The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco has announced that they will hold the book launch for Anathem. This event will include some of the music from IOLET, performed live by a small group of singers.
OK, maybe it is a little nicer than a smackdown…
Every year since 2004, Peter Phillips has brought his Tallis Scholars Summer School to Seattle, and every year the Tudor Choir has been invited to collaborate in producing the opening concert of Renaissance vocal polyphony at St. James Cathedral.
Four of the singers from The Tallis Scholars join around a dozen singers from The Tudor Choir under Peter’s direction this year for a concert of English music. I always enjoy singing this concert – the slightly different vocal composition of the group, and Peter’s insights into the music, make for a fun and fresh way to revisit the classic repertoire. This year, for example, we will do Verbum Caro by John Sheppard, which is a monumental and familiar piece; the opportunity to perform such a work with these folks is exciting. Now if I can just lobby for Media Vita next year…
Thanks to Al Billings, who posted on his blog about the CD of music that was included in the Anathem ARC. His description of my music: “weird shit”, I take as high praise. He’s right about the Asian throat-singing influences. The mystery language is Orth, of course!
Thanks also to Cory Doctorow and Joey deVilla, whose subsequent postings on BoingBoing and on AccordianGuy did wonders for my traffic here.
RADIUS at the Chapel Performance Space
Perri Lynch and I collaborate in making electronic ambient music from field recordings under the name RADIUS. Our newest efforts will be heard 19 July at the Chapel Performance Space – for this concert, we will be using field recording made by Perri all over the world as the raw material. As Perri creates a sound collage out of these recordings, I will sample her output live and electronically process the resulting samples using Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and various VST plugins. I inject the results of these transformations into the overall mix, and Perri comments upon my additions with new material, resulting in a feedback loop based on listening and responding. For this particular show, we’ve got the Chapel’s wonderful sound system to work with, and so we will be placing sounds in six-speaker surround. It should be fun!
The Tudor Choir trundled off to the Tacoma Art Museum to sing an excellent concert of polyphony by Thomas Tallis last night. The concert was short format – one hour, no intermission – and the repertoire selected was just wonderful. From the opening Loquebantur to the bombastic Missa Puer Natus to my personal favorite Suscipe Quaso to the final Lamentations, one was reminded as to just how good a composer Tallis was. The room, which was the high-ceiling entry foyer to the museum, was also very well suited to this particular style of singing.
This event was in conjunction with the currently installed piece “The Forty Voice Motet”, by sound artist Janet Cardiff, which is a minimalist installation that loops a performance of Thomas Tallis’ “Spem in Alium” on 40 speakers, configured in a circle. The motet consists of forty parts, and each part for the installation was recorded from the individual singer perspectives. The Cardiff piece is surprisingly powerful, and it shows off the splendid architecture of Tallis’ work very well, since the 8 choirs are located in sequence around the room. The performance itself is fine, but not astonishing – there are pitch problems and the usual lost singers. This works, though, as it gives you a feel for what it is like to really perform the piece (which I am lucky enough to have done 3 times). Once you start, random people will be lost, pitch may go north or south, and you, as only one of the forty parts, have no real ability to correct things…
The concert was also held the day of the opening of the Tacoma exhibition of the St. John’s Bible, which is billed as the first handwritten, illuminated, Bible to have been produced in over 500 years. While other religions, noteably Islam and Judaism, as well as the more obvious Asian cohort, have continued their traditions of producing beautiful and painstakingly wrought handwritten holy texts, Christianity seems to have stopped once the printing press made things easier. Folios from the brand-new Bible were on display, and while I was impressed with the effort in so many ways, the artistic side of it seemed somehow stuck in the conservative 1960s, and left me flat. The book is sumptuous, however, and deserves to be seen close up, despite this extremely conservative approach to the illustrations. After all, monastic scribes are rarely thought of as the leading edge…
A geometric construction made using compass alone
Here is my latest piece of “math music”: a geometry proof, turned into a puzzle, that is set as music for one or more players. One player starts with the first circle, and the others join in, cooperating to find a way to sing or play all 22 circles. The rules for the game are on the last page of the score. (Extra bonus points if you can also sing or play all 22 points – that makes it much harder!)
I’ve recorded one realization of this piece for inclusion on the upcoming Anathem CD, and my friend Jim Bennett has worked up a number of alternate performances, which I hope to post here.