THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
EChO
Electric Chamber Orchestra
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, Director
Emelia Ulrich, Graduate Assistant
Friday, April 17, 2026
7:30 p.m. | Lindsay 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.
hush Nina Shekar (b. 1995)
Daniel Farias and March Jeongmin Seok, microtonal keyboard
Spatial Void Darcie Ogando Almánzar (b. 2001)
Sergio Ramirez Guerrero, flute
Petrichor
Sequitur XIII
Adam Scott Neal (b. 1981)
Kuan-Yu Yang, clarinet
Daniel Farias, piano
March Jeongmin Seok, electronics
Karlheinz Essl (b. 1960)
Elberta
East Broadway
March Jeongmin Seok, viola
March Jeongmin Seok (b. 2001)
Julia Wolfe (b. 1958)
Daniel Farias, toy piano
Barnes Dances Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984)
Sergio Ramirez Guerrero, flute: Kuan-Yu Yang, clarinet
Emelia Ulrich, violin; March Jeongmin Seok, viola
Shekar: hush
I wrote hush during a time when I wanted nothing more than a hug. The uncannily saccharine sounds of the piece are meant to surround and envelop the listener as similar to how an infant might be swaddled when held in their mother’s arms. The piece is scored for two microtonal pianos using alternate tuning systems reminiscent of a music box. Over time, the tuning is further warped, creating a haunting and unearthly emotional effect. Though lullabies are generally used to soothe a child to sleep, they are often even more meaningful for the mother who sings them, and the lyrical content of many historical lullabies is dark and lamentful. hush tries to capture this duality, portraying the sweet, yet eerie nostalgia of childhood.
Almánzar: Spatial Void
Spatial Void is my first electroacoustic composition. The piece is constructed entirely from flute material. I wrote and recorded the flute part, used it to create the electronics, and then rewrote the flute part. Working on this project was challenging because it was new to me, but I really enjoyed it and discovered a different way to approach music.
Neal: Petrichor
“Petrichor” is a term coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas that describes the pleasant fragrance of rain. The fragrance is actually a combination of various chemical compounds collected on rocks and soil, so the term combines the Greek words “petros” (stone) and “ichor” (the blood of the gods in Greek mythology). This piece depicts a rainy summer afternoon, beginning with a thunderstorm and followed by a more subdued rainshower.
I wrote Petrichor the summer after I graduated with my Master’s from Georgia State, before embarking on my next one at Queen’s University Belfast. I tried to capture my impression of a rainy summer afternoon in Georgia. At the same time, I still used twelve-tone techniques; the first half is a fairly linear use of the set, while the second half projects chords derived from this set for longer periods of time. This and Parallel Lives, written the same summer, are the last pieces where I used twelve-tone technique in a systematic way.
The sounds in this piece were created in Csound. The sound source is a recording of rain, which is at times chopped up and granulated, and run through resonant filters throughout. I used the algorithmic utility nGen to generate some of the rhythms of the more chime-like parts in the second half, while all of the rhythms in the first half were composed by hand first.
In Sequitur XIII, various resonance phenomena of the piano are investigated. At the beginning, muted keys in the highest and lowest register are used to excite diffuse resonances. Later on, an EBow comes into play to focus those resonances towards the middle C which is more or less always present to certain degrees. This pitch is also the anchor point of three different harmonic scales based on odd-numbered overtone series.
Deriving from this harmonic principle, flageolets (always odd-numbered with 3rd or 5th overtones) are introduced later. Furthermore, I am also using all three pedals of the piano and certain keys which are depressed silently in order to create sympathetic resonances. The virtuosity of this piece is not found in the polyphony of voices, but in the polyphony of structural components which - by interacting with each other - form a common “sound” together.
The electronics create a complex canonic structure from the live input of the piano which includes random procedures in order to subvert the determination of the canon, and also modifications of the harmonic structure: either by amplifiying or distorting certain spectral components, but also in creating microtonal pitch shiftings. This is organized in a sequence of pre-composed cues that a second player evokes by hitting the space bar of the computer at certain times, as notated in the score. The second musician also takes care of controlling the input levels of the and the output levels of the computer-generated electronic sounds.
Seok: Elberta
Ideas for Elberta for viola and electronics came to me on a soft, breezy, sun-setting afternoon in January at Lake Elberta in Tallahassee, Florida. The quiet yet dense, gently swarming sense of fulfillment and happiness instantly ignited a melody in my head, and I recorded it on my phone so I wouldn’t lose it. While deciding what to create with the melody, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to use the raw recording from that day as tape material, with some edits, and turn it into an electroacoustic piece.
The viola is tuned down by a half step, and the beginning of the viola part is entirely composed of overtone series partials on D-flat (utilizing natural harmonics on the tuned-down strings), including the microtones. As the piece progresses, the melody gradually molds itself into equal temperament.
I wish to share with you the pink hues of the sunset, the sounds of geese and birds singing in the warm breeze, and the willow leaves softly dancing by the water at Lake Elberta. As the lake once did for me, I hope this piece gently embraces you with the same sense of comfort and belonging to nature.
Wolfe: East Broadway
Julia Wolfe’s East Broadway is a 3-minute, high-energy piece for toy piano and audio playback, famously performed by Margaret Leng Tan. It blends the delicate, music-box sound of the toy piano with a driving, industrial-influenced recorded soundscape, reflecting a gritty urban energy. It is a quintessential example of Wolfe’s ability to blend acoustic instruments with raw, energetic, and often electronic soundscapes, frequently associated with her broader themes of labor and industrial life.
Cerrone: Barnes Dances
I’ve often worked with electronic sounds, and yet previously I had avoided incorporating recognizable real-world sounds in my compositions. Perhaps due to a subconscious fear of sounding dated or a belief that concert music should remain abstract, I gravitated toward ambiguous or drone-like electronics.
This changed during a vacation in Iceland when I encountered the distinctive sounds of Reykjavík’s crosswalks. Designed to aid the blind, these signals had an unusual rhythmic cadence: a repeating cycle of 5 notes that created a strange, uneven lilt. Transfixed by this sound, I captured it with the portable recording device I always carry.
I became fascinated by how each city uniquely orchestrates its crosswalk sounds. This seemingly mundane and functional aspect of urban life revealed itself as potential artistic material. My exploration expanded to include crosswalk recordings from Jersey City, Brooklyn, Paris, and Florence.
This research culminated in Barnes Dances, five interconnected pieces for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and electronic sounds. The title references a “Barnes Dance” intersection, named after the traffic commissioner Henry A. Barnes— an intersection where all vehicles stop simultaneously, allowing pedestrians to cross in any direction, including diagonally. The concept proved so popular that people reportedly said “Barnes has made the people so happy they’re dancing in the streets.”
The first dance opens with a brief introduction from Newark Avenue in Jersey City before transporting us to Reykjavík’s 5/8 lilt. Each ensemble member employs unique techniques to mimic the crosswalk’s percussive sound: the flute’s “tongue-pizz,” the cello’s pizzicato, and the violin’s bounced ricochet ornaments the lilting dance.
The second dance returns to Jersey City, where the crosswalks, in a characteristically American way, speak directly to pedestrians. I fed recordings of standard crosswalk phrases (“wait,” “walk”) into an AI learning algorithm to generate new words in the same voice, imagining a malfunctioning crosswalk that develops its own consciousness.
The third dance draws from Brooklyn recordings, featuring a malfunctioning crosswalk that resembles a jackhammer. The ensemble creates rhythmic, unpitched noises while the flute and clarinet’s wailing multiphonics echo the chaos of Brooklyn traffic.
The fourth dance, in Paris, explores the smooth-spoken voices of crosswalks (“Rue Lafayette rouge, piéton”) in canon with another street’s signals. This rare melodic crosswalk sound inspires a flowing, chromatic dialogue between flute and clarinet. An alarm clock sound from Florence intersects with spoken directions like “green, red, dark, clear” in French.
The final dance weaves together sounds from all previous movements, creating a true “Barnes Dance” where listeners can mentally “cross” whichever street they choose—diagonally from Iceland to Brooklyn!
Barnes Dances was commissioned by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, Hub New Music, Rocket City New Music, and CAP UCLA, and is dedicated to Hub.