Etude 1

Etude 2

Etude 3

Etude 4

Etude 5

*Created in Audacity, SoundHack, Spear, GarageBand and iMovie with found, recorded and commercial recordings for educational purposes only.

I had previously listed this information under the itinerary tab in the toolbar above. Since the information would live better in my archives at this point in time, I have moved it to this post.

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Note: Updates will be added regularly as plans change.

Here goes nothing….

June 13th Arrive in Munich, Germany

June 16th Leipzig Bach Festival, Germany: Catone in Utica (opera seria)

June 19th Aldeburgh Festival, England: Carolyn Sampson sings Britten, Wolf, Debussy, Poulenc; Ligeti, Martinu, Mozart, Bach recital; Kurtag recital

June 20th University York, England: New Electroacoustic Music & Dance

June 25-27 Vienna, Austria

*June 28th Rheingau, Germany: Mahler 4 (tentative)

June 29 – July 5th   Munich Opera Festival, Germany: Roberto Devereux, Doktor Faust, Tristan, Norma, Dorthea Roeschman

July 6-8th Brussels, Belgium: Meeting Amanda Jessen

July 10th Rheingau, Germany: Christine Schaefer sings baroque music

July 12th La Scala, Italy: La Boheme

July 13-16th Dublin, Ireland: James Joyce expedition and meeting Amanda Jessen again!

July 17-20th BBC Proms, England: Opening Concert, Nigel Kennedy plays Jazz, Folk Day 1- Vaughn Williams, Berio, Bartok, Grainger

July 20-23rd Edinburgh, Scotland -or- Paris, France ?

*July 24th Rheingau, Germany: Alma Mahler Recital (tentative)

July 25th Munich Opera Festival, Germany: Elektra

July 26th Munich Opera Festival, Germany: Salome

July 27-30th Prague, Czech Republic -or- Greece

July 31st Munich Opera Festival, Germany: Die Meistersinger

August 2nd Rheingau, Germany: Recital of Ullman, Martin, Brahms, Mahler

Aug 3-6th Greece -or- Prague, Czech Republic

Aug 8-13th Spain -or- Paris, France

Aug 15th **Fly Home**

Composer Ryan Krause hosted in his party pad (hence the event name Tier-Krause), and a bevy of musicians participated, i.e. performed and drank, with aplomb. Here’s an audio sample of what we do:

Libra & Scorpio

Libra:  John Mallia, Electronics

Scorpio:  Ceceilia Allwein, Soprano, & Ryan Krause, Keyboard Stylings

Draw a line with your body. See how it effects you, see how it effects where you are drawing the line. See how it effects the whole world.

On Twitter? Really? Once I got over that little obstacle, I discovered another obstacle that my ivory tower education placed in my way: Grammar. I scoffed, “It’s supposed to be affects, not effects.” Right. But, if you 1) replace the pronouns with the prior nouns to which they refer and 2) replace effects with a synonymous phrase or word, the piece could very well mean like this:

Draw a line with your body. See how your body results in you, see how your body results in where you are drawing the line. See how your body results in the whole world.

That’s a little different, no? It emphasizes the body, not the line. The line is merely a tool by which one becomes aware of their bodily limitations, tendencies, memories, etc. One also becomes aware in the end how  bodies are the source material for “the whole world” according to Ono.

As a singer, I often think about the sounds bodies make, i.e. the aural evidence  of physicality, when “art” enters.  I’ve been pretty fascinated with it lately, because I’ll soon perform a piece by a friend of mine with contact mikes plastered all over my body. This project, let me tell you, has made me very aware of the sounds my body makes… and they’re not  pretty.

Moreover, I love me a good bit of wordplay. After reading Ono’s piece, my attention turned to this line that she requires. What sort of line was it exactly? How would one draw it with their body–as a whole, not just with a part, with hands, with feet or with mind alone? How many different types of lines intersect our bodies in modern life?

Bodies–intersected by lines–bodies in the industrial to digital to ??? revolution. There are power lines, phone lines, life lines, central lines, waiting lines, musical lines, clothes lines, blood lines, lines all over the place… in calculus, in the wild, in game shows, in music.  So, if bodies make sounds, if lines cut across and combine with and separate from and define our bodies every day, if there are musical lines, why not take advantage of the metaphor and turn Ono’s piece into a sonic etude?

Furthermore, and more pragmatically, I had to write a piece for my computer music class that evoked a person and three moods surrounding that person. My choice was Yoko Ono (as a symbol for the archetypal body), and the moods were longing, insistency, and that ineffable quality derived from social networking… cheesy superficiality.

So, I interpreted/performed Ono’s piece as a sonic etude (musique concrete). Here, again is the tweet and the instruction piece:

Draw a line with your body. See how it effects you, see how it effects where you are drawing the line. See how it effects the whole world.

And, now, here’s a link to my aural interpretation (cover?) of Yoko Ono’s piece as musique concrete and a little bit about what to expect in the form, intentions and effects.

–> Etude 6

The piece opens with electronic sounds–a geiger counter and a sine wave.  A processed ostinato figure (derived from a heart monitor and a busy signal) soon joins them, sliding up and down octaves within and without the range of human hearing. The sine wave persists on the same volume and pitch (3349Hz) for the entire piece, and the ostinato loops throughout.  I then interpolated the sound of a dial-up modem interacting with a phone line, which I layered and processed in order to create mounting density (stretto?) and frenetic, contrapuntal opposition, i.e. contrary motion, saturated cannon. When the density reaches critical mass, the layers give way to the sound of a Native American flute (so cheesy you can smell it!) which becomes progressively processed and disappears into the persistent background ether. Next, the sine wave assimilates the ostinato and the clicking of the geiger counter slips away.

The sine wave is the constant connecting fiber of this piece and correlates to Ono’s line. While the line remains empirically static (thanks to the computer), human ears perceive it differently throughout the piece. I present and conceived of the sine wave as background material, yet it intrudes–sometimes painfully–on the listening process as if it were foreground material. For example, sometimes the volume seems to fluctuate due to the competing sounds, even though no such thing empirically happens. Thus, to stay within the metaphor, the ear draws the sine wave in a totally different location and manner than the mathematics. This experience makes the listener aware of where their body delineates pitch, movement, orientation/physical relationships, the senses, focus, etc. and how the body effects–results in–where one draws the line.

I chose a geiger counter in the sense that the word “counter” describes a surface, opposition (to counter) and quantities.  The tool refers to a quantity of radiation… where is it radiating from? Along what trajectory does it draw us? In this instance, there is no trajectory and the only correlating radiation is the sine wave. Both sounds are evidence, nay, residues of natural phenomena that were and always were; both sounds function and inherently don’t function musically as background and foreground material, countering notions of noise and music.

Moreover, geiger means violin in German, and I find it only appropriate to this piece that one plays the violin by essentially shortening strings–resonating lines–with their body. The metaphor obtains.

Finally, the geiger “counter” is a contrasting textured surface against the other smoother, more legato, reverberant sounds, such as the flute, the sine wave and the ostinato. This counter/surface creates a transparent ledge through which the range of textures becomes apparent. Simply put, without the rough, popping sounds, the whole piece just dissolves into one big, indistinguishable reverberant ooze. On the contrary, the rougher articulations delineate the other end of the spectrum of articulations and attune the ear to variances in attacks.

“See how it effects the whole world.”

Or,

“See how your body results in the world.”

I’ve mentioned numerous concepts, systems and descriptive metaphors that cross the boundaries coughlinescoughcough of culture, creed, gender, age, race, handicap, etc. But I’m not sure that’s really what Ono was getting at. Rather, I think she was getting at the first person experience of looking out on these concepts and the process by which individuals come to understand how their bodies (not necessarily their minds or common sense) draw distinctions for them, how they are passive and submissive to the will of the body. Ultimately, one’s outlook on life–and the whole world–will be effected by their bodies, and it is a fact of the human condition that mind cannot be divorced from flesh.

Its sorely tempting to go on a rant right now about the way the Cartesian divide has fucked us all up, but I won’t. Instead, I want to place a challenge to future times:

Notice how bodies effect where we draw lines.

Notice in ourselves just how extensive that process is.

Just notice.

Notice how it effects us.

In order to view one’s work through this lens though, an artist must grasp the value of what they create. It takes exceptional time and energy to produce art that has significant value, and yet most artists treat their work–here synonymous with career, education and ongoing development–like it’s of little worth or value.   Even reduced to a simple question of supply and demand, artists produce works more often than not in very small quantities and demand for good art will almost always outweigh the available supply. Thus, the value of these artworks goes up.

Seth Godin wrote these insightful posts lately–

1. Cost Reduction for High-End Markets
2. Better Than Nothing (Is Harder Than You Think)

The first article is one of the best arguments I’ve ever read for spending money on individualized training that will make YOUR art differentiable from competitors.   While $130/hr for a private teacher or $40K/year for conservatory tuition may seem like an awfully steep price to front for a career that has a very low, lifetime income potential (especially in relationship to the overhead), it makes total sense as a business model within a luxury market.

The second article by Godin provides some great question(s) needed to fuel the quest to 1) find a compelling artistic voice and 2) to generate audiences.   How is my art different than nothing?   What is it about what I will offer on stage/canvas/paper/my body that is better than the old armchair and SNL?   This is especially applicable for arts that people decry as “in decline” or “of a former generation,” say, for example, opera. Many people have never really experienced opera and have lived happy, cultured, expansive lives without it.  There is no competition.

Do people find their lives enriched at the simulcast of an opera compared to the armchair full of nothing that they have at home?  Or is it just another chair of nothing?  And what about slashed ticket prices?  Does it do anything to generate audiences that are willing–regardless of their financial status or class–to pay the real value of a luxury product?  If going to the opera is better for my life than nothing, wouldn’t I be willing to shell out the extra cash?

L’Enfant et les Sortilèges consists of one act in two scenes—the first in the child’s room and the second in the garden outside the house. Ravel, however, connects moments in both acts through recurring musical passages. The prelude begins with what appear to be directionless undulations outlining a pentatonic scale in 4ths and 5ths, and Ravel puts the passage in context by returning to these patterns at the entrance of the child and again at the mother’s entrance. Likewise, Ravel uses tonality throughout the opera in order to show maturation in the child’s character. The child’s monologue in E flat major following his encounter with the princess—in sharp contrast with strong preceding passages of bitonality and modalism—begins to show the tender interiority of the child as he laments that he cannot defend the princess against the forces of darkness. Moreover, as the child cries “Mama!” on a descending 4^th, before the final ensemble, the animals crudely imitate this interval, first introduced in the undulating, pentatonic prelude. Tonality emerges again as the child and the animals find common ground in a slow, hymn-like, G major fugue.

Ravel also played with Colette’s text to accomplish a musical landscape that encompasses both human, conceptual, and musical characters. Animals, insects and fairytale princesses waltz across the stage in the company of more conceptual characters such as the Sofa, Fire, or even Old Man Arithmetic and his chorus of swirling, whirling numbers. Each character has a personality more fantastic than the one before, and the Child becomes more and more aware of his incorrigible behavior as each character attempts to teach him a lesson. One way to trace the change in the child is to track the child’s perception of each character’s language. For example, Ravel develops the text into more and more onomatopoeic utterances such as “Meow!” from the cats and “Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki” from the frogs to show this intensification and estrangement from human comforts.

At points, Ravel abandons text all together, such as after the child’s incomplete exclamation, “Oh, ma belle tasse chinoise! [Oh, my beautiful Chinese cup!]” Ravel uses these moments without text to allude to other art forms and musical works. He frequently inserts ballets, such as those of the cinders in the Fire Aria, following a long French tradition of including ballets in opera. On the one hand, these dances give the audience a break from the menagerie of foreign and animal languages in the opera, and on the other these breaks refocus attention on “musical beasts.” The Frog Dance in particular alludes to Ravel’s works La Valse and Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Ravel also uses traditional compositional practice and forms to references the work of other composers. For example, the sofa and the armchair sing to a stunted French minuet pattern; the song of the nightingale—a Romantic motif appearing throughout the works of Schubert, Schumann and Wolf—punctuates the garden scenes; and the child’s monologue “Toi, le Coeur de la Rose” following the departure of the princess evokes the long lines and lyricism of Massenet. Moreover, Manuel Rosenthal, a life-long student and confidante of Ravel, writes that the poignant, grief-stricken aria “Adieu, notre petite Table” from Manon in particular inspired the Child’s monologue.

Nevertheless, the music never intimates that the child’s character acquires sophistication beyond his years, and Ravel often calls upon contemporary French trends to breathe child-like energy into more esoteric “classical” compositions. In the duet between teapot and teacup, Ravel toys with fin de siècle France’s trendy obsession with the far east following the 1889 Paris Exhibition by fusing a so-called Chinese melody with the popular vaudevillian style of the time.

Ravel also avoided gratuitous complexity in his use of the orchestra. For example, he pulls forth a luxurious, full sound from the orchestra to illustrate the sudden appearance of many creatures and growing outdoor space during the transition from the house to the garden scene. In other instances, Ravel relies on simple two-part counterpoint—such as between princess and the flute—to show intimacy and more subtle interactions of the heart.

Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges exemplifies the fantasy of childhood with a rich and engaging musical composition, and one can equally enjoy Ravel’s opera as an opera connoisseur and as a wide-eyed child enamored of a fantasy world in which sofas talk and princesses emerge from storybooks. Tonight, as you lean back and savor the first notes of the prelude, remember that the chair you are sitting on might just like to share a thought or two after the concert!

Without further ado… 

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Ceceilia: Well, where did we leave off last time?? Oh, right, WELCOME TO COLLEGE! You made it. You’re here. You’ve been oriented to this huge campus, an overwhelming class size, and that behemoth of a football stadium looming a mile away from your dorm. All of you, new and returning, know the buildings, your agenda is in your hand and you’ve staked out the practice rooms with air-conditioning. Now that you know this campus inside and out, ask yourself… does this campus know me? Do I know me? What does that even mean?

Ceceilia: For those of you who may not know us, I’m Ceceilia.

Brandon: And I’m Brandon.

Ceceilia: We’re both Resident Assistants in The Dorm ™

Brandon: We both love to laugh and have killer, completely inappropriate senses of humor.

Ceceilia: We’re also extremely modest.

Brandon: I grew up in liberal, ultra-gay, Portuguese Provincetown, Mass.

Ceceilia: I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana going to Wal-Mart with the Amish.

Brandon: I do voice over work, sing in operas, study voice, and practice underwater basket weaving… but have no idea what I want to do for my career.

Ceceilia: I know I want to be a singer, but that hasn’t stopped me from things like doing activist work or a finance internship.

Brandon: So do you think they know us now?

Ceceilia: Hahah. Hardly. It takes more than just reciting facts to get to know people.

Brandon: When you join a new community, it can often seem like a labor-intensive process in order to integrate.

Ceceilia: In our life experience and in our experience building community as Resident Assistants, we’ve learned a few truths about community that we’d like to share with you today. So ask yourself…

Brandon: First, do I know me???

Ceceilia: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?  Have I actually named the facts of who I am? If I scream them louder will people get to know me faster? What if I write it on my whiteboard in the hallway? What if I wear it on a T-Shirt? Will people “get me” then?

Brandon: Second, what does all this even mean????  

Ceceilia: When I came to college, I realized that I had to decide not only how to describe myself, but how I felt about myself. I asked … Why do I choose specific words? Do I consider why others may choose different words? Do I choose this for a factual reason or have life experiences led me to this decision of how to name myself?

Brandon: See, it’s a two part process. First, we have to name ourselves, and second, we have to own up in word and deed to what a “name” means to us.

Ceceilia: And the easiest way to do that is to bring your personality to each and every moment. For example… I have only one name that I go by—Ceceilia—whereas, Brandon…  

Brandon: …has somewhere around 20 different characters that are a part of me. Each of them is a real person. They each have names—Valerie, Shaniqua, Betsy Sue, Florencia Caparelli, Rufus…

Ceceilia: And when you ask them simple questions like where they’re from, they bring their personalities and perspectives to each moment. They are not ashamed of letting their communities know who they are.

Ceceilia: So, what’s your name and where are you from?

Brandon: Hi der, I’m Betsy Sue. Born and raised in Minnesota and a proud, proud, homeland lover. There’s nothing like my kids, my Wal-Mart and muh husband Karl. God bless. It’s simply who I am. That’s where I come from, that’s what I do. Why not have PRIDE in it, right? But Karl says… Having pride is something very important. I feel very fortunate to be in a loving relationship that allows me to be so free. This says something very important about community to me: When we name something, even our limitations, like muh husband Karl, gawd love him, but I do have to say, he likes to keep a tight rein on his woman, oh…Huh, Jesus mary and Karl! I can sense what you’re thinking. You think I’m an underpaid, under-appreciated housewife. Actually, I’m all of those things… and then some. See, when we name something—however we choose to name it–suddenly it exists. And you can’t have PRIDE in something that you don’t acknowledge.

Ceceilia: While Brandon quite literally “names” the different parts of his personality, Betsy Sue demonstrates an important point for all of us. She, of course, named the facts of her life—housewife, Minnesota, middle-class, Christian—but she “named” more than just the facts by how she said them: She’s enthusiastic about her family and her way of life. She even embraces the limitations and stereotypes that go along with being a housewife. She is naming herself and opening up about what it means to her.

Brandon: It takes guts to have pride in every single aspect of who we are, especially when real-ness isn’t socially desirable. Nevertheless, your community—this NEC campus—can’t truly know you unless they know how you feel, for better or worse, about yourself.

Ceceilia: When Brandon first arrived at NEC, I didn’t understand what people were saying about his characters. It didn’t make sense… until I experienced his personality, err… all 20 or so of them.  

Brandon: But that’s me. You’re probably wondering if I have multiple personality disorder. No, no, no, I don’t. Well, actually, CONFESSION! I DO have multiple personalities. But it’s not about a disorder. It’s about embracing every part of who I am.

Ceceilia: Some of you in this community, like Betsy Sue, love your underpaid and underappreciated lives.

Ceceilia: Some of you are the apple of society’s eye.

Brandon: Some of you at NEC are understood and some of us… well, aren’t.

Brandon: Some of you are pigeonholed in the world of “disorders” or as “weird” or as (gasp!) AWKWARD.

Ceceilia: Some of you feel pressure from other’s narrow definitions of “talent”.

Brandon: Sometimes it can be really easy to be REAL and sometimes it can be totally uncomfortable.

Ceceilia: It may even change from situation to situation. But that’s ok, because the final part of this puzzle called community doesn’t end with you.

Brandon: You see, when we’re real ourselves, we make it easier for others to be real as well. And each of you in the audience today can affect our shared NEC community for good by simply being who you are.

Ceceilia: Over the years, many unique people have contributed their authentic selves to the community at this school.. My mind goes to alumna Coretta Scott King in particular.

Brandon: Cause, she kept it REAL.

Ceceilia: She was an awesome lady. She did things that only she could do, and today we are freer to be ourselves because of her commitment to community. How awesome is it to think that each of us could live a life just as great?

Brandon: Right now you are all at the start of a new year, and when you leave this hall—schedule in hand, classrooms to find, practice rooms to inhabit, halls in which to perform–you will begin to fill these spaces with community.

Ceceilia: Therefore, we challenge you to ask yourselves, “Who am I? What does that even mean? Does this campus know me?”

Brandon: This is your opportunity.

B&C: And we can’t wait to meet you.