Nicholas Deyoe – for Duane booklet

Nicholas DEYOE

“ for Duane”

sketch from 1560

Thank you: Stephanie Aston, Matt Barbier, Rachel Beetz, Jessie Brugger, Archie Carey, Allison Carter, Claire Chenette, Paul Coleman, Duane Deyoe, Jane Deyoe, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Steve Luttmann, Batya MacAdam-Somer, Ethan Marks, Andrew McIntosh, Frank Oberg, Ruth Esther Oberg, Weston Olencki, Adriane Pope, Linnea Powell, Roger Reynolds, Élise Roy, Luke Storm, Tim Sullivan, Nick Tipp, Richard Valitutto, Brian Walsh, Ashley Walters, and Scott Worthington.

Tracks 1-10, 12-14 recorded on March 11-12, 2017 at Citrus College – Studio A and engineered by Nick Tipp.

Track 11 recorded at UCSD Studio A on February 28, 2014 and engineered by Colin Zyskowski.

All music edited by Nicholas Deyoe and mixed by Nick Tipp at Soniferous Studios April–July 2017.

Produced by Andrew McIntosh, Cover artwork by Jessie Brugger, Layout & Design by Traci Larson All music © Nicholas Deyoe, 2017

Immer wieder, ob wir der Liebe Landschaft auch kennen

…

Listening to the work of Nicholas Deyoe is no small undertaking. The immense force of the music, from its trajectories of relentless energy to its moments of impossibly concentrated vulnerability, leaves little room for the neutral or the passive.

Instead, one is faced with a compelling invitation to suspend all defenses and surrender to the music’s intense express­ivity, and the rewards for doing so are great: navigating a pathway through this raw and perilous terrain is an exhilarating, immersive, and ultimately very human endeavor. In fact, it is the essence of the music’s significance, the beauty that can lead our ears and minds, again and again, through the “Liebe Landschaft” of desire and infinite loss.1

Aiming for lovely but getting stuck, crystallizing…

This is music built on a deep sense of trust that could not possibly exist without close, collaborative ties. From the delicate heights of Stephanie Aston’s voice in Immer Wieder to the intricacy and depth of the instrumental writing in Lullaby 6 (especially the solo for Ashley Walters), the materials are carefully and personally tailored to the unique abilities, strengths, and sensitivities of the individual musicians. Composing this way takes time, trial and error, patience, but shapes every­thing about the music – from nuances of gesture to orchestration – in a fiercely intimate way. This leads to tremendous virtuosity in 1 Eric Gans, “Art and Entertainment.”

the writing, exploring the furthest physical and acoustical regions of instrumental idiom yet in ways that emphasize the richness of inherently unstable sounds without shying away from them when they break – a kind of honesty that instills the fragility of the materials with great urgency.

The music’s expressive potency and collaborative origins are absolutely inseparable from one another, yet a collaborative search for the possible and meaningful also brings certain challenges; any human interaction involves a degree of disagreement and compromise. The technical difficulties of the material, rather than evading or transcending this, actually highlight it as an important feature of the music’s expressive nature. In 1560, for instance, the impossible activity of violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell attempting to play much of the piece in complete unison creates a scenario in which collaboration is problematized, even endangered, and made all the more vital as a result. Throughout the album, the landscape is peppered with “artifacts of failure” that draw the music deeper into the realm of the human, emulating the broken utterances of the voice and triggering the emotional sources from which they spring.

breathe innnnnn hold it!

So much of music’s search for the beautiful can be traced back to connections with the human voice, from direct parallels of feeling (sensing our own voice through that of another) to the mirroring of vocal qualities in instrumental sonority (the singing line, the hushed gesture). What if these invitations are present yet intentionally veiled in some way? Like collaboration, Deyoe’s stance toward the voice is complex and transformational: frail songs of incredible dexterity, singing as an extension of instrumental behavior and vice versa (most especially in Batya MacAdamSomer’s realization of her own texts in Lied/Lied), glimpses of vocal utterance in unusual instrumental sounds (the growling of brass multiphonics or the moaning of low scordatura strings), contact points in which “voice” and “other” meet (for example, the incredible hinge between flute and soprano near the beginning of Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along, or the unearthly shift from instrumental harmony to a cloud of singing toward the end of Lullaby 6) – all beckon to the listener-as-collaborator to lean in close and trace the fragile contours of the music’s voice as though it were their own.

The significance of voice in Deyoe’s music frequently involves an additional scaffolding of meaning provided by a poetic text, whether presented directly (spoken or sung), or concealed in some way, privately guiding the flow of musical experience by

playing a hidden structural role or – in some cases – simply appearing in the score as a secret emotional device for the performers (and the occasional listener who might also be aware of its existence). Not only does poetry act as a common thread, binding together a number of independent stylistic tendencies, it also offers another glimpse of the music’s collaborative spirit, relying on the voices of others when one’s own cannot bridge the distance between intention and impact.

…between lovely and a jammed, wedged, trapped, fixed, formal arrangement. …zwischen die Blumen, gegenüber dem Himmel.

Of course, poetic meaning extends well beyond the referential capacities of language, and contact points based on sonority can create a vibrant syntax apart from that of conventional structure. Much of the poetry of Allison Carter, including the texts set in Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along, relies upon the immediate sound connections of word groupings, fleeting semantic hinges by which longer streams of ideas can be strung together in a way that is vaguely narrative yet also open to a variety of interpretations. Similar qualities unfold in Deyoe’s music, where sounds often create a kind of grammatical context without the need of an underlying structural trajectory. Events trigger other events based purely on the overlap or juxtaposition of raw sonority. At the same

time, such beguiling, momentary connections might also be distractions from long-term pathways of change and consequence, a complex, dialectical layering in which the expressive intentions of the music are disguised yet remain discoverable. In Lullaby 6, for example, the way the solo cello finally blossoms into the haunting melody in the last section feels completely inevitable. Even though the unfolding processes that led to this point traverse such wildly different regions of expressive saliency, the poetic evolution of materials creates a kind of migration from raw utterance to singing, not in any linear or “narrative” sense, but as a guiding force within the unique, collaborative vocabulary of sound and gesture.

The expressive immediacy of this music provides a range of access points, yet the overall experience is far from straightforward. It is demanding and complex and tremendously dynamic, oscillating between the clarity of familiar harmonic, linear, and syntactical contours and the greater resistances of material derived from more exploratory strains of imagination: a palette of microtonal inflections enrich the harmonic language but also distort moments of traditional consonance, linear trajectories break apart into timbrally-salient gestures leading to dissolution rather than cadence, repetitions cease to ground our expectations and instead become vehicles for trans­formation. In many ways, and despite seemingly uni­­versal traits of collaboration and voice, the music affords an im-

mensely private kind of listening. The sounds become a chasm between the listener and the world, growing from the intensity of subjective experience (breathe in, hold it!), shaped by traces of human endeavor, struggle, accomplishment, growth.

…a complete image in a way not previously possible.

Ultimately, the richness of any music might be traced back to its resonances with human experience, including the grit and the imperfections. The magic of Nicholas Deyoe’s work is that he creates a space in which this beauty is manifest not only as a kind of expressive reflection (of the world, of human nature), but also as an invitation to “meet halfway,” to relinquish – on an individual basis – our preconceptions and safeguards and enter into a dialogue with the unknown. “We can’t change the world around us,” the composer writes. “We can never truly change ourselves. We can only learn to tune the relationship we have with our surroundings.” It is precisely this tuning of experience, this crystallization, that leads to the lasting significances of Deyoe’s music – not as something “lovely,” perhaps, but as something far more valuable, something real.

— Daniel Tacke

sketch from Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along

Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along for soprano, flute, trombone, violoncello, and double bass { Poetry by Allison Carter from A Fixed Formal Arrangement, published by Les Figues Press } commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association performed by wasteLAnd with Stephanie Aston

1.

How Did 3 Get There

2.

3 expresses an estranged state in which it’s always barely resisting sleep but is never able, in which it’s yearning for considerable departures but staying close to bed,

When the phone rings I am stroking my fingers, showing them off, what do you do when in the glass you see it, Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along, the accident, what happens to all the dates you had gotten, do you rephrase, do you stuff the space with superelectric chewable tissue,

But Even Just Thinking About (abridged)

3.

but even just thinking about buy out, buzzard, about calling, calumny, compacting, decompressing, depending, drinking, Even just thinking about face mask, fack, falter, finishing, flanking, Even just thinking about graft, even just thinking about garages, gorging, grabbing, grinding, hanging, impression, invitation, keeping, knocking, landing, laying, leaving, liking, locking, losing, lying, multilocular, needy, occupation, Even just thinking about pegging, planning, plodding, posting, promising, pulling, pulping, questioning, racked, even just thinking about releasing, rushing, slack, suck, swallow, taking, Even just thinking about thinking, threatening, tilting, about timing, about touching, about trusting, about tying, about turning, about trying, unbedding, unracking, use value, value, waiting, waking, wanting, even just thinking about wanting,

My Hand Has Been Amputated

Calcification

4.

Aiming for lovely but getting stuck, crystallizing, but not lovely, it’s not like 3 isn’t prime, it’s not like there’s much of a difference between 2 and 3, between lovely and a jammed, wedged, trapped, fixed, formal arrangement,

Feeling Guilty

5.

Guilt starts like anger and then goes rotten, soppy, it’s enough to gut one, the sun baldly striking, issuing judgments, the judgments increasing alphabetically, and just when you realize you’re still on A,

A

6.

Abandonment, abandon ship, abandon your pride, abase yourself, abashedly, abbreviate, abducens nerve, a bee in your bonnet, abruption, absenteeism,

1560 for violin and viola performed by Aperture Duo

From the score This piece should be performed from 3 different positions: –– both players very close together –– both players as far apart from each other as possible in the space –– both players an intermediate distance from each other, with at least one player extremely close to a portion of the audience.

These three positions should be assigned to Positions 1, 2, and 3 by the performers, and thus the order of positions will be determined by the performers. The transitions from Position 1 to 2 and from 2 to 3 are to occur while both musicians are actively playing. These transitions are marked in the score.

Lied/Lied for speaking and singing violinist { poetry by Batya MacAdam-Somer } performed by Batya MacAdam-Somer

No. 1, No. 5

sit stare silently bored No. 2

heads cracked on the concrete lying for days smells like success No. 3

breathe innnnnn hold it!

No. 4

it’s the electric chair in my stomach but it just oozes out whimpering so disappointing No. 6

attached to her box violin rejected her first real violin when it was presented to her

No. 7

flew to Chicago masterclass. many people she knew other violinists who felt that they instead of her It made her feel bad. she froze.

She was 12 years old.

No. 8

the only Texan to be accepted into the Disney’s Young Musician Symphony Orchestra at age 9 No. 9, No. 11

proud and shy about the attention.

No. 10

turn it off swallow it don’t tell anyone No. 12

don’t think too much about it remember, practice makes perfect and, practicing is for losers no one likes a suck up

photo by Tim Jaquette featuring members of Populist Records, Soniferous Studios, and The wasteLAnd collective (left to right: Andrew McIntosh, Nick Tipp, Nicholas Deyoe, Élise Roy, Ashley Walters, Claire Chenette, Ethan Marks, Weston Olencki, Archie Carey, Matt Barbier, Brian Walsh, Luke Storm, Scott Worthington)

Immer Wieder for soprano { poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke } performed by Stephanie Aston composed for the wedding ceremony of Ashley Walters and Luke Storm

Immer wieder, ob wir der Liebe Landschaft auch kennen und den kleinen Kirchhof mit seinen klangenden Namen und die furchtbar verschweigende Schlucht, in welcher die anderen enden: immer wieder gehn wir zu zweien hinaus unter die alten Bäume, lagern uns immer wieder zwischen die Blumen, gegenüber dem Himmel.

sketch from Lullaby 6 “for Duane”

Lullaby 6 “for Duane” concerto for amplified violoncello and nine instruments Performed by wasteLAnd with Ashley Walters Dedicated to Duane Deyoe and Ashley Walters

Absence inspires reflection.

In pain, one finds beauty.

In simplicity, rich detail emerges.

Through the lens of death we see a complete image in a way not previously possible.

excerpt from Lullaby 6 “for Duane”

The wasteLAnd collective is comprised of performers featured on the wasteLAnd concert series. It exists to take on projects that fall outside the realm of our series, such as recordings, run out concerts, and tours. After our first two seasons, it became clear that while wasteLAnd’s core mission is to consistently present music in Los Angeles, we were also, in a sense, presenting a part of Los Angeles to an audience bigger than that inside our concert venues. The collective offers the same kind of performances that audiences have come to expect from a wasteLAnd show, just in different formats, venues, and locations. To date, the wasteLAnd collective has performed Ferneyhough’s music at UC San Diego and Cal Arts, recorded Anne LeBaron’s piece A to Zythum, and recorded Katharina Rosenberger’s album SHIFT on HatHut Records. wasteLAnd is directed by Matt Barbier, Nicholas Deyoe, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Élise Roy, and Scott Worthington.

members

Rachel Beetz, flute (tracks 1-7) Élise Roy, flutes (tracks 13-14) Claire Chenette, oboe (tracks 13-14) Brian Walsh, clarinets (tracks 13-14) Archie Carey, bassoon (tracks 13-14) Ethan Marks, trumpet (tracks 13-14) Weston Olencki, trombone (tracks 13-14) Matt Barbier, trombone/euphonium (tracks 1-7, 13-14) Luke Storm, tuba (tracks 13-14) Stephanie Aston, soprano (tracks 1-7, 12) Batya MacAdam-Somer, violin (track 11) Ashley Walters, violoncello (tracks 1-7, 13-14) Scott Worthington, double bass (tracks 1-7, 13-14) Nicholas Deyoe, conductor (tracks 1-7, 13-14)

Aperture Duo curates fearless programs that explore new sounds, voices,

Stephanie Aston is a committed performer of contemporary music.

and techniques through the lens of violin and viola chamber music. Founded in 2015 by violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell, Aperture Duo has quickly become a mainstay of the Los Angeles new music scene.

Equally at home interpreting old and new music, Aperture Duo has commissioned over thirteen new works as part of a repertoire that spans W.A. Mozart to Salvatore Sciarrino. Aperture Duo’s performance credits include Tuesdays @ Monk Space, the main stage at the Carlsbad Music Festival, Music at Boston Court, L.A. Signal Lab, Synchromy, LA Downtown Art Walk, Brooklyn’s Home Audio Concert Series, UC Santa Barbara Summer Music Festival, Clockshop’s Hear Sunday, Craft in America Center’s Window Concert Series, and the Eureka! Musical Minds of California Graduate Student Conference. Aperture Duo has designed educational outreach concerts with wild Up and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and has been in residence at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and California Institute of the Arts.

Praised by Steve Schick as “fearless” in her pursuit of repertoire, she has participated in numerous American and world premieres, including Luigi Nono’s Guai ai Gelidi Mostri, Michael Gordon’s What to Wear, and George Aperghis’ Sextuor: L’Origine des espèces. She has appeared on the L.A. Philharmonic Green Umbrella and Chamber Music Series, wasteLAnd, (Re)Sounds at Stanford University, and at REDCAT. Ms. Aston is an original member of the vocal ensemble Kallisti, and a founding member of the ROMP Ensemble and Accordant Commons.

She has also performed with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Long Beach Opera, The Industry, Red Fish Blue Fish, the La Jolla Symphony, gnarwhallaby, Chamber Cartel, 18-squared, and ad-hoc ensembles at Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Norfolk Contemporary Music Festival, UC San Diego, Stanford University, and in Los Angeles.

Stephanie is an affiliated artist with San Diego New Music.

members

Adrianne Pope, violin (tracks 8-10) Linnea Powell, viola (tracks 8-10)

Noteworthy performances include Brian Ferneyhough’s Etudes Transcendantales, John Zorn’s Rituals, Jason Eckardt’s Tongues, John Adams’ A Flowering Tree (Kumudha), Edgard Varese’ Offrandes, Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and Alberto Ginastera’s Cantata Para America Magica. Ms. Aston holds a D.M.A. from University of California San Diego, an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, and a B.M. from University of North Texas and currently teaches at Moorpark College.

Batya MacAdam-Somer is a freelance violinist and violist currently based in San Diego. She is thrilled to be a member of Quartet Nouveau, a string quartet that presents classical chamber music throughout Southern California, and The G Burns Jug Band, a five piece old time band specializing in prewar blues, folk, and country music. She teaches for the San Diego Youth Symphony’s Opus Community Project and Chamber Music Conservatory and coaches for the Mira Mesa High School Orchestra program.

Batya earned her DMA in 2014 at the University of California, San Diego, focusing on avant-garde and experimental practices. Her involvement with composers and contemporary music has led to work with organizations wasteLAnd, Glottalopticon, wild Up, RENGA, Art of Élan and San Diego New Music.

Cellist Ashley Walters has been described as performing “with the kind of brilliance that beckons a major new performer on the new music scene” (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times). She has been praised for her “imposing talents” (Sequenza 21) and “impressive” (Pitchfork) and “beautiful playing” (All About Jazz). Walters maintains a uniquely diverse career, performing music that blurs the boundaries between classical, avant-garde, and jazz, breaking new ground in repertoire with microtonality, extended techniques, alternative tunings, and improvisation. As a solo artist known for tackling virtuosic, demanding works and collaborating with composers, Walters has been the dedicatee of significant additions to the cello repertoire and has appeared on concert series and venues throughout the United States.

A frequent collaborator with legendary trumpeter, improviser, and composer Wadada Leo Smith, Walters joined his Golden Quintet in 2016, recording America’s National Parks the same year. The album was named Jazz Album of the Year in DownBeat Magazine and one of Nate Chinen’s Best Albums of 2016 in the New York Times. Walters is a member of the Formalist Quartet, which has been heralded as “superb,” “ferocious,” and “fabulous” by Mark Swed in the L.A. Times. The Formalist Quartet has established itself as one of the most innovative new music ensembles on the West Coast. Founded in 2006, the group has appeared in concert in Iceland, Austria, Italy, Germany, and throughout the United States.

Nicholas Deyoe is a Los Angeles based composer, conductor, and guitarist, and is the Co–Founder and Artistic Director of the wasteLAnd concert series. His music has been called “intriguingly complex and excitedly lush” by the LA Times. Drawn to sounds that are inherently physical, Nicholas strives to create music that engages listeners intellectually and emotionally by appealing to their inner physicality. His compositions combine uses of noise, delicacy, drama, fantasy, brutality, and lyricism to create a diverse sonic experience. As a guitarist, Nicholas strives to further the already vast so­und world of the electric guitar by experimenting with microtonal tunings, preparation, bows, and beer cans.

Photo by Jonathan Piper

He has received commissions from The LA Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, USINESONORE Festival, The La Jolla Symphony, Palimpsest, and several soloists. His music has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. As a conductor, Nicholas has performed with wasteLAnd, ICE, The La Jolla Symphony Orchestra, Red Fish Blue Fish, Ensemble Ascolta, The Darmstadt Preisträgerensemble, Noise, The University of Northern Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and many ad-hoc ensembles in the United States and Germany. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from UC San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds. Nicholas is currently on faculty at California Institute of the Arts where he conducts The Ensemble and teaches composition.

www.nicholasdeyoe.com

Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along

(2016)

for soprano, flute, trombone, violoncello, and double bass performed by wasteLAnd with Stephanie Aston

How Did 3 Get There 2:36 2. My Hand Has Been Amputated 2:08 3. But Even Just Thinking About (abridged) 0:59 4. Interlude 1:28 5. Calcification 3:10 6. Feeling Guilty 2:38 7. A 1:30 1.

1560

(2016) for violin and viola performed by Aperture Duo

Position 1 2:38 9. Position 2 4:05 10. Position 3 4:10 8.

11.

Lied/Lied

12.

Immer wieder

(2013) 7:25 for speaking/singing violinist performed by Batya MacAdam-Somer

(2015) 3:46 for soprano performed by Stephanie Aston

Lullaby 6 “for Duane” (2016)

concerto for amplified violoncello and nine players performed by wasteLAnd with Ashley Walters

Lullaby 6 17:37 14. “for Duane” 8:14 13.