THE
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
EChO Electric Chamber Orchestra
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, Director
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
7:30 p.m. | Dohnányi Recital Hall
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.
PROGRAM
The Abyss (2024) – for piano and electronics**
Jackie Yong, piano
shedding, as if sloughed (2020) – for violin, prepared piano, and electronics
Oliver Schoonover, piano; Michael Mesa, violin
Vespers for Violin (2014) – for amplified violin and electronics
Michael Mesa, electric violin
A Thousand Tongues (2011) – for amplified violin and fixed media
Michael Mesa, electric violin; Natalia Rojcovscaia-Tumaha, piano
Plasticity (2013) – for piano and fixed media
Oliver Schoonover, piano
Simple Pleasures (2024) – for piano, windchimes, teapot, electric fan and fixed media
Oliver Schoonover, piano
Finding Breath (2018) – for violin and piano
Michael Mesa, electric violin; Oliver Schoonover, piano
Niké: The Winged Goddess of Victory (2023) – for fixed media**
From Passion to Compassion (2023) – for electric cello and fixed media**
Angelese Pepper, electric cello
Youngsun Kim (b. 1987)
Bekah Simms (b. 1990)
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980)
Missy Mazzoli
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu (b. 1982)
Oliver Schoonover (b. 2001)
Alexander Elliott Miller (b. 1982)
Natalia Rojcovscaia-Tumaha (b. 1982)
Natalia Rojcovscaia-Tumaha
**World premiere
Kim: The Abyss for piano and electronics
What would we do in an abyss? What would we think when we are in that dark place? Here, I would try to read the mind of a certain man who stayed in a very desperate situation, like in the belly of an enormous deep-sea creature for three days and three nights. Through descriptive changes of sound texture within piano and electronics, I would love to understand him, the one who realized in the deepest, lowest, and darkest place that there is light within darkness, calm in storm, sun in rain, peace in pain, love in loneliness, joy in sorrow, bliss in agony, and life in breath’s failure.
Simms: shedding, as if sloughed for violin, prepared piano, and electronics shedding, as if sloughed was commissioned as part of the Ecology of Being project and digitally premiered during the 2020 Tuckamore Music Festival, based in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Writing for Duo Concertante’s programme “Ecology of Being,” I was asked to consider humanity’s shifting relationship to the Earth in the Anthropocene: an epoch defined by humanity’s all-encompassing impact on the planet.
This rumination lead me to think about a line from singer/songwriter/harpist Joanna Newsom’s song “Money and Bear,” where the titular bear sheds her limbs and skin, which fall off “as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes.” This skin shedding combined with the overripe red tomato imagery evoked thoughts of grotesque burning – of skin, of people, of life, of everything. The violin takes the principal role in this “burning” – it is gravelly, a sound object constantly in tiny, curling motion.
I also reflected on the human idea of nature as an innate good, versus the actual neutrality and seeming cruelty it often contains. This is reflected musically through a blend of tempered and non-tempered systems – the man-made equal temperament versus perfectly tuned intervals, which are thought of as more “natural” even when they can sound “out of tune” on the concert stage. A blend of acoustic and electronic,tempered and non-tempered, slow/simple and hurried and complex – it all boils down to an attempted shedding of a complex and destructive human system.
Mazzoli: Vespers for Violin for amplified violin and electronics
Vespers for Violin began as a reimagining of my recent composition Vespers for a New Dark Age. I sampled keyboards, vintage organs, voices and strings from that composition, drenched them in delay and distortion, and re-worked them into a piece that can be performed by a soloist. The result is something completely separate from the original work, with only distant, nostalgic connections to the source material. Vespers for Violin was composed for Monica Germino and Frank van der Weij, and premiered at the Sounds of Music Festival in Groningen in October, 2014. The work was later recorded by Olivia de Prato for her album Streya, and was nominated for a 2019 Grammy award in the category of Best Classical Composition. In 2019 director James Darrah created a music video for the work featuring dancer Sam Shapiro.
Mazzoli: A Thousand Tongues for amplified violin and fixed media
A Thousand Tongues was commissioned by cellist and vocalist Jody Redhage. This piece is a short but intense response to the following text by Stephen Crane: Yes, I have a thousand tongues, And nine and ninety-nine lie. Though I strive to use the one, It will make no melody at my will, But is dead in my mouth.
Gümrükçüoğlu: Plasticity for piano and fixed media
Plasticity is an effort to convey spontaneity and interplay with a non-human element in the ensemble. In a group improvisation, members of the group would share the task of leading the ensemble through passing time. I wanted to let the electronics make decisions for the pianist at times by taking over the lead. My goal was to create a sense of an organic flow, within which two entities exchange musical ideas in response to the timbral, temporal and registral fluctuations of the musical space.
Schoonover: Simple Pleasure for piano, windchimes, teapot, electric fan, and fixed media
Simple Pleasures is dedicated to Doogan Townsend, who gave me hexatonic windchimes for my 22nd birthday. The piece is a celebration of many everyday joys: the beautiful ringing of the windchimes, the hexatonic collection, every-day noises such as water pouring and an electric fan, the drama of a teapot slowly boiling, and the many sounds of electronic music. The piano writing is non-virtuosic and invites the performer to savor every interval, immersing themselves in the hexatonic sound and enjoying moments it breaks from the collection. I’ve never had more fun while writing a piece and I hope this comes across.
Miller: Finding Breath for violin and piano
Finding Breath is a work for violin and piano with optional live effects processing, composed in 2018. The work was composed for Rafael Liebich, Alex Russell and the People Inside Electronics concert series in Los Angeles. While much of the work is fast paced, energetic and unstopping, the title refers to passages that take place in the middle of the piece, where both instruments gradually settle down and find a gesture that deliberately imitates deep breaths in and out. I suppose this is my attempt to find some inner calm in a frenzied 2018; I hope perhaps you may find the same.
Rojcovscaia-Tumaha: Niké: The Winged Goddess of Victory for fixed media
Niké: The Winged Goddess of Victory is a composition that serves as a synesthetic journey through the timeless grace and dynamic presence of Niké of Samothrace. Drawing inspiration from the iconic sculpture, this piece belongs to the genre of SynthSculpt, intertwining and embodies the principles of sound sculpturing, akin to the techniques employed by a sculptor: cutting, engraving, polishing, relief, volume, symmetry, and more. Just as a sculptor meticulously shapes a figure from raw material, this composition sculpts sonic elements with contemporary digital music synthesis techniques.
This is my sublimated, capacious understanding of this sculpture. Penetrating the image of Niké with an external and internal gaze, I tried to feel and convey the historical context of her creation, the power that she personified, the way she influenced people and what role she played in their lives. I also thoroughly examined Niké’s figure and listened to the atmosphere that reigned in the Louvre Museum in Paris where it is presented. I wanted to convey the energy of this sculpture and the emotional background accumulated in the atmosphere from its presence and from the impression of people, their mental interaction with this astonishing, miraculous and inspiring sculpture.
Through the combination of ancient symbolism and cutting-edge digital music synthesis technologies, this project breathes life into the sonic representation of Niké, paying homage to the timeless symbol of victory while continuing to explore new territories in contemporary musical expression.
Rojcovscaia-Tumaha: From Passion to Compassion for electric cello and electronics
The Monodrama for Cello From Passion to Compassion is a monologue of a living musical instrument, which narrates how a human (composer and performer) has gone too far in his relationship with her, the Cello, how a human torment his cello, which has been perfected over centuries to achieve the pinnacle of musical refinement and virtuosity in the name of beauty and harmony, embodiments of which Cello is; how a human, having forgotten this highest mission bestowed upon the Cello, forces her to squirm from unimaginable beatings, tortures inflicted upon her during sophisticated contemporary sound extraction techniques. She groans and howls in horror, but the human is deaf to her pleas, forcibly making her produce horrifying dissonant clusters, wild shrieks, grotesque grimaces of hysterical laughter, cynical and empty remarks, muttering meaningless and incoherent phrases... Thus, through the musical instrument, the human manifests his destructive principle, his insatiable thirst to seize and subjugate everything to his despotic will. Overwhelmed by passions, he is possessed by ambition and egocentricity. At the moment of highest tension, the tormented Cello comes to life, and on a long distorted glissando, her bow, reaching the highest notes, slips off the strings and rushes further towards the performer’s throat. Having achieved her goal, she, like an epee, menacingly stops. At this point, the music pauses, and in the ensuing silence, the heartbeat of the living instrument becomes distinctly audible: at first it is ac celerated, then gradually it calms down. In this moment, when the human is stunned by the unexpectedness and truly sees his instrument, Cello’s trembling soul, the bow returns back to her strings, leading the hand of the shaken human, and begins to retune herself anew: open strings sound, from which an inspired melody is born, as an appeal to light, mercy, and compassion. The music leads us further, into ourselves, into our soul and spirituality. Enlightenment and insight come.
Here, I also express my beliefs regarding the prevalence of technical, constructive thinking in contemporary composition, which has brought a destructive element into music. It has largely turned into a mechanical craft “from mind to mind” and ceased to be a high art “from soul to soul.”