Ringmasters: Luke Gullickson

 The soulful, carefully stripped down, and no b.s. music of Luke Gullickson is always a joy to encounter.  Classically trained and skilled as a player and composer, Luke passes on the pretense and creates in an arrestingly direct style.  He can be seen around Chicago and increasingly beyond with the infamous Grant Wallace Band.  If you've never heard this freaky folk trio in action, check out the first track from their upcoming album:

And, Luke frequently releases tracks under the name Golconda.  Listen up and dive deep into some great tunes:

Ringmasters: Suzanne Farrin

 The incredibly creative and poetic Suzanne Farrin is an articulate voice for contemporary music and a composer with a uniquely substantive flair for the dramatic.  You can hear her talk in-depth about here about her recent disc of works centered around the poetry of Petrarca, which covers a wide range of expression and color.

Below, check out the spaciously grand "Gli Occhi Miei" with Suzanne providing a tour de force of sound playing inside the piano and singing. 

Gli Occhi Miei from suzanne farrin on Vimeo.

Ringmasters: Seth Boustead

Seth Boustead is one of the leading advocates for new music in Chicago, wearing many hats as a composer, administrator, and broadcaster.  He is the Executive Director of Access Contemporary Music, which engages in a wide variety of efforts to bring many composers and countless pieces to light.  He also plays the advocate for the wider new music scene through his show on WFMT, Relevant Tones.

A particularly popular effort of ACM is their "Sound of Silent Film Festival", which brings new music and strangely wonderful old films together.  Here's a work by Seth from a past festival:

Ringmasters: Katherine Young

In the spirit of full disclosure: Katherine Young is a close personal collaborator of mine.  I'll be premiering an evening-long work for solo violin(s) that we constructed over the course more than a year on September 27 in Chicago.  Our piece, like much of her work, lives at the intersection of improvisation and notated music as well as exploring the potential of sounds that might seem too small to be significant at first glance.

The quartet is very happy to name her as a good friend as well.  She plays bassoon in the band Pretty Monsters, who opened for us at The Hideout in June, and she's working on an arrangement of this lovely Arthur Russell tune for our Oct. 26 Album Release Party.  

But, until you can hear the results of her ringtone creativity, why not check out one section of Katherine and my project (called: Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight) and hear the gritty sound-world we created with a strangely prepared violin we bought on Amazon?

Ringmasters: Marek Poliks

Marek Poliks write music that "mines for expressivity in threadbare spaces, exhausted resources, and modes of interdiction." He lives on the edge of notated music, writing pieces that focus heavily on the performer's interaction with the score.  The complex, and visually beautiful notation inspires multiple modes of response from interpreters and the sonic results are similarly multivalent.

I had a real freak-out when I heard his string quartet "ordinances(B)".  The strangled shimmers and terrifying groans of the instruments create a haze of harmony that challenge my ear and imagination.  As the notes fade in and out of speaking, I wonder: "How much space can music occupy in the world, and in my mind?"

Ringmasters: Morgan Krauss

 Morgan Krauss has quickly emerged as a prolific and preternaturally talented composer, recently receiving 1st prize at the 2013 Orkest de ereprijs YCM competition.  She describes her work as aiming to "produce tactile explorations based on ones physical awareness and elements of sensuality."

Her pieces live up to this description, hovering at the edge of incredible expectation here...

...and with this overwhelming texture of obscured language and secret messages: 

Ringmasters: David Skidmore

Deep grooves and beautifully resonant harmonies typify David Skidmore's "Common Patterns in Uncommon Time", which you can hear an amazing clip of on here.  It's not every day that you find a performer capable of playing in a group as busy, cohesive and polished as Third Coast Percussion that also finds time to write excellent music.  We can't wait to see what he'll do once he gets his hands on the string quartet!

Oh, and check him out in action with Third Coast here...this is awesome:

Museum of Modern Art - John Cage Day - Third Coast Percussion - August 9, 2012 from Third Coast Percussion on Vimeo.

Ringmasters: Sarah Ritch

Sarah Ritch is the closest of close friends to the Spektral Quartet.  Before we'd even fully formed as a quartet, Aurelien and I got together on a Tuesday afternoon to read duets, drink a little vodka, and get to know each other.  Sarah was there, and the first to let us know that we had a long way to go if we were going to learn to match sounds in a string quartet.  Why was she there?  Oh yeah, she's married to Aurelien.

She's a savvy tech-expert and capable of wearing many hats: from composer, to Google Glass pioneer, to Director of Educational Outreach at the Beethoven Festival...and she gives a great interview involving music and technology.  Plus, here's another interview between her and another good buddy of the quartet, Andrew Tham.

I think this duo (with a very old-school Aurelien look going on) depicts how she may have hoped Aurelien and my reading session had ended:

Ringmasters: Bernard Rands

It's an honor to include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Bernard Rands in the killer stable of  composers for our Mobile Miniatures project.  He's worked with countless top artists, lauded in the press and received countless awards.  But, the most exciting part of working with him on this project is to experience his great sensitivity to line and poetic sensibilities as we develop his miniature musical moment.

2014 marks Bernard's 80th birthday, and we also have performances of his Second String Quartet to look forward to.  This is a finely sculpted piece with a great understanding of the quartet as a medium.  To hear a masterful composer in full command of a genre and wringing deep expression from string instruments, take a listen.  We can't wait to learn it!

Ringmasters: Julia Holter

I've known Julia Holter since my undergraduate years at the University of Michigan.  While I didn't know her well back then, I've followed her amazing progression into an indie sensation after her move to Los Angeles for grad school at Cal Arts.

Among several good friends of the quartet (and in the spirit of full disclosure: fellow Michigan alums Chris F-L and on our blog Alex Temple), long discussions were had about her intriguing and labyrinthine song Marienbad.   And I've been nothing short of enthralled with her new album Loud City Song.  I'm pretty confident I've listened to Into The Green Wild at least 30 times.  Check it out now:

Ringmasters: Jay Alan Yim

I've known Jay Alan Yim since my time as a graduate student at Northwestern University.  I had a fantastic time in his "Music Since 1975" class, including sprawling conversations about aesthetic issues that somehow wound up talking about initially unrelated issues and being forced to engage with music I thought (and continue to think, in some cases) that I hated.

Jay is a composer of incredible intellect and wide-ranging interests.  His scores can range from the carefully constructed and sculptural "Blue Voice of Air" (that you can check out below) to this spacious multi-layered structure with elements of improvisation I was a part of performing back in 2009.

I always imagine a bold, geometrically bristling modern sculpture when I hear this piece.  Also, fish making music...c'mon!

Ringmasters: Jen Wang

I first became acquainted with Jen Wang's music in Darmstadt last summer.  As a recipient of a "Staubach Honorarium", she had composed a new work for New York's excellent Talea Ensemble.  It was a great moment in the festival from my perspective as it showed that even in a place as famously rarified as Darmstadt, the zeitgeist has shifted toward acceptance of a wide range of musical aesthetics.

I've kept an eye on what she's been up to ever since with keen interest in what's happening in the Bay Area.  Jen is incredibly active as a composer and administrator as a co-Director of the Wild Rumpus collective and as curator at the Center For New Music.

A wonderfully sonically aware composer, Jen's sense for the development of sounds is on full display in this wonderful percussion quartet (make sure to click through to the second half):

Ringmasters: Liza White

We've gotten to know Liza White well since this last spring.  We premiered her "Zin Zin Zin Zin" (a raucous short work based on a scat by Mos Def) back in May, and had a fantastic time getting all its moving parts and criss-crossing lines into place for our debut disc.  You can look forward to the full piece then, and in the meantime we'll be working with her on a brand new ringtone.

Were you wondering if Liza knows how to put together an exciting and energetic piece of music?  If so, you haven't heard "Zin", but check out "Freestyle" on her website...each section of this barn-burner is based on different hip-hop dance moves!

And, because great music is great, check out Mos Def with The Roots...ZIN ZIN ZIN ZIN!

Ringmasters: Ted Hearne

On a personal level, I am nothing short of squealing with joy that Ted Hearne agreed to be a part of our Mobile Miniatures project.  I've listened to his album under the guise of R WE WHO R WE, his project with Philip White, countless times.  Check out the project and his music...two things I'm independently and mutually pumped about!

Check out the madness live, linked above, or listen to what may be my favorite cover of all time: his version of Mariah Carey's Emotions.  Y'know that original is pretty darn good too...

Comic Cadences: Test Run - Richard Lewis

As any follower of this blog knows, this quartet likes to have a lot of projects cooking at any given point.  With our debut album recorded and mid-preparation for our disc with Julien Labro that we'll put on tape in September, it was really exciting and somewhat odd to have Chris Fisher-Lochhead come to the rehearsal studio some days ago to work on a project that won't see the concert hall until beyond this upcoming season.  I'm talking 2014-15, people!

I'm planning to document what will be a long, and detailed process of engagement with the world of standup comedy from a musical standpoint.  Chris has already been thinking about this for years (as evidenced by the repeated Richard Pryor clips I used to hear coming from his desk when we were roommates), and we're excited to endeavor with him in digging deep into the musical aspects of a fascinating and rich performance medium.

Our first session came together over this clip excerpted from a Richard Lewis appearance.  Check out the audio, and then see where Chris and my conversation begins.  I hope you'll enjoy following along as the conversation unfolds.

JAW: How did you come to decide upon this short clip from Richard Lewis to tackle first?

CFL: As a little background, I had started to transcribe the deliveries of standup comics in the spring of 2011 as a way to study the use of the human voice in performance situations.  I first transcribed 30 second clips by Paul Mooney, Richard Lewis, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Dave Chappelle.  The Richard Lewis clip seemed to me to be the most "musical" in a traditional sense; it had a clarity of pitch and regularity of rhythm that eased with the translation between media.

JAW: Musically speaking, how does the string quartet work for you as a medium for this concept of transcribing the cadence of standups?

CFL: In some ways, the string quartet as an ensemble is actually rather inadequate as a means to capture the various aspects of human vocal delivery.  Unlike wind and brass instruments (and of course, the human voice), string instruments do not rely on the use of breath for sound production, they do not employ the tongue for articulation, and they do not have the same possibilities for noise production that are so important for the production of linguistic meaning.  However, for my purposes, the string quartet is an excellent fit.  First of all, as a string player, I am very comfortable writing for string instruments.  Secondly, as the point of the project is to focus on those aspects of comedic delivery which are properly "musical", the choice of a medium that necessitates some form of translation can actually accentuate those aspects.

JAW: How do you feel affect of Lewis' nervous, neurotic patter effects the music you wrote to fill out the arrangement?

CFL: Although Richard Lewis' onstage persona is certainly very neurotic and nervous, it's interesting that his delivery is a lot more traditionally musical than those of the other comics I studied.  One of the things I plan to do in the future is compare the musical characteristics of a specific comic's delivery with the way that delivery articulates their onstage persona.  For example, is there some correlation between the regular rhythms and songlike pitches in Richard Lewis' routine and its nervous character?  Is there a correlation between the long pauses and monotone delivery of someone like Tig Notaro and their "dryness"?  Regardless, in transcribing the exact rhythms of human speech, the resulting rhythms will inevitably be more irregular and jagged than those of a traditionally metric music.

JAW: You said after we put together this quick recording of the Richard Lewis excerpt that you were glad we did something this early because unexpected problems came to light.  What aspects of this transcription process proved to be the most vexing?  Which aspects of the notation or approach to transcription are you currently wrangling with conceptually?

CFL: I would say that the biggest unexpected obstacles that became evident as we did this arrangement were all practical in nature: creating a tempo map and click track to exactly match the source material, creating an arrangement within the limitations of an absolutely strict click track, and synching up the live performers with the click track.

JAW: It's amazing how far this excerpt has come toward a fully expressed musical aesthetic even in this incredibly early stage of this project's development.  Check out the quartet music without Richard Lewis' voice and see for yourself: