Resonate

An Unopened Seashell (2023), for alto saxophone, is inspired by resonating sounds produced within a seashell as air vibrates. By metaphorically “opening” an “unopened seashell,” this piece experiments with the use of breath by the saxophonist, introducing a variety of harmonics and multiphonics. The breath emerges from the rapid notes, extending from the performer to the audience, serving as an invitation for all to engage in a collective breathing practice.

At the end of the piece, the audience is encouraged to follow the saxophonist’s breath and practice the 5.5 breathing method: inhale for 5.5 seconds and exhale for 5.5 seconds which leads to 5.5 breaths per minute. This exercise provides a gentle reset for the mind and body, offering a moment of pause in the hectic rhythm of life to bring clarity and tranquility back into focus. This intentional connection through breath creates a moment of unity, where both the saxophonist and listeners actively contribute to breathing through their shared respiration. An Unopened Seashell thus becomes more than a musical performance; it transforms into a communal exploration of breath, sound, and shared presence.

Animation by Muzhi Leng and Stina-Uka. More videos: Vimeo: Mr. Cold

–YTL

Of Wells and Springs takes its title (and the spelling of drouth) from environmentalist Wendell Berry’s poem, Water, from his collection, Farming: A Handbook. The poem tells of a terrible drouth, of the narrator’s mother waiting for men to bring water from distant springs, of his fear of recurring drouth and of his love of the water of ‘wells and springs.’ He closes the poem with the line ‘My sweetness is to wake in the night after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.’

My music responds to the experiences that Berry conveys so vividly— the fear of drouth and its anguish, the joy of rain and its sound, adding the potential danger it carries. Of Wells and Springs conveys emotion in a manner not unlike text, through structure, flow and tone of voice.

Of Wells and Springs was commissioned in consortium with the lead Bent Frequency Duo and saxophonists Nicole M. Roman and Drew Whiting. It has been exciting to create music for such outstanding musicians!

–JS

Vibra-Elufa is a version for vibraphone of the final scene of Freitag aus Licht (Friday from Light), Elufa for basset-horn and flute (1991).

The first nine measures with changing tempi comprise a moment for one voice. During the next eleven measures, a two-part moment with mirrored voices is elucidated by the

vibraphone using different registers and echoes—and is slightly dramatized through the insertion of a short solo. A conclusion of nine measures follows for a single voice, with short interjections.

On the vibraphone, the microtonal glissandi originally played by the woodwind instruments become bands of sound with distinct timbres through the blending pedalisation and the richly varied mallet technique. This verticalization of horizontal lines renders a unique poetic fascination to the piece.

-KS

The expression "À intervalles fixes" could be translated as "At fixed intervals" or "at regular intervals". It could be a distance of greater or lesser length between two things, between one point and another, or the space of time between two instants.

In music, the notion of interval refers to the notion of pitches, not distance or time-lapse as in the expression. But I've taken the notion of time from the expression and transposed it into rhythm. You'll hear a regular pulse (regular time intervals), mainly at the Hi-hat, which gradually accelerates from section to section. I superimpose an irregularity on this regularity, with off-beat or contrasting rhythms either on the other percussion instruments or at the saxophone.

The composition of this work was made possible thanks to the financial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council (francophone music program).

–RL

Tuning In is in touch with at least three significant references. First, there is Shikasta (1979), the first of Doris Lessing's series of space opera novels, in which the natives of a planet allegorically reminiscent of Earth develop a degenerative disease and inevitable decline, due to a lack of a substance called SOWF, or “substance-of-we-feeling.”

Second, there is the Mexican linguist Carlos Lenkersdorf, who spent decades studying Tojolabal, a Mayan language spoken by the Tojolabʼal people of Chiapas. According to Lenkersdorf, the name of this people is a compound of ab’al, the word which is listened to and not spoken, and tojol, the right moment of listening. The crucial importance of listening to the identity of this ethnic group centrally implicates the we (nosotros in Spanish) in a process that Lenkersdorf and others have called nosotreidad, or nosotrification.

Third, we have “Making Music Together” (1964) by the sociologist Alfred Schutz, who identified music as a prime site of nosotrification avant la lettre. Central to the power of music, Schutz observed, was a “mutual tuning-in relationship…established by the reciprocal sharing of the Other's flux of experiences in inner time, by living through a vivid present together, by experiencing this togetherness as a "We."

Schutz maintained that a study of musical processes “may lead to some insights valid for many other forms of social intercourse.” Thus, Tuning In, one of my series of works exploring the sound of decoloniality, presents a sonic meditation on community. The music expresses the hope that you and I can invent a new, incarnative “we” that understands contemporary music, not as a globalized, pan-European, white sonic

diaspora, but as an expression of the situation of a creole. In this way, we can experience our globalized, polyasporan, listening-rich tuning-in relationship.

This work was commissioned by and written for Bent Frequency.

-GL