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MAIN CONCERT:

NOTES:

East and West V (world premiere) | Hwang-Long Pan
Music for Zheng and String Quartet

When it comes to praising life with music, musicians might think of Alban Berg's "Kammerkonzert," which not only pays respect to life, but is also an ode to friendship.

East and West V consists of three movements, commemorating a number of important events in my life, symbolizing the "immediate," "future," and "past" -- the three dimensions of music creation.

First Movement: Largo - Moderato - Andante
The pitch material of this movement was taken from my unique guzheng scordatura, as well as pitches implied by the names "International Society for Contemporary Music (1922) Taiwan Section (1989)", "Asian Composers' League (1971) Taiwan National Committee (1973)", and "Taiwan Composers' Association (1989)." These pitches serve as the backbone for my piece and were expanded and developed several times over.

Second movement: Lento assai
This movement used space notation and picturesque glissandi as the main material to construct a three-dimensional sound field inlaid with guzheng's overtones, column sounds, and the point-like radiance of string sounds. Several significant years were transformed into numbers of seconds or measures in the performance.

Third movement: Andante - Adagio
The pitch material of this movement (Praise) was taken from "Ma Shui-long (1939)", "National Institute of the Arts (1982)" and "Hwang-Long Pan (1945)", which served as a skeleton over which lines of "muscles" were gradually developed into various sound levels. By the end of this movement, the mosaic melody of "Happy Birthday" appeares among different voices, achieving a "characterization of spirit" through the "expansion of musical ideas." — Hwang-Long Pan, Taipei, Taiwan (2009)

Texture Mapping (2002) | Yunkyung Lee, video by Claudia Esslinger
(violin, viola, cello, kayagum)

"Dream-like and abstract, Texture Mapping is inspired by archipelago and temperate rain forest. Structured on a simple mathematical pattern, Texture Mapping weaves visual and musical themes together to create a metaphorical 'map' of water. Composer Yunkyung Lee of Korea and Ohio visual artist Claudia Esslinger each referenced a pre-determined numerical structure while working independent of one another. In spite of its origin in the world of numbers, the resulting combination of image and sound is 'meant to evoke individual memories and associations on the part of the audience.'"—Yukyung Lee, Seoul, Korea, 2002.

KwangYa - Five Korean Dances (1996/2003) | Il-Ryun Chung
for Changgu and String Quartet

• Prelude
• First Dance (Dasurim)
• Second Dance (KutGori)
• Third Dance (DongDokGung)
• Fourth Dance (DongSalpuri)
• Fifth Dance (HwiMori)

"KwangYa means „wide field“ or „wide lowlands“ and refers to a part in the 5th movement, where the music opens itself and becomes wide. It is like the feeling you get, when after a hard and exiting journey through the mountains the view suddenly opens and you can see over wide lowlands.

"KwangYa is built on the rhythms of the SamulNori changgu-piece „Samdo Seol-Changgu Garak." Samdo Seol-Changgu Garak is a highly virtuosic arrangement of Korean folk rhythms. I added a string quartet part, which represents a well balanced counterpart to the Changgu. KwangYa was commissioned by the master drummer Kim Duk-Soo of SamulNori."— Il-Ryun Chung, Berlin, Germany.

Trio for Three Zithers and Changgu (2008) | Shiaw-Wen Chuang
koto, zheng, kayagûm, percussion

"To name or give a title to a musical work always exposes the composer's intention to transmit or express his original idea in creating the piece. People believe that a musical work can in some way express feelings, scenic landscapes or say something narrative. However, music, as a descriptive language, is very different from literature. It is questionable that music can do any of these things.

"To call this piece 'Trio,' a term defined specifically in musical terms, tells us that the composer believes that music itself is not able to transmit, express, or to tell a story. The enjoyment of listening to music comes from listeners' individual dialogue with the moving notes inside a piece, which evoke their experiences. In this way, an extra so-called introduction to a musical work is sometimes unnecessary." — Chuang Shiaw-Wen, Tainan, Taiwan 2008

Fragments from Cold (2006)| Matthew Burtner
for cello, snow and electroacoustics

Like a skier moving across the snow, the cellist slides the bow across the surface of the cello. The performer’s breath and the sounds of snow reveal contours of two parallel terrains. Fragments from cold: the snow from outside, the breath from within. The tracks of both crossings are left in noise. Premiered at the Technosonics Festival by Madeleine Shapiro, Fragments from Cold was recently featured at the Ear to the Earth Festival in New York.

funded by the Jebidiah Foundation New Music Commissions
Moments in Human Life (world premiere) | Stefan Hakenberg
for IIIZ+ and UnitedBerlin (2 violin, viola, cello, koto, kayagûm, percussion, zheng)

• Perching
• Soaking

"Even before Moments in Human Life's first note is heard in a concert hall, its unusual instrumentation is apparent on stage. Two violins, viola, and cello – the classic formation of a string quartet – are joined by the three iconic East Asian zithers; koto, guzheng, and kayagum, as well as various Korean percussion instruments. The East Asian instruments in this piece, constitute the unique formation of the ensemble IIIZ+ which is one of the two ensembles that have commissioned Moments in Human Life, the other one being UnitedBerlin.

"I am closely connected with both of these remarkable ensembles. It has been an honor for me that UnitedBerlin has repeatedly premiered my pieces since the early 1990s [. . . and] Jocelyn Clark introduced me to the fascinating and rich world of Asian zithers and Asian music in general, that has since played a significant role in my aesthetic and musical development. [. . .] In my understanding, both ensembles IIIZ+ and UnitedBerlin, have in common the fact that they were each founded with the goal of exhibiting divergent works together in order to further discover the distinct aesthetic experiences of their respective founders, Andreas Bräutigam and Jocelyn Clark. For over thirty years, Andreas Bräutigam has been a violinist in the Komische Oper Orchestra that was located in the old East-Berlin. He founded UnitedBerlin as a reaction to the aesthetic pluralism that flooded the realm of his experience at the moment the Berlin wall came down in 1989. Jocelyn Clark grew up in Juneau [Alaska] playing oboe in the Juneau Symphony Orchestra. Later, she gained intimate exposure to all three of the major East Asian cultures through studying their musics by learning their instruments, the koto from Japan, the guzheng in China, and at last, the kayagum in Korea.

"Jocelyn Clark also introduced me to the work of Korean writer, Yi Mun-Yol. [. . . ] One of the central roles in [his opratic novel,] the The Poet, is played by a poem, one line of which I have listed on each piece's title page in each of the two pieces in Moments in Human Life. In Perching, one sees the line "Birds at dusk perch to sleep on a bough,” and in Soaking one sees "What's the use of soaking your sleeves with tears?" — Stefan Hakenberg, Darmstadt, Germany (2009).

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"TRANSFORMATION"

ZHENG RECITAL

sponsored in part by

Fri. 8.28 | 7:30PM
Juneau Arts & Culture Center (JACC)

• Fisherman’s Song at Dusk | Traditional Henan School

• The Sorrow of Cliff Mountain | Traditional Kejia School

• “Jasmine in June” Capriccio(2001)| CHANG Li-Chiung (Taiwan)

• Shang Si Tao(Four Short Pieces)| Traditional Taiwan Xiyue, arranged by WANG Rui-Yu (Taiwan)

• Labrynth-Promenade (1992)| PAN Hwang-Long (Taiwan)

• Fighting the Typhoon (1965)| WANG Changyuan (China/New York)

• Timeless Knowing | Composed by SHI Fu, arranged by JIN Fu-Zai (Taiwan)
  

Excerpted from Lai Yi-Chieh's first CD "Transformation" Liner notes. Text, Lai Yi-Chieh, Translation and editing, Jocelyn Clark:

• TRANSFORMATION | Contemporary Zheng Music in Taiwan: Content and Interpretation
  
  Today all things, including Taiwanese zheng music, are the inevitable outcome of what came before. The diversity of today’s contemporary zheng music did not simply come out of nothing but is the transformation of, or we should say it is the continuation of a living tradition. Therefore, when a player performs new works, her interpretation also is a contemporary presentation that is at its core traditional.
  
  
  The Content of Contemporary Zheng Music
  
  Most traditional zheng pieces come out of various folk music genres and are classified according to region. There are a few contemporary composers writing for zheng who have made good use of such folk materials in their own compositions. Li Chiung-Chang’s Capriccio on “Jasmine in June” is one example.
  
  Traditional zheng music focuses on embellishing resonance – in other words, what happens to the decaying sound after the initial pluck of the string; how is the decay manipulated? Such manipulation traditionally varied according to region much in the same way as linguistic dialects. Composers continue to be interested in post-pluck articulations – those made by the left hand instead of the right. An example is the embellishment on two or three notes in Labyrinth. Promenade.
  
  Although on the surface, some contemporary music seems have moved quite far from tradition and thus, in a way, subverting the voice of the zheng – the timbre changes and pickless plucking in Phase Transition for example. If one listens carefully though, one finds that such pieces still fall within the realm of possible sound explorations of the traditional instrument. Phase Transition is still transformation of tradition and not a total break.
  
  From the traditional to the contemporary, zheng music expresses everything from the cultural colors of a region to the deeply personal character of an individual composer. It is up to the performer to internalize, interpret, and present it all.
  
  
  The Interpretation of Contemporary Zheng Music
  
  A performer’s job is twofold: she must present the music according the score (i.e. the composer’s intention) as well as according to her own interpretation. In the first case, the performer must carry out the ideal of the German romantic concepts of Werktrue or Texttreue – in other words, she must be true to the composer’s work by being true to its score so that the work itself can shine through transparently to the audience. But a score does not actually contain the full contents of the music, particularly in the case of new works for traditional instruments. Therefore, some degree of freedom must be given to the performer so she may express in her own way the full range of possibilities of what has been set before her with, if you like, a kind of secondary creativity.
  
  For example, Labyrinth. Promenade has 26 independent sections that a performer can order according to her own taste. From here, the performer injects her insight and presents her own musical style. In Yi-Chieh Lai’s version, Labyrinth. Promenade includes five movements, each of which creates a different atmosphere – respectively fluent, lyrical, passionate, deep, bewildered.
  
  One can divide musical source materials into two types: reinterpreted traditional materials and new materials. Zheng sources have been mined for materials in a lot of contemporary repertoire, but their use tends to become nothing more than abstract symbols on the page. Because of the inherent limitations of notation systems – both Western and Chinese-- it is up to the performer, in whom the tradition is embodied, to give the written musical material an aural form through different gradation effects merely hinted at in the source materials. On the other hand, the presentation of new material depends on an intertwining of the composer’s intention and the practice of the performer. From plucking to striking to bowing, from music to “noise,” the performer gives contemporary zheng music life – note by note, gesture by gesture. While facing both the traditional and new musical materials, performers merge techniques and condense the contemporary zheng into its quintessence on the modern stage.
  
  The Transformaiton of Contemporary Zheng Music
  
  The development of music is like the continuity of life -- it has within it the genes of heredity but propagates individual subjects with individual characteristics. There is no doubt that there are many traces of tradition in contemporary the zheng repertoire, but where the actual boundary lies between the two classifications is hard to say. The dialectic is actually artificial to some extent – a vague definition of time used for convenient communication.
  
  "Traditional" and "contemporary" is in fact a continuous linear process. Contemporary musicians extract the essence of the past, and launch a series of explorations, reflections, transformations, and concentrations and refinements in shaping the contemporary style of Zheng music. This is the ultimate meaning and value in presenting contemporary music for the Zheng or, for that matter, any other instrument.
  
  

NOTES:

Fisherman’s Song at Dusk | Traditional Shandong School

The Henan "school" of zheng is one of the oldest schools. The Henan zheng traditionally had 13 strings of silk plucked with ivory or tortoise shell picks. This is the zheng that is called the Qin zheng. Henan pieces are generally in the key of G (pentatonic scale of G, A, B, D, E). Fisherman's Song at Dusk (Yu Zhou Chang Wan)is among the most important pieces from this Chinese region. Fisherman's Song at Dusk was adopted from the older piece The Home-coming (Gui Lai). It is an ancient programatic piece depicting an old fisherman rowing his boat home at night after a long day of fishing. His song fills the heavens above the Pang Yang River. It was arranged by and representative of Luo Shuhua's work and "is noted for its ease in learning but difficulty to actually play well, as well as for being a blending of elegance and simplicity. It continues the tradition while being an innovative classical style piece."

The Sorrow of Cliff Mountain | Traditional Kejia School
This piece describes an event in the history of the Kejia (or Hakka) people. In 1297 at the end of the Song Dynasty, Mongolian Yuan troops invaded. The last Southern Song Emperor Zhao (age 9) fled south to Guangdong, but became trapped in Yaimen. Lu Xiufu, the prime minister, carried the young emperor and jumped into the ocean at Yaishan killing them both before the Mongols reached them and thus dying for their country. The piece commemorates his actions.

Kejia School — Kejia means "guest peoples" and refers to the Hakka who who lived in the Zhouyuan region around Henan, but were forced to move south to the area between Guangdong and Guangxi (Canton) after Mongolian invastions in northern China. The Kejia style of zheng playing originally came from the Henan School, but was influenced by the music of Guangdong and Guangxi after the move south, and thus developed into its own style. As with the Shandong style, the Kejia zheng uses metal strings and are generally in the key of G, but uses bamboo picks.

“Jasmine in June” Capriccio(2002)| CHANG Li-Chiung (Taiwan)
Capriccio, on the well-known Taiwanese folk song “Jasmine in June,” begins with a concern for the emotions of Taiwanese traditional music. It starts with a variation on the theme of the original song. While the variations keep the important notes, it breaks with the original melody giving it a new surface and shows the modern interpretation of tradition. New performance techniques emerge in the “contrast section” – in particular, the player is asked to use her picks to hit the strings in a way that sounds like a Taiwanese Aboriginal Jew's Harp. As if long overdue, the performer comes to the original and familiar melody, which sings the praises of the land. At the end, the variation reappears reflecting the traditional in the modern; in ancient emotions, new ideas.

Shang Si Tao (Four Short Pieces) | arr. Rui-Yu Wang (Taiwan)
"Shang si tao" is one of the best-known pieces from the Taiwan Xiyue repertories. It is usually played for joyous occasions, particularly weddings, by a "silk and bamboo" ensemble. It is a suite of four little pieces: "Support the Bridegroom up the stairs" in which a drunken bridegroom is helped upstairs by his bride; "Red Everywhere" depicting the red lanterns and scalloped festoons, music and cheerful people celebrating a wedding occasion; a plum blossom and a sparrow vainly preen and contend in "Fascination in Spring;" "Da Ba Ban" paints a scene of the spring breeze gently blowing over a land full of life." — Rui-Yu Wang, Taipei,Taiwan.

Labrynth-Promenade (1992)| PAN Hwang-Long (Taiwan)

The loose strings of the lower reaches of the zheng are used to evoking the sound of silk strings, which were used by the traditional zheng. The form of this 26-part piece is open – the performer decides the order in which she plays the movements giving her more space for creativity. The performer is free to choose one of the following methods of organization:

• arrangement of the order prior to the performance based on personal choice
• Arrange follow the order of letters in the words of a short poem or an article from a newspaper or a magazine.
• Improvisation during the performance

Any one of the twenty-six segments may be repeated up to 3 times or omitted altogether. If the second method is chosen, segments correspoinding to letters in the poem or article that have already been used three times will thereafter be considered for omission. If the performer selects the first or the third method, not more than five of the segments can be omitted. Originally, the segments were written for solo performance, but the creative conception, harmonic structure, and the unique musical form that they share in common also allow them to be transformed intot chamber music.

Whether in solo or chamber music form, the work should be approached anew with each performance in keeping with the composer's "mobile form" style. The feeling should be as if finding one's way out of a labyrinth and enjoying the discoveries along the way.

Yi-Chieh Lai’s choices create an ABCBA structure. In section A, the melody includes a variety of timbres that transform the notes into differing realms – high, middle, and low – for portraying the image of tortuous of labyrinth. New materials such as the monotonous melody appearing in section B and the arpeggios in section C, contrast with section A. However, a few of the materials belonging to section A were also used in section B and C, and vice versa (including permutations) to show the meaning of “promenade.”

Fighting the Typhoon (1965)| WANG Changyuan (China/New York)
Fighting the Typhoon is a dramatic depiction of fight of the Shanghai harbour proletariat against the forces of nature, while protecting the property of the people and the Chinese communist government. Wang Changyuan composed the work in 1965 while living for three months in the dormitories of the Shanghai harbour and sharing her quarters with the workers there.

Timeless Knowing | Composed by SHI Fu, arranged by JIN Fu-Zai (Taiwan)
Written on a Chinese yuefu poem, this piece, orignially by a composer from China, is here arranged for zheng solo and voice.

TANGO!

Sat. 8.29 | 7:30 PM
Juneau Arts & Culture Center

Tango and contemporary music—
how do they fit together? It's simple: the mix! Astor Piazzolla's tango music in many ways reflects the musical development of the 20 Century in other parts of the world — his music is at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. While Piazzolla was studying with the ledgendary Nadia Boulanger in 1954, she commented: "Your tango music is new music, and it is honest."

George Crumb and Astor Piazzolla
- What a seemingly unlikely pair in a concert program, and yet it is possible to draw connections between key works of the pair, which is an attractive starting point for this program.

Black Angels
George Crumb's Black Angels, written at the time of the Vietnam War has now been updated with his words, "this business with Iraq." Crumb deals with the themes of God and the Devil very closely together - including the dies irae sequences and quotes from Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata - performed by an electrically amplified string quartet, which is also equipped with a glass harmonica, organ and percussion, to give good and evil stronger expression.

Characters and music
The score of the Black Angels is written graphically, but nevertheless precisely, by Crumb and thus stands in stark contrast to the practice of the tango, which recognizes a adhoc embellishment technique through sparsely notated material. The effect of improvisation is guaranteed by both composers, despite such different notations. Here's an example from Crumb Dream Sequence:

Always the same thing?
And then there is the commonality of the persistence of both authors in their compositional approaches: the gossip is that Piazzolla wrote the same tango two thousand times (the mention of this figure is a gross exaggeration), while Crumb wrote the following of himself: "Since then, it has basically been one and the same style. I am not among the composers who with each new piece wants to be independent of any tradition. For me it is-but only partly!—a continuous process. My compositions come from earlier ideas, solutions overlap."

Bonds are allowed.
With respect to the use of compositional techniques, while Piazzolla comes out of the tango scene (into the worlds of contemporary composition modeled on Bartok and Stravinsky) and Jazz, George Crumb also uses quite old musical quotations (Schubert, Dowland)in Black Angels.

The formal structure of Crumb's Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land:

The selection of these program elements from the contemporary repertoire draws from many years of experience by UnitedBerlin. It in some sense represents the cream of our programming since 1989.— Andreas Bräutigam, UnitedBerlin (attempted translation and condensation from the German by Jocelyn Clark. Original at: http://tangopunkt.de/page1/page1.html)

PROGRAM:

NOTES:

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"GOBLIN'S LAGOON"

Sun. 8.30 | 4:00PM
Juneau Arts & Culture Center

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a concert of chamber music, sound, and video art

with KnikKlang,
Jaunelle Celaire (soprano), Morris Palter (percussion), Matthew Burtner (metasax),
Think Thank

Sun. 9.6 | TBA
Anchorage UAA Arts Hall
(subject to change, please check back)

"Rebound" closes CrossSound’s 2009 “Refugium” series. "Rebound" describes what happens to the land as it rises and regenerates after the glacial cataclysm.

Alaska composer Matthew Burtner's Snowprints will invite you into the hall.

Soon snow turns to water and drains away in Kuik, an aria on the topic of the Kvichak River flowing from mountain glaciers into the ocean, according to the legend told by Antone Evan in Dena'ina, translated by Andrew Balluta. The aria is sung by Fairbanks soprano Jaunelle Roberta Celair.

From the Kvichak River, north to Gwich’in territory, Fairbanks composer John Luther Adams' Make Prayers to the Raven, comes from an intimate view of the life ways and spiritual beliefs of the Koyukon Athabascans of Interior Alaska and Adams's own experience listening to the natural sounds of where he lives. “Long ago they say there was no land […] This land we live upon now, they say it was made by a miraculous force,” writes Adeline Peter Raboff in a poem for children in Gwich’in, words Adams expresses musically in his piece.

Burtner's Broken Drum, on the topic of broken down cars, offers further insight into real life in bush Alaska.

British Columbia composer Owen Underhill's Sakalaka reprises a CrossSound commission from its 2007 "Fault Lines" program, a project that explored musical relationships among communities lying along the Denali, Fairweather, Transition, and Queen Charlotte faults. Originally written for performance by Seattle’s Quake Ensemble, in "Rebound," UAA faculty and Anchorage Symphony members -- the KnikKlang ensemble -- remember the Anchorage Earthquake of 1968 in which "Alaska" was shaken up and reordered: "Sakalaka!"

The program winds down, or up, with the jutting peaks produced by those fault lines and rebounding land -- a snowboard video by Matthew Burtner’s brother Jesse, accompanied by metasax, drum kit, and computer interaction, composed by Matthew.

Finally, Burtner's Portals of Distortion for nine tenor saxophones (one live and eight prerecorded), brings the concert to a contemplative end. Modeled on glacial ice, the music moves and forms fissures, covering the land again, but leaving refugia seeded along the coast in which to conceive and prepare next year's CrossSound festival.

PROGRAM:

• Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
  Kuik (aria) (2006)
  for voice, percussion, computer sound and video
  
• John Luther Adams (Fairbanks)
  Make Prayers to the Raven (1996/98)
  fl, vln, hp (or pno), vlc, percussion
  
• Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
  Broken Drum (2003)
  automobile brake drum and computer
  
• Owen Underhill (Vancouver, B.C.)
  Sakalaka (2007, CrossSound Commission)
  vln, vcl, fl, cl, tbn, pno
  
• Metasax&DRUMthings + ThinkThank, Mindcam (2006)
  metasax, drum kit, computer interaction, snowboard video
  
• Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
  Portals of Distortion (1999)
  version for tenor saxophone + 8 prerecorded tenor saxophones
  
  

Kuik (aria) (2006) excerpt from the multimedia opera Kuik | Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
for voices, percussion, video and computer sound

The Kvichak river in Southwest Alaska sustains a number of unique cultures. It is here that the borders of the interior Indian, the northern Inuit and the Aleut people meet and overlap. This region drew early European and Russian explorers and supported permanent Russian settlements by the 1780s. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the rich salmon fisheries of Bristol Bay drew people from the U.S., Asia and Europe. Growing up there, I perceived the Kvichak river as a place of living mythology. Like all people there, my family lived on and from the river. I saw the villages, the people, and the river itself change over time, and each change redefined the way we related to the world. Kuik is a story of this river told through the names of the places.

The piece adopts a legend about the flow of water from the mountain glaciers into the ocean as told by Antone Evan in Dena'ina, translated by Andrew Balluta and published by National Park Historian, John Branson. The story communicates a wish for peace between diverse cohabitants of unique natural spaces. It traces the water's movement using place names drawing on a confluence of languages including Dena'ina, Yup'ik, Alutiq, Russian and English. USGS maps of the region include few named locations, offering little insight into the cultures inhabiting the region. In fact, the places on this river have deep significance to the people, and the place names tell of a rich and changing history between the people and the land.

In 2003, with the help of a summer research grant from the University of Virginia, I spent two months following the path of this water and creating an audiovisual map documenting the water as it travels from the glacier to the ocean along the river. I worked as a volunteer Park Ranger in Lake Clark, a volunteer Alaska Department of Fish and Game fish counter, and a fisherman on the F/V Jesse Lucile.

In the piece, a shamanic character, Kala Alak, tells the story of the river and performs with the giant Shaman Hands. The solo soprano voice, Sook, portrays the voice of the river. As the intensity of the river builds, a Yup'ik hand drum features prominently in the percussion. Dancers play various materials and interact directly with the audience and with the Windtree on the stage. The second part of the piece features a solo male voice, emeQana, as the voice of the ocean. A meditation on wind, waves and tides, the section also features four dancers interacting with my interactive light sculpture, the Windtree. —Matthew Burtner

Make Prayers to the Raven (1996/98)| John Luther Adams (Fairbanks)
for fl, vln, hp (or pno), vlc, percussion

This little suite is dedicated to the children, the animals and the boreal forest of the northern interior. The title is borrowed from Richard K. Nelson’s book about the Koyukon Athabascan people and the profound spiritual connections between their culture and the forest in which they live. Movements I., III. and V. were composed as part of my score for a theatrical work for children. Movements II. and IV. are based on my settings of poems in the Gwich’in Athabascan dialect, written for children by Adeline Peter Raboff. — John Luther Adams

Broken Drum (2003) | Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
For brake drum and computer

Broken Drum turns a piece of wreckage -- a car “brake drum” found on the side of the road -- into a musical instrument. The piece expands the acoustic sonorities of the brake drum in the computer and explores the “broken drum” metaphor represented by rhythmic systems that in various ways are imperfectly constructed or disintegrated through cross-polymetric relationships. Broken Drum was written for percussionist Morris Palter who will perform it today. —Matthew Burtner

Sakalaka (CrossSound 2007 Commission: "Fault Lines")| Owen Underhill (Vancouver, B.C.)
for vln, vcl, fl, cl, tbn, pno

CrossSound 2007: "Fault Lines"
Underhill conducts Sakalaka in Sitka with the Quake Ensemble

It is an adventure to compose a piece for six musicians I have never met before. "Sakalaka" (the title is a playful reordering of letters used in Alaska) is written in the spirit of embracing the unknown. From an exuberant launch, the music proceeds rather intuitively through a series of sections, returning eventually to a variaton on the opening music. Rhythmic intricacies, surprising juxtapositions of contrasting materials, and layering of multiple scales and tonalities are prevalent. Throughout the journey, the instruments alternate between a chaotic independent presentation and a more uniform, cohesive relationship. My thanks go to CrossSound for commissioning this work and inviting me to the festival. — Owen Underhill

Mindcam (2007) | Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
For metasax and snowboard video

In 2007, the snowboard collective ThinkThank and Metasax & DRUMthings presented a completely new type of movie premiere. The Coast-to-Coast live music and snowboard video performance played to sold out audiences of artists and snowboarders in Seattle and New York. Transworld Magazine called it a show “that will go down in history,” Frequency Journal called it “an industry first . . . a great performance to all those who managed to make it in,” and Future Snowboarder described it as “original . . . action packed . . . amazing music.” Mindcam takes the energy of snowboarding into new levels of interactive multimedia. This piece defined a new genre of experimental snowboard sound art. —Matthew Burtner

Portals of Distortion (1999/2009) | Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
version for tenor saxophone and 8 prerecorded tenor saxophones

Portals of Distortion was originally composed and performed as a version for nine tenor saxophones. In 2009, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the composition I created a version for 8 prerecorded saxophones and solo tenor. The piece explores concepts of sonic fissure and the inherent chaotic acoustic aspects of the instrumental sound. The compositional approach was inspired by the glacial movement of ice -- cracks in a slowly shifting landscape opening to reveal darkness. Of the piece, 21st Century Music wrote “There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive.” —Matthew Burtner

Matthew Burtner as a volunteer park ranger in Lake Clark National Park