MicroFest 2002: Global Tunings
Mostly Metallophones!
Lyman Hall, Thatcher Music Building, Pomona College, Claremont
Friday, May 10, 2002 8:00
Preconcert talk at 7:30
-- PROGRAM --
The Harvey Mudd College American Gamelan:
Bill Alves
Adam Bush
Masashi Ito
Valerie Lake
Michael Mathis
Julie Simon
| Gending Chilao* | Bill Alves |
The Harvey Mudd College American Gamelan
| Sounds From a Distant Past | Ron George |
| Microtonal Mallet Keyboard Console | Ron George |
-- INTERMISSION --
| Cold Fragments* | Kraig Grady |
The Ensemble of 31 Birds:
| Metaslendro vibraphone | Kraig Grady |
| Metaslendro vibraphone | Erin Barnes |
The Harvey Mudd College American Gamelan
| Bowling Bells* | Tom Flaherty |
| BOWLING BELLES: | BOWLING BEAUX: |
| Alison Ellsworth | Bill Alves |
| Cindy Fogg | Andre Elias |
| Catherine John | Tom Flaherty |
| Emily Petrick | Greg Jackson |
| Elizabeth Siegel | Belcher Samuel |
| Alexandra Thompson | Pete Steele |
| Wayne Steinmetz |
| Steven Young |
| Elegy in Memory of Bill Colvig | Bill Alves |
The Harvey Mudd College American Gamelan
| Violin | Rachel Vetter Huang |
*Denotes first performance
The Harvey Mudd College American Gamelan is an ensemble of instruments
from the gamelan orchestra of Java played tonight in its debut performance by
Harvey Mudd College students and others. While these instruments come from Java
and were commissioned from a traditional master instrument maker, they have
been tuned to a version of the Javanese pélog scale in just intonation,
that is, a tuning system based on the harmonic series but which is not
traditional in Java. The music we have created for this first appearance of the
gamelan sometimes uses traditional Javanese concepts and techniques but is
otherwise American in its heritage, and hence the ensemble is known as an
"American Gamelan."
Imbal-imbalan is the Javanese term for interlocking parts, a technique in which
a melody is created by the alternation between two or more instruments. Here
those parts are polyrhythmic on many levels, creating a texture that does not
really resemble traditional Javanese music (though sometimes such complex
patterns are used in the neighboring island of Bali). In fact, beyond the
instruments and scales, there is little to connect this piece to Javanese
music, beyond a more ineffable inspiration that the pattern-based music of the
region has given to me.
Gending Chilao is an example of a piece which shares more in
formal structure, mode, and other qualities with traditional Javanese music,
but here combined with a Western emissary, the cello (retuned to match the
gamelan). Chilao is a beautiful area in the nearby San Gabriel
Mountains.
Bill Alves has written extensively for acoustic and electronic
instruments as well as mixed media, including the integration of music and
computer video, robot choreography, and web art. A CD of his computer music,
The Terrain of Possibilities is available on the EMF label, and works of
his are included on other recordings, including tuning@eartha.mills.edu
and ICMC 1999. His video works are syndicated by Offline and
CinemaNow.com. In 1993-94 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow in
Indonesia, whose cultures have especially influenced his writing. He currently
teaches at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, where he also directs
the American Gamelan. In 2001 he organized and hosted the MicroFest 2001
Conference, the first conference/festival devoted to alternate tunings.
Sounds From a Distant Past is for a Microtonal Mallet Keyboard
Console and prerecorded music. The prerecorded music includes the Microtonal
Mallet Keyboard Console, bells, and chimes, which are tuned to a microtonal
scale developed by Ron George, and suspended orchestra bells, which have a
different tuning system. George's microtonal scale is a 32-tone scale covering
2 1/2 octaves and there are no repeated notes within the 2 1/2 octave range.
The Super Vibe is a modification of the standard vibraphone with four variable
high speed motors (one variable slow speed motor is standard) and a foot
operated control pedal for controlling the motor speeds (the standard
vibraphone has no foot control). These modifications allow the instrument to
have an extensive variable melodic/harmonic/timbral (color) spectrum that is
not available on any other mallet keyboard percussion instrument. Special
tuning clamps make it possible to create microtonal scales on the instrument
without physically altering it. The Super Vibe, when combined with the marimba
becomes an entirely new instrument, the Mallet Keyboard Console. This
instrument combines the two into an integrated extended keyboard, which extends
the melodic/harmonic/timbral spectrum available on the Super Vibe.
Ron George is an international performing and recording artist and proud
inventor of seven major new percussion instruments as well as a variable
microtonal tuning system for them, a special tablature notation system, and new
performance techniques for traditional and newly developed percussion
instruments. He has also developed a new system of multiple percussion
construction, the Multiple Percussion Console and a totally modular set of
percussion instruments inspired by the Indonesian gamelan, the Tambellans. He
has recently been awarded an NEA Recording Grant and the Aaron Copland Fund
Support to record his compositions as well as those written for him for a solo
CD, Magic Ears (Music for and by Ron George), to be released on O.O.
Disc, Inc., the McKnight Visiting Composers Award and the Composers
Commissioning Program Grant, American Composers Forum, Center for Arts for
Children and Young People (Poznan, Poland), and the City of Los Angeles
Cultural Affairs Department. Currently Ron George is involves in "hands-on"
creative music programs for children and young people with his American
Gamelan. He teaches at Inner City Arts, a privately funded arts organization
that serves inner city children.
Cold Fragments is a "invocation" of one of the final scene of
next week's shadow play presentation of the now renamed Shrinky in the
Eighth Climate at the Pacific Asia Museum on May 18th. In Anaphoria, it is
customary to precede Shadow Performances with both Invocations and afterward
Banishments in order to prepare and place to rest the spirits necessary for
these endeavors.
Kraig Grady was born in Montebello, California. While still in
his teens, he realized he had an overwhelming urge to be a composer. After
studies with Nicolas Slonimsky, Dean Drummond, Dorence Stalvey (all briefly)
and Byong-Kon Kim (longer) he produced his earliest compositions. Since meeting
Erv Wilson in 1975, he has composed and performed in alternative tunings of
Wilson's. In the 80s Kraig Grady (along with Keith Barefoot) became one of the
first to revive the combination of live music with silent film. He was
responsible for the films as well as the music. During this period he took part
in the LA Philharmonic's American Music Weekend as well as New Music America.
In 1990 with the opera "War and Pieces" film retreated to a background for live
performers. Soon afterwards was his first exposure to the music of Anaphoria
Island where he took up residence, on and off, for a period of three years. On
his return he found himself being asked to act as a liaison between Anaphoria
and North America. In this role he has produced numerous solo and ensemble
works and three shadow plays BLACK EYE MERU, TEN BLACK EYE I &
II.
Water Drops is an attempt to express musically the rhythm I heard
in the rainwater falling to the ground from an undrained roof. I was inspired
by Steve Reich's concept of phase music, and incorporated it in the form of
discrete-interval shifting in the parts.
Masashi Ito is a senior computer science student at Harvey Mudd College
and composition student of Bill Alves. He has played the piano for about 16
years and drums for about 8 years. "I write music for personal amusement..."
Bowling Bells is an excuse to listen carefully to a few everyday
sounds, and to celebrate their extraordinary beauty. Central to the piece are
two stainless steel bowls which have served hundreds of pounds of salad to our
many guests over the years. I have always marveled at the rich sonority that
each produces with the slightest encouragement. They are nearly perfectly tuned
a minor third apart (though with everyday use that perfection does vary from
dent to dent,) and they signal major points of arrival in the piece. The four
channel playback is of digital retunings of the metal bowls, yielding 15
equally spaced pitches within the minor third. The 16 glass bowls used in the
premiere have served hundreds of gallons of soup to many guests over the years,
and have a range or nearly a minor third also, with many pitches in between.
Performers sound the bowls with various implements found in most homes:
toothbrushes, marbles, combs, trickling water, and fingers.
Tom Flaherty has received grants, prizes, awards, and residencies from
the National Endowment for the Arts, American Music Center, the Pasadena Arts
Council, the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, the Delius
Society, the University of Southern California, "Meet the Composer," and Yaddo.
Published by Margun Music, Inc. and American Composers Editions, his music has
been performed throughout Europe and North America, and is recorded on the
Klavier, Bridge, SEAMUS, Capstone, and Advance labels. He earned degrees at
Brandeis University, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, and the University of Southern
California; his primary teachers in composition include Martin Boykan,
Bülent Arel, Robert Linn, and Frederick Lesemann. A founding member of the
Almont Ensemble, he is currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of
the Electronic Studio at Pomona College and is an active cellist in the Los
Angeles area.
Elegy in Memory of Bill Colvig was written shortly after the
death in 2000 of Bill Colvig, who designed and built the first American Gamelan
in 1970. He was a wonderful musician, instrument designer and builder, mountain
climber, and collaborator with his life partner composer and microtonal pioneer
Lou Harrison. Like many, I was charmed by Bill's energy, good humor, love of
the earth, and his puns.
Rachel Vetter Huang holds the rare distinction of being honored by both
the National Endowment of the Arts, for the production of chamber music
festivals in New York and Colorado, and the National Endowment for the
Humanities for participation in "JAZZ: A Comparative View" at Yale University.
Dr. Huang was a featured performer at the 1994 World Conference of the
International Society for Music Education and has presented on the topic of
violin-piano duo repertoire as the chamber music at state and national
conventions of the Music Teachers National Association and the College Music
Society. She has concertized extensively on both coasts and in the Far East and
has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops, the Concord Symphony Orchestra
and others. She has participated as an American representative in the Respighi
Festival in Citta de Castello, Italy and on scholarships to the Aspen and
Tanglewood Music Festivals. Her teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Robert Koff and
the late Ivan Galamian. Dr. Huang holds degrees from Harvard University and the
State University of New York Stony Brook, and the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro.