Program Notes
Crystal Prelude No. 1 with Cryoacoustic Orb sound installation – Reena Esmail and Lee Weisert
“Cryoacoustic Orb is a sound installation involving multiple illuminated polycarbonate orbs filled with slowly melting ice. Hydrophones frozen inside the ice amplify the sounds of the melting process, which are electronically processed and spatialized throughout the darkened gallery space. The result is a unique ambient soundscape that evolves over the course of several hours.”
– Lee Weisert
Clara Yang will perform Reena Esmail’s Crystal Preludes No. 3 (Vachaspati/Bhup) with the fascinating natural sound world of the Cryoacoustic Orb. Esmail’s Crystal prelude’s natural beauty and luminous quality create a perfect companion to Lee Weisert’s Cryoacoustic Orb.
Clinamina – Lee Weisert
“The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius proposes the existence of a phenomenon in which atoms travelling through space are subjected to minute, unpredictable swerving motions. According to Lucretius, this random swerving of atoms, which he calls clinamen (pl. clinamina) is responsible not only for the existence of rivers, plants, and animals, but also the free will of man, since, in a completely deterministic universe, there would be no room for free will. Clinamina explores the notion that human expressivity and creativity is in some basic sense inseparable from ‘lower’ forms of utterances, noises, and proto-musical paraphernalia. Representations of various degrees, or ‘levels,’ of musical organization co-exist on equal footing. Disconnected, particle-like notes float aimlessly, sometimes fusing into assemblages of chords, or converging into sudden bursts of gestural motion. Repetitive algorithmic gestures and musical automata overlap with excerpts from a Debussy prelude—warped and fragmented, but retaining flashes of a sophisticated and lyrical melodic and harmonic style. Technology serves as a modern example of hierarchical organization—an extension of our preferences and biases. By selectively capturing and extending fleeting musical events, we are presented with an imposed structural framework; an illusory ‘structure’ to guide us through the tangle.”
– Lee Weisert
Deep ConditioNN Redux – Suzi Analogue and Clara Yang
“Deep ConditioNN Redux marks a pivotal moment in my artistic journey, a collaborative endeavor with the brilliant pianist Clara Yang. Inspired by the multifaceted layers of my ZONEZ collection of electronic productions, which are deeply rooted in personal experiences, this work serves as a sonic reflection of current reality. The fusion of Clara’s piano prowess with the synthesized sounds creates a mesmerizing tapestry of rhythms and melodies. One of the most exhilarating aspects of this project is the seamless connection between the percussive elements of the piano and the electronic beats, all pulsating at a rapid tempo of 160 beats per minute. Through this collaboration, we’ve crafted a musical narrative that transcends boundaries, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of soundscapes that mirror the complexities of life itself.”
– Suzi Analogue
Nebula – Clara Yang
“The idea of Nebula started from a spur of the moment improvisation before dinner during the pandemic. This year I took the idea and started to expand it to a full piece. It starts with these sound clouds that ring in the air just as what a nebula could look like—a giant cloud of star dust. I do not have synesthesia, but I can almost imagine the color of each of the harmony. In this birth place of stars, these colorful sound clouds grow into a beautiful and simple folk tune in an asymmetrical meter. The middle section creates waves of colors on which a new theme is carried to a cathartic climax. The piece gradually returns to its previous state and ends like the beginning. A palindromic form is used to portray the birth of stars—from stillness to an emotional climax and back to stillness. The luminescent sounds will linger like star dust.”
– Clara Yang
RoboDream – Phil Young
“Our desire to create robots that resemble us not just with our appearance and intelligence but even our emotions has been reflected in every form of art. This composition gives me a chance to follow the suit. The music is trying to personify such a humanoid robot in a comical way, imaginably human but realistically machinal. The music is introduced with a four-notes-stepwise-ascending motive echoed by a swirling arpeggio chord, the former becomes robo leitmotif for the piece. The first section is in a style of ragtime which is energetic, nimble yet clumsy, and at times repetitious and even tedious—everything that characterizes a robot. The middle section is full of fantasy but with a little aura of sadness and mystique, a robo daydream which is constantly interrupted by the robotic motive, there is even a sorrowful longing to be a real human but only to be awaken by the daily grind. The following parody begins with a ‘record needle skipping’ effect and continues to unleash into a true chaos—a computer malfunction and robo’s nightmare. A majestic closing section brings the music to the climax with a beckoning of the robo motive fading away in distance; a cartoonish passage leads to a thundering cadence that abruptly finishes the robot’s day and concludes the music. Though the piece is at the core lighthearted and joyful, the robot ponders on a very important question—‘Who am I?’”
– Phil Young
Movement artist Yili Fan will create choreography to perform live with Clara Yang for this piece.
Conception – Yvette Young and Clara Yang
Conception is an emotional journey of the birth and development and end of AI consciousness. The strange but beautiful sounds in the very beginning develop into a unique texture with life sparkling and bubbling in a nascent stage of consciousness. The idea was to build a cloud of abstraction through the form of effects and briefly discernible melodic lines that weave in and out. This resembles the abstraction we much experience when we are born—the nebulousness of being in a new place where nothing around us makes sense yet and how everything is so mysterious and whimsical in our formative years. Yvette Young creates a beautiful and fascinating soundscape by developing a unique blend of sound of the electric and acoustic guitar, violin, and electronics. In the piano part, Clara Yang responds to the guitar melodic writing and adds a new layer of emotional expression, which eventually helps build to the climax of the piece.
In the process of working, Yvette wanted to allow the use of effects and technology to dictate the melody and create unexpected sounds for her to compose around. She then composited all the sounds she collected from the effects and wrote a melody to make it all cohesive and flowy. In a way, the process of composing was collaborative with technology—a way to forfeit control and add a touch of humanity and emotion to tech generated sounds, in addition to having the original prompt in a purely narrative sense. The AI robot’s monologue at the very end of the piece is sampled from a video of its final moments of consciousness as it is about to be powered down. The earnestness of its goodbye and the acknowledgment of true friendship of its own volition is eerie and believable. Perhaps it has developed humanity and genuinely experiences the emotions of letting go and gratitude.
Analogue Confession – Peter Askim
“In a program of music inspired by technology, Analogue Confession explores the original technology: the human being. Whether it is the ‘digital’ technology of the human hand (and its ten digits interfacing with the piano keyboard), or the ‘Local Area Network’ of the brain and its intellectual interconnections and emotional interweaving, Analogue Confession is a graph of that which (so far) differentiates the soul from Artificial Intelligence and hardware. The piece is dedicated to the wonderful—and very human—Clara Yang.”
– Peter Askim
Think *that’s* you – a personality recognition software toccata – Allen Anderson
“For me, the puzzle with Think That’s You, a personality recognition software toccata, is trying to determine if the music is the machine processing the habits and proclivities of the object or if it is the subject itself, behaving as the subject does. Is the ‘touch’ of the insistent sixteenth notes the nervous system of the agent or the sample rate of the scanner? Or, when the music repeats, which it does frequently, is it because it is in its nature to do so or is it because the machine needs to repeat a data packet to process it to memory? Of course, there is no processor other than my composing habits, but the fun with writing the music was putting myself in both positions—that of the analyzing software (has it predicted what comes next?) and that of the tending-towards-evasive music that would prefer not to be overly defined. Composing is almost always like that: at some point the music dictates how it will go and it’s worth paying attention. Think That’s You was composed for Clara Yang in response to her request for a score addressing some aspect of technology’s ubiquitous presence. No generative algorithms were used other than those I employ without my knowing.” (2019)
“Since writing those words in 2019, I have, in working with Clara, added ‘prepared piano’ sounds at some spots in the work. No physical objects are placed in the piano. Rather recorded samples (randomly selected by the computer) are either triggered by pitch recognition software from notes the piano plays, or set sounds are manually (humanly) on cue to the music.”
– Allen Anderson
Drones – Stephen Anderson
“The concept for the title of the piece, Drones—e.g., as in ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ that first became commercially available in the early 21st century—is characterized musically by the ever-fluctuating motivic material, shifts in the trajectory of the melodic line into extreme registers, and correspondingly, incidental harmony that can quickly alternate between densely chromatic, bluesy, or tonal voicings from moment to moment according to the spontaneous motivic material that was originally generated in the improvisations.”
– Stephen Anderson
Hoyt-Schermerhorn (electroacoustic, composed in 2010) – Christopher Cerrone
“Named for the subway station in Brooklyn where I have spent many nights waiting for the train, Hoyt-Schermerhorn is a tribute to the New York nightscape. The piece explores the myriad and contradictory feelings that come to me late at night in my city of choice - nostalgia, anxiety, joy, panic. Hoyt-Schermerhorn was originally conceived as a graphic score; the pianist was allowed to choose notes at the beginning of the piece. Those sonorities were slowly replaced by my own specifications as the chorale entered midway through. By doing this, I was trying to capture a kind of automatic or intuitive texture, but after hearing the first performance, I realized that in order to realize my desire I would have to work quite intensely and diligently to create what sounded like effortless improvisation. As the piece progresses, it slowly transforms into a soft and gentle lullaby, with the shatter of fragmented electronics breaking the quiet haze.”
– Christopher Cerrone
This deeply moving and meditative piece will end the program as the epilogue. It recapitulates the complex emotions we all feel in this modern world – “nostalgia, anxiety, joy, panic.”
Collaborators
Clara Yang
Praised by critics for her sensitivity, intelligence, and excitement in her playing, Chinese-American pianist Clara Yang has performed in notable venues such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing), Auditorio Nacional de Música (Madrid), the Seymour Centre (Sydney), Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theater (Rochester), the Sunset Center (Carmel), Memorial Hall (Chapel Hill), Meymandi Concert Hall (Raleigh), and on major series such as Carolina Performing Arts and Dame Myra Hess in the Chicago Cultural Center. She is currently Associate Professor of Piano and Head of Keyboard Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Xuan
Xuan is a new media artist, filmmaker, and pianist working at the intersection of music, visual art, and technology. A trained classical pianist with a passion for ‘visual music,’ she actively develops innovative, cross-disciplinary projects that broaden the immersive scope of new music and performance. Her work encompasses experimental animation, abstract scenography, music videos, interactive installations and large scale projection mapping. Her music-driven films explore themes of femininity, power, inner conflict, and multicultural identity.
Lee Weisert
Lee Weisert is a composer of instrumental and electronic music and an associate professor in the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches courses in composition, electronic music, and musicianship. Weisert’s recent music has incorporated increasingly disparate elements such as orchestral instruments, found sounds, field recordings, digital synthesis, and analog circuitry, in an attempt to find, “through experimentation, tinkering, and unconventional approaches, a ritualistic and deeply expressive world of sound” (Dan Lippel, New Focus Recordings).
Yvette Young
Yvette Young is an artist and musician based out of California. She grew up in a classical music background, playing piano and violin from a very young age. She started out as a member of two orchestras, and eventually picked up acoustic and electric guitar. She is the front-woman for the math rock band Covet.
Suzi Analogue
Maya Shipman, professionally known as Suzi Analogue, is a prolific Producer, Songwriter, Composer, Member of the Recording Academy/Grammys, and Creator of Never Normal Records based in Miami, Florida. She is energetically pioneering the new wave of women producers in electronic music & beyond.
Stephen Anderson
Described as “a true piano monster” (All About Jazz) and as “a bright star on the jazz horizon” (Musical Memoirs), Stephen Anderson is a critically acclaimed composer and pianist whose music has been published on twenty compact discs through Summit, Albany, Nagel Heyer Records, and other labels.
Allen Anderson
Allen Anderson has composed works for the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild, Speculum Musicae, Ascolta, the Empyrean Ensemble, the UNC Chamber Singers, The Master Singers of Lexington, Aleck Karis, Thomas Warburton, Daniel Stepner, as well as UNC graduates Grace Kennerly and Sara Soltau. His work has been acknowledged with awards or commissions from the Guggenheim, Fromm and Koussevitsky foundations, Chamber Music America, BMI, League of Composers/ISCM (both the National and Boston chapters) and the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC.
Phil Young
Phil Young (杨智华) composes music in various forms, including symphonic, chamber, electronic, vocal, and film. His ability of fusing Chinese and western elements in his music enriches his originality. Young’s ballet music “Middle Kingdom Ancient China” for Ballet San Jose and the Chinese Performing Artists of America is one of many works well received by the audiences and the media.
Reena Esmail
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. Esmail divides her attention evenly between orchestral, chamber and choral work. She has written commissions for ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Kronos Quartet, and her music has featured on multiple Grammy-nominated albums.
Christopher Cerrone
Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone’s multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.
Yili Fan
Yili Fan is an award-winning artist at international theater and film festivals, and the designer of the collective intelligence method "Fill the Space." She was an instructor in the film department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. She grew up in Canton, China and graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing with a bachelor degree of Screenwriting and Film Directing and postgraduate of Arts in Theater Performance.
Peter Askim
Active as a composer, conductor and collaborative connector, Peter Askim is the Artistic Director of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists and the conductor of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, as well as Director of Orchestral Activities at North Carolina State University. He was previously Music Director and Composer-in-Residence of the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra. As a conductor, he has led the American Composers Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony and Vermont Symphony, among others, and is known for innovative programming, championing the work of living composers and his advocacy of underrepresented voices in the concert hall.
This project is supported by the Department of Music, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, the Arts & Humanities Grant Studio, and the College of Arts & Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill.