Viola Recording Session - Garth Knox

One week ago, on Monday, October 13th, the outstanding violist Garth Knox was the guest of the Harvard Group for New Music.

Repertoire survey

First, he talked about the history of the viola and its techniques, while constantly playing examples. Quite a great survey of the viola repertoire: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Berlioz (did you know that Paganini asked Berlioz to write for the viola?), Hindemith, Bartok, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Xenakis, James Dillan, Murail, Grisey, Kurtag, Berio, and Sciarrino. Finally, he presented eight fun études: Viola Spaces. He composed them to help teach contemporary techniques.

Recording session

In the afternoon, we had a chance to record Garth Knox in the Huseac Studios: Edgar Barroso and myself seized the unique opportunity. Here is the score I had written for the occasion:

score viola palustris lapalu recording

I also asked him to play in reaction to these four propositions:

Play the spectrum of this flower
Viola palustris
Violet Picture GNU license by fi:Käyttäjä:kompak		 Play the simplicity of this flower
Viola palustris
Violet Picture CC license by Manuel M. Ramos
Play the rhythm of this flower
Viola palustris
Violet Picture GNU license by Kristian Peters		 Play the entourage of this flower
Viola palustris
Violet picture CC license by MiikaS

The session was fast-paced and went very well. Garth Knox shared with a communicating enthusiasm his creativity and experience. Thanks to Professor Hans Tutschku who helped us set up the microphones and ProTools session in advance.

Concert in February 2009

This event took place as a first meeting before Garth Knox comes back for a concert on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 in Cambridge. Several new works will be composed for him. My contribution will be a work for viola and live electronics, and the title will be: Lapalu.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Max for Live: Extreme Time Stretching with Spectral Stretch

Image
In this post, I'm giving insights into the creation of the Spectral Stretch Max for Live Device . There are many ways to achieve audio time stretching without transposition . Some time-based methods build on Pierre Schaefer 's Phonogène . Another approach consists in processing the sound in spectral domain, using a phase vocoder . In this case, the audio samples are converted to spectral data through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Then, even if we focus on extreme time stretching, the details of the phase vocoder implementation have important consequences on the sound quality and the tool's flexibility for live usage. Before introducing the Max for Live device Spectral Stretch, let's have a look at a selection of four possible algorithms: Paulstretch Max Live Phase Vocoder Interpolation between recorded spectra Stochastic Re-synthesis from a recorded sonogram Paulstretch Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch , also known as Paulstretch , is an algorithm designed ...
Read more

A Free Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter

Image
When I discovered electronic music during the Centre Acanthes 2000/Ircam , my favorite topic was real time sound processing in frequency domain. Hans Tutschku taught the wonders of AudioSculpt in Avignon, before Benjamin Thigpen taught Max/MSP in Helsinki. Now, the Computer Music Journal just published an article I wrote about spectral sound processing in real time and performance time ( whereas real-time treatments are applied on a live sound stream, performance-time treatments are transformations of sound files that are generated during a performance ). If you are interested in graphical sound synthesis, phase vocoder , and sonograms (or spectrograms) , I hope you will enjoy this tutorial. The great news is that you can download the article for free on the page of the Computer Music Journal, Issue 32, Volume 3 . Max/MSP/Jitter patches You can readily apply the described techniques in the development environment Max/MSP/Jitter . For a hands-on approach, make sure you download t...
Read more

GroundSwell 2020 Emerging Composers Competition

Image
Groundswell is a wonderful organization dedicated to the development of new music in Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba, Canada. I've been invited to serve as a member of the committee for their first electroacoustic music competition, along with composer Margaret Schedel and composer William Brunson . It's been a fun and quite interesting adventure. We listened to more than two dozen compositions. I wish we could have included more than 5 finalists: there were a number of atypical nice compositions. To listen, head to the competition page . You'll find links to the finalists' music.
Read more