BETWEEN SYSTEMS
Thomas Kotcheff & Bryan Curt Kostors
Track Narratives
1. Morton Feldman - Nature Piece 1:
Nature Pieces 1 is entirely atonal, yet its continuous melodic line carries a playful, whimsical contour. To accentuate this, the piano is live-processed through the Meris Hedra, which transforms each note into shifting three-note chords. The intervals are adjusted in real time to mirror the line’s non-tonal fluidity, creating harmonizations that lend the piece an extra quirky, engaging edge.
2. Morton Feldman - Nature Piece 2:
Nature Piece 2 is notated in strict 4/4, yet every note appears as a grace note before the beat—a feature of the score that is felt by the performer but invisible to the listener, who still hears regular 4/4. This performance emphasizes that hidden feature, giving the grace notes a sense of time. The Moog Drummer From Another Mother provides the rhythmic framework, its analog oscillators and filters driving the piece’s growing energy, while additional glitchy fills are performed live through a modular synth. To mirror this glitchiness, the piano is processed through a formant filter—normally used on pop vocals—which struggles with chords, producing artifacts and errors that become a defining part of the sound.
3. Morton Feldman - Nature Piece 3:
Nature Piece 3 is a highly rhythmic work written in 5/8, though the meter is almost irrelevant as Feldman often avoids clear downbeats, bar lines, or continuous pulse. In this performance, the underlying 5/8 is brought to life with a synthesized percussion part on the Arturia Drumbrute Impact, whose intuitive design allows for playful fills and variations. Harmonic layers emerge at points in the piece and are expanded with the Moog Subharmonicon, a sequencer inspired by Leon Theremin’s 1930 Rhythmicon for Henry Cowell. Another central element is the piano’s studio processing at pivotal moments—for example, recording a melodic phrase backward and then reversing it again to create a ghostly, backward-sounding piano instrument.
4. Morton Feldman - Nature Piece 4:
Nature Piece 4 is among Feldman’s most popular works, celebrated for its simplicity, pandiatonic harmony, and concise beauty. This performance adds ethereal pads created by running the Soma Lyra-8 through the Hologram Microcosm and the piano is processed with granular synthesis, adding shimmering high-frequency repetitions and reverb that enrich its texture.
5. Morton Feldman - Nature piece 5:
Nature Piece 5 is written in 7/8, yet its virtuosic and continuous leaps hint towards the feel of a steady fouron-the-floor pulse. Leaning into this sensation, a Eurorack modular synth drives an evolving bass and kick drum which anchors this movement’s new overlaid pulse. Classic saw-wave pads with sidechain compression —borrowed from the EDM world—gradually build, pushing the piece toward its climax.
6. Morton Feldman - Intermission 3:
Feldman’s Intermission 3 explores piano overtones activated by silently depressed keys. To amplify this effect, the Prophet Rev2 sustains resonant overtone chords, enriching their interaction with the piano’s pitch
content. A bed of low, filtered noise from the Eurorack modular synth gives voice to the score’s silences, while the piano itself is routed through the modular system and processed with granular synthesis, distortion, delay, and reverb.
7. John Cage - In a Landscape:
As the title suggests, a synth landscape was built to accompany—and at times envelop—the piano. Pads from the Prophet Rev2, Sequential Take 5, and ASM Hydrasynth each contribute distinct timbres to the orchestration, while a Eurorack modular synth adds evolving, shifting chords alongside the piano. The piano itself is processed through the Hologram Microcosm, layering reverb, pitch, delay, and filtering effects.
8. Morton Feldman - Intermission 5:
Intermission 5 builds directly on the approach of Intermission 3, using the same Eurorack modular synth generated noise bed and piano processing. The Prophet Rev2 highlights upper harmonics of select chords with metallic, bell-like timbres, while near the end of the piece the Moog Sub37 reinforces a repeating pattern of low piano notes.
9. John Cage - Dream:
Drawing on the chance-controlled techniques central to Cage’s compositional practice, an evolving probabilistic pad—built on the Eurorack modular synth using granular synthesis—forms the foundation of the piece, interacting with both piano and synth textures. Dreams unfolds in three large repeats, each shaped by recurring synth roles: the Sequential Take 5 provides organ-like pads, the ASM Hydrasynth adds jittering, unstable sustained pitches, and later, classic filtered sawtooth textures. Each repeat also introduces its own variation—for example, in the second cycle the piano is processed so its audio is sliced, reordered, repeated, and delayed, creating an effects-driven counterpoint to the modular soundscape.