materials and rhythms you are hearing. I have isolated the numeric structures of each color of the spectrum - you will hear iterations of these; notice how each one shifts, indicating the constant change and adaptation of the light precursor as described above. The light 'source' are the pitches Do and Sol (C and G), or DS standing for Dorothy Stone; numerically I have adopted the interval of the 5th (from C to G) as the numeric basis of the 'source.'

I am an avid science and math fanatic and have always incorporated systems and complex mathematic equations into my work. Considering Light is a further exploration of the possibilities of those number systems. In the tradition of James Tenney, I used math to generate specific scales. In the tradition of Lucky Mosko, I ignored all of my own rules and attempted to create a piece of work that simply 'is.'

Welcome!

2007-07-14T00:18:00.000-04:00

I am not assuming that what I do is of such importance to the world that anyone may be interested in it. However, there has been considerable volume of questions about my process as an artist, my feelings about specific events and/or concepts ubiquitous in art and music as well as a general curiosity about where I am, what I am doing and with whom I am doing it.

I also have to stand by my own maxims. I recently wrote a lengthy letter-to-the-editor of the Eugene Weekly, a fine publication by which I was once employed, ranting against the mythology behind the 'Artiste' and the 'Composeur' - fact is, we work, it's a job like any other, but as with any other job, a specialized set of skills. I think it's important that the world-at-large come to realize that composers aren't like unicorns or sprites: the idea that composers, or any artist, belongs to a different class, a different echelon or niveau of human evolution - well, that's preposterous and adds to the mis-belief that we work hard to learn our skills, master them and to put our best efforts into our field.

So, in the spirit of sharing information and in the spirit of debunking fairy-tales - I open this blog!