Excerpts from the score, 2014
Fictional Atmospheres: six receding backgrounds
Graphic score for five instruments and field recordings
Commissioned for the Emergents Series at The Music Gallery
Premiered by Ensemble Paramirabo at The Music Gallery 2014
Six receding backgrounds is for piano quintet and field recordings. The piece is conceived of as part of a series of chamber music works (entitled fictional atmospheres) that work with field recordings inside of chamber ensemble scenarios— treating the audio recordings and concert instruments as an entangled presence.
The score is mainly graphic with some specified pitch frequencies, and the audio recordings are deployed via loudspeakers placed behind the musicians (on the floor). The form of the piece is six miniatures. Each miniature has a continual diminishing structure (decrescendo), creating the impression of one material (the audio recordings) receding into another (the acoustic instruments and the concert hall itself). The players are instructed to attenuate their volume in relation to the audio recordings (represented by the waveform drawing) so that the acoustic sounds of the instruments are slowly revealed, and at times disappear into the audio soundscape.
Listen to an excerpt
Performed by Ensemble Paramirabo