THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
College of Music presents
Guest Artist Recital
Popebama
Erin Rogers, Saxophone
Dennis Sullivan, Percussion
Monday, March 6, 2023
7:30 p.m. | Dohnányi Recital Hall
PROGRAM
Operating Manual (3rd ed.) (2021)
Alex Christie (b. 1986)
Shedding Waste (2016)
Third Contact (2020)
Showdown (2020)
Noise Level Tone Level (2023)
Dennis Sullivan (b. 1982)
Erin Rogers (b. 1980)
Popebama
Dennis Sullivan (b. 1982)
Hack It! (2017)
Paul Pinto (b. 1982)
Basket Case (2022)
Erin Rogers (b. 1980)
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Popebama is a New York-based experimental duo that focuses on exciting performances of unconventional works. Described as “Noisily Virtuosic” (clevelandclassical.com), and “A Slippery Duo” (The New Yorker), Erin Rogers (saxophone) and Dennis Sullivan (percussion) are composer-performers who apply text, electronics, and highenergy instrumental writing to fresh and edgy soundworlds.
Specializing in works conceived by Rogers and Sullivan, Popebama has championed composers such as Paul Pinto, Merche Blasco, Matthew Shlomowitz, Jenna Lyle, Rick Burkhardt, Kittie Cooper, Song Ae Kim, Daniel Silliman, and Alex Christie. The duo has collaborated with yarn/wire (NYC), Tøyen Fil Og Klafferi (Oslo), Brandon Lopez (Brooklyn), Ensemble Pamplemousse (Queens), Anne La Berge (Amsterdam), Merche Blasco (NYC), and DECODER (Hamburg). Popebama has been featured at the Elbphilarmonie (Hamburg), NYmusikk Bergen (Norway), The Shed (NYC), Edmonton Fringe Festival (Canada), Splendor (Amsterdam), Diabolical Records (Salt Lake City), Bodies-As-Technology (Brooklyn), ReSound Festival (Cleveland), The Stone (NYC), SPLICE Festival (Kalamazoo), Studio Loos (Den Haag), Chance & Circumstance Festival (Long Island City), and The Walden School (New Hampshire).
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Christie: Operating Manual (3rd ed.)
Excerpt from Operating Manual (3rd ed.):
“When presented with abandoned technology, the user must reconfigure their relationship with the equipment in order to allow it to function and speak in its native mode. This process takes time and patience and a willingness to relinquish control. The technology will communicate more clearly once it is thoroughly understood on its own terms. Delays in communication between users are inevitable. Study the processes that drive inputs and outputs. Actuate transmissions. Open channels for reception. Allow for interventions from all actors. Do not assume a syntax. When engaged with in these ways, the equipment will operate as intended and broadcast its multiple modes of existence into multiple spaces.”
Operating Manual (3rd ed.) was developed by The Institute for Reconfigured Intervention and Spatial Modalities (TIRISM). The exact history of the manual is unclear. It seems to have been written by multiple authors over the span of multiple decades. Eventually, the document was abandoned and has been left permanently unfinished.
TIRISM itself seems to have disappeared from the field, most likely due to lack of funding and the alienating nature of its projects. TIRISM’s mission was always a bit unclear, shrouded in impenetrable language that frequently felt like intentional misdirection. Operating Manual (3rd ed.) is the perfect example of this lack of clarity. It contains unlabeled diagrams that could represent either new technologies or theoretical concepts. It’s technical descriptions are interrupted by poetic musings. It explains incredibly specific maintenance procedures but provides no context for what is being maintained. In the end, both TIRISM and Operating Manual (3rd ed.) seem primarily concerned with communication within what the manual refers to as “a constellation of multiplicities.”
Sullivan: Shedding Waste
Shedding Waste is a duo for tenor saxophone and table top percussion. It is a comparison of hi-fi vs. lo-fi sounds. Each timbre produced by the tenor saxophone is mimicked by some sort of found or discarded object (minus the melodica) in the percussion setup. These sounds are placed directly next to each other for 1-to-1 comparison or combined in a multitude of ways to produce new timbres still relating to the saxophone’s sonic palette.
Rogers: Third Contact
Third Contact explores the underbelly of the saxophone, giving life to small sounds and bringing microscopic details to the fore through magnified playing and amplification. Performed solo by Erin Rogers (saxophone).
Popebama:
Showdown
Showdown is a Rogers-and-Sullivan collaborative special, based on a multi-task competition prompted by famous sports calls. Levy Lorenzo’s MaxMSP controlled joystick instrument, the Modified Attack, is used to manipulate the sample rate of the sportscasters voices. Speech rhythm of the sportscasts are transcribed and are applied as the rhythmic backdrop of the instrumental material. Showdown encourages ample space for performer interpretation and offerings.
Pinto: Hack it!
Hack it! is a scene from the larger work, Thomas Paine in Violence (2014) by Paul Pinto. Originally envisioned for four men of similar appearance, anyone can perform the piece. In fact, it can be arranged for fewer or more performers. Acting as a Greek Chorus on the radio, the performers respond-to and lash out at the doubts of the Spirit of Thomas Paine, all of them imprisoned in a sort of purgatory and struggling, in various ways, to communicate. Performers vocalize somewhere between spoken poetry and sung complaint, often self-censoring or glitching out.
Rogers: Basket Case
During a Popebama road trip, it became apparent through the constant dashboard drumming, that Dennis Sullivan knew the drum fills to nearly every 90’s hit that landed on our randomized playlist. The fills in Green Day’s Basket Case (Dookie, 1994) are rhythmically simple, yet played at top speed present such a perfectly crisp noise, that the song deserves a 30-year anniversary tribute. Paired with 0-Coast semi-mod desktop synth, freeze and ring modulation pedals, a peaked-out vocal mic, and a catalog of soprano multiphonics, Basket Case encounters its next-generation self.
