Arias | unfamiliar spaces (Bb)

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Spencer Arias

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unfamiliar spaces

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for B@b Saxophone and Fixed Media (2018)

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PE U SA L R

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Spencer Arias

unfamiliar spaces for B@b Saxophone and Fixed Media

(2018)

Program Note

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unfamiliar spaces was written for my dear friend Brice Smith. The work is an exploration of new techniques and sound worlds while maintaining my own musical language and artistic tendencies.

Recently I have been interested in the question who is music for, who is the world for, and how are people supposed to act and be in spaces that are not their own? How am I, as a queer man, supposed to act in spaces inhabited primarily by the heterosexual world? This has been made more clear having moved from a neighborhood that was the center of LGBT life in Seattle, where I would walk down the street and feel a sense of homogeneous community. My goal for this work was to find a way to take something that is comfortable (the saxophonist’s ability to play their instrument), and my own abilities (composing melodies with harmonies, rhythms, etc.) and place it within a context of unfamiliarity. A context that LGBT folk are familiar with. We are rarely in a place that is ours, but that begs the question, what is ours? Gay men have gay bars, but they are often times exclusionary of women, people of color, and non cis-gendered individuals. My hope is to open up this dialogue and to ask the question to the performer and the listener, who is this space for, and does its mere existence exclude those individuals who are in the most need of familiarity.

—Spencer Arias 2018

Performance Instructions

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The performance of this piece is informed by the fixed media component. The score can be read with the aid of a timer. Each measure can be treated like a cell. Each musical idea should occur from the beginning of the time marker to the subsequent marker which would begin the next cell.

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Within the tape material, the various info mentioned can be used as guide markers. As the majority of the piece consists of extended material of various textures, repeat signs are used to indicate that a specific rhythmic cue starts. The arrow indicates that the track consisting of that material will either repeat, or is often times expanded on in some way. X noteheads indicate nonpitched, percussive material and traditional note eads indicate the pitch on the staff. For the sake of legibility, most octaves have been normalized to fit cleanly in the score to avoid unnecessary ledger lines.

For the drone material an open note head indicates that a drone begins or ends, a closed note head indicates a continuation to the following system.

The saxophonist may be amplified at the discretion of the performer. The saxophone should sit within the texture of the electronics.

Duration: c. 5 minutes

E R SC O SA L U R PE Copyright © 2018 Spencer Arias (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Program Note © 2018 Spencer Arias. All Rights Reserved.

For more information, visit www.spencerarias.com Published by Just a Theory Press, LLC. For more information, visit www.justatheorypress.com

for Brice Smith

UNFAMILIAR SPACES for Bb saxophone and tape Otherworldly and free metallic ambient noise choral

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p Copyright © 201 8 Spencer Arias (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved.

Published by Just a eory Press. Printed in the U.S.A.

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