Alien Stories - Liner Notes

STRING NOISE: Alien Stories Liner Notes Jessie Cox: I’ve thought a lot about aliens during COVID. Viruses are aliens — alienation of Black people, subalterns (Sun Ra, Delaney, Butler, Afro-futurism). Being a nomad, a migrant, perhaps a refugee, a body has many homes - alien wherever one goes. DNA works in the same way: music is like a genetic code. In music, we hear cultures, histories, individuals, aesthetics, and so forth. Any new musical creation is a gene-editing, or engineering process. This genetic engineering, or re-coding, is a way to create possible futures, and redefine the past and the present.

Jessie Cox is a composer, drummer, and scholar, currently pursuing a DMA at Columbia University. Growing up in Switzerland, with roots in Trinidad and Tobago, he currently resides in NYC. He has written over 100 solo and ensemble works, including commissions and performances by LA Phil, JACK Quartet, Steve Schick, Claire Chase, ICE, Either/Or, Fonema Consort, and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof. Jessie has performed in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA, and has participated at the Martinique Jazz Festival, The Stone Series, La Phil’s Noon to Midnight Festival (Walt Disney Hall), New Music Gathering, Bang on a Can Music Series, the Interpretations Series at Roulette, Composers Now Festival, Frequency Series at Constellation (Chicago), and more.

Lester St. Louis: The translation and replication of notes and stylistic ideas in score production doesn’t often allow the user the ability to generate meaningful options for their own development. This piece is a prompt to ʻʼprovide a non-mimetic, interactive performance in real time.ʼʼ Working with people who understand the terms being developed makes for substantial growth, but the introduction of people outside of that one’s group generates new avenues of exploration.

Absolute Recoil is a means to ask a performer to be generative, intuitive and responsive.

Lester St. Louis is a New York City born and based multi-instrumentalist, composer and curator.

Lester has performed and created works in artistic environments in the United States, Canada, South America, Europe and China with groups and artists such as Dré Hočevar Trio, Jaimie Branch Fly or Die, Exploding Star Orchestra, SZA, Chance the Rapper, MOCREP, TAK Ensemble and others. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by the JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani, RAGE THORMBONES, and Jennifer Koh. Lester continues to develop new intermedia projects and performs with the various groups he plays in along with many new ventures.

Anais Maivel: Every August in the French village where my paternal roots are, there are parties where people dance the bourrée. It's a very energetic dance with lots of syncopation and stomping. Last summer, Pauline Kim Harris invited me to write a short piece for String Noise, and I decided to ask myself: how does dance give music its reason to be? How does rhythm reflect our sinuous

harmonic and melodic inquiries? While working at the piano, I also took the opportunity to sit with some traumatic Eurocentric French background, and to distinguish what did and didn't serve my creative process. I had to let go of the aesthetic pre-conceptions, embrace a certain humor, and explore music with embodied joy, connecting the classical canon with oral traditions and conceptual, intuitive thinking.

Anaïs Maviel is a vocalist, percussionist, composer, writer and community facilitator. Her work focuses on music as essential to settling common grounds, and creating an utopian future.

Involved at the crossroads of mediums - music, visual art, dance, theater, and performance art, she has been an in-demand creative force for artists such as William Parker, Daria Faïn, Shelley Hirsh, César Alvarez, and Steffani Jemison. Anaïs creates substantial works, from solo to large ensembles to music direction of cross-disciplinary works. She also expands the power of music as a healing & transformative act. Anaïs performs and teaches extensively in New York, throughout North, South & Central America, and in Europe. In 2019 Anaïs was the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship at Roulette in New York City, and of the American Composers Forum’s Create commission prize for the Rhythm Method string Quartet.

Charles Overton: Only Time Will Tell explores various connections in my musical experiences. Time plays a crucial role in the music we create. In writing music for the present moment, the overall arc of this piece grew out of this great uncertainty we feel right now, both personally and in our greater communities at large. The piece begins in a contemplative space, followed by a more urgent moment of passion and concise action, only to return to a place similar to where we began but inescapably colored by what had come before. The somewhat ambiguous ending further echoes this idea of uncertainty. However, it is up to the individual to decide for themselves whether this is encouraging or discouraging or perhaps some of both.

Equally at home in an orchestra or in a jazz club, Boston-based harpist Charles Overton seeks to create an accessible musical environment. Originally from Richmond, VA, Charles moved to Boston in 2012 to attend the Berklee College of Music, where he was the first harpist to be accepted to Berklee Global Jazz Institute, and also attended the Pacific Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, and the Castleton Festival. He has played in festivals abroad such as Harpes au Max festival in Ancenis, and Mandorla Music’s Dot Jazz Series. As a classical musician, he appears frequently with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with the Walden Chamber Players, Collage New Music, and the Marlboro Music Festival. Charles resides in Boston, and serves on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Jonathan Finlayson: The initial idea for this composition was to formalize some harmonic movements that I began to explore through improvisation on the trumpet while quarantining in the woods. The challenging part was translating my ideas to the violin and not using them within an improvisational framework. The piece is in many ways a reflection of me watching from a distance as things unfold.

Jonathan Finlayson began playing the trumpet at the age of ten in the Oakland public school system. He came under the tutelage of Bay Area legend Robert Porter. He subsequently attended the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where he studied with Eddie Henderson, Jimmy Owens and Cecil Bridgewater. Finlayson is a disciple of the saxophonist, composer, and conceptualist Steve Coleman, having joined his band Five Elements in 2000 at the age of 18. He is widely admired for his ability to tackle cutting-edge musical concepts with aplomb. Finlayson has performed and recorded in groups led by Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson, Craig Taborn, and Henry Threadgill, as well as playing alongside Von Freeman, Jason Moran, Dafnis Prieto and Vijay Iyer.