Compilation CD 1996-2000

CD 1

CD 2

Credits

CD 1
1. Olivier Messiaen
Amen du Désir from "Visions de l'Amen" 12:27
(Track 1)

2. Marita Diane Bolles¹
La Mia Famiglia Misteriosa 11:03
(Track 2-6)

3. Franco Donatoni
Fili 11:39
(Track 7)

4. Karlheinz Stockhausen
Zyklus 9:12
(Track 8)

5. Dana Reason²
Meeting Number 5 2:53
(Track 9)

6. Mark Osborn¹
Virtue 8:43
(Track 10)

7. Jason Stanyek²
Four Violins 9:16
(Track 11)

1. Olivier Messiaen
Amen du Désir from "Visions de l'Amen" 12:27
(Track 1)
Performers: Andrew Infanti³ (piano), John Mark Harris³ (piano)
Recorded: Live Performance, November 11, 1999; Mandeville Recital Hall, UCSD

2. Marita Diane Bolles¹
La Mia Famiglia Misteriosa 11:03
(Track 2-6)
Performers: The Eberli Ensemble: Evelyne Luest (piano), Evan Spritzer (clarinet), Andrea Schultz (violin), Michael Finckel (cello)
Recorded: Live Performance, February, 6, 2000; Music at the Anthology Concert, New York City

"La Mia Famiglia Misteriosa" is a piece of miniatures that was written for the Eberli Ensemble with a commission from the Music at the Anthology (MATA) Festival 2000 in New York City. Each movement was written for a woman in my family, though the pieces are not meant to be illustrative or indicative of their personalities. Rather, my intention was to use these pieces as an expression of an inquiry I was preoccupied with at the time, which was to inquire into the (unknowable) mystery that each woman is--that we all are--as opposed to my impression of each person's (seemingly predictable) truth.

3. Franco Donatoni
Fili 11:39
(Track 7)
Performers: Elizabeth McNutt³ (flute), Shannon Wettstein³ (piano)
Recorded: Live Performance, May 31, 2000; Warren Studios, UCSD

"Fili" for flute and piano is dedicated to Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Alberto Neri. Fili may be translated as "threads," but may also refer to wires, breaths, blades, and edges. The threads of the flute and piano parts are tautly woven together through most sections and the piece. However, as is typical in Donatoni's work, there is virtually no transition material; sections are abruptly cut by sharp edges. The overall effect is rather like a set of variations with no explicit theme. Donatoni's compositions often include fragments taken from his other works; in the case, he reworks materials from the second movement of his solo piccolo piece "Nidi" (1979), which is also dedicated to Fabbriciani.

4. Karlheinz Stockhausen
Zyklus 9:12
(Track 8)
Performer: Morris Palter³ (percussion)
Recorded: Live Performance, May 31, 2000; Warren Studios, UCSD

The title "Zyklus" or "Cycle" refers to the many ways in which the work unfolds in a cyclical manner. Graphically notated on 16 spirally-bound pages, there is no beginning or ending: an unbroken circle. The performer may start at any given place and play the score either forwards or backwards, but must follow the pages in consecutive order. The performance ends once that starting point is reached again. Each of the different instrumental voices in the percussion set-up move through their own degrees of intensity as the work progresses, with each group peaking while all the others are either approaching or receding from their own peak densities. The performer also physically makes a full circle with respect to the initial starting position taken.

In portions of the score, Stockhausen has determined exactly the order of the elements to be played, and at other times he leaves it to the discretion of the performer. This results in a cycle of determined and undetermined music that gradually increases and decreases itself throughout the composition.

Zyklus was composed in 1959 as a test piece for the Kranichstein competition for percussion players and is dedicated to Wolfgang Steinecke, the then-director of the Darmstadt Summer School.

5. Dana Reason²
Meeting Number 5 2:53
(Track 9)
Performers: Peter Kowald (bass), Hans Fjellestad (piano), Jason Robinson² (saxophone), Dana Reason² (piano)
Recorded: Live Performance, Fall, 1999; Erickson Hall, UCSD

This piece is just one from a series of improvisations the group recorded at UCSD during bassist Peter Kowald's brief visit to San Diego in the Fall of 1999. The experience of working with one of the most powerful and creative bassists in improvised music was a precious musical experience.

6. Mark Osborn¹
Virtue 8:43
(Track 10)
Performers: Lisa Cella³ (flute), Shannon Wettstein³ (piano), Mark Osborn¹ (electronics)
Recorded: Live Performance, January 25, 1999; Mandeville Recital Hall, UCSD

"Virtue" by Mark Osborn is the result of a long-term collaboration between Shannon, Lisa and Mark. The accompanying tape part consists of recorded computer-manipulated samples of Shannon and Lisa. Both instrumental parts are obsessively intertwined, often interrupting or continuing one another's unfinished phrases in a way that prevents either player from claiming full expression of any particular material. Rhythmically complex and tightly interlocking, the physical energy of the gestures is kept in check both by ensemble needs and by the attention focused upon local detail by the score's extensive articulative and dynamic indications. The constant hovering between these interpretive demands intends to serve the dehabituative function found in the practices of many spiritual traditions. The potential "meanings" of the piece, therefore, are not realized in the depictions of musical states, but arise from the energy expended in this active state of uncertainty.

7. Jason Stanyek²
Four Violins 9:16
(Track 11)
Performer: Mark Menzies² (violins)
Recorded: Studio Recording, 1996; Computer Music Instructional Lab, Department of Music, UCSD

Each of the violins in "Four Violins" is retuned. With the exception of the lowest string of violin I (which is tuned to "G," the fundamental of the piece) the 16 strings of the four violins are tuned in varied relationships of "just" fourths (4/3) and fifths (3/2) to the third, seventh, eleventh and thirteenth partials of the fundamental (the superscript numbers in the chart below indicate what partial each retuned string is related to). The soundscape of this work is built from the 16 different pitches of the open strings, natural harmonics, and the stopped pitches that lie beneath the natural harmonics. This pitch world is "activated" through three types of trills: (1) trills between a harmonic and its corresponding open string (2) trills between two harmonics (3) "nodal trills" (trills between a harmonic and the stopped pitch directly beneath it).

I wrote "Four Violins" in collaboration with Mark Menzies, a phenomenal musician whose creativity, intelligence and generosity very much shaped the version of the piece heard on this recording. He gave the premiere (with three of the violins on tape) in July 1996 at the Second Inter-American Composition Workshop sponsored by the Latin American Music Center at Indiana University, Bloomington.