SURROUND SOUND SALON SERIES (SSSS) #4
Music by
John Bischoff, All Vessels (Sally Decker and Brendan Glasson) and
Chris Brown, realized by The Hub.
SSSS is a monthly, informal show at CNM in which electronic music composers present their fixed media and/or live electronic music through the 8-channel surround system, generously provided by Meyer Sound. The composers mix their sounds from the center of the space, and the audience is free to choose their own listening location, and to move within the space to hear the music from different vantage points. This concert celebrates the CD release of
John Bischoff’s Bitplicity on ArtifactRecordings, with copies for sale at the show.
PROGRAM:
1)
John Bischoff Bitplicity
Bitplicity combines the wild outback of hands-on analog circuitry with the more formal properties of digital synthesis. This fixed media version maps the inherent 12-voice structure of the piece onto the Center’s multi-channel environment so that shifting voice activation patterns are uniquely projected in space. The very ground of each event in this music is a physical interruption—-a disturbance in a continuous tone or silence. The usual electronic music preferencing of an acoustic-style envelope—-the shaping of an attack followed by subsequent sustain and then release—-is replaced by an ever-present potential for either sudden sound or sudden silence. The artifacts accompanying these transitions provide a site for sonic ornamentation—-unpredictable edges of sound that balance the overly formal interior of electronic tone production.
2) All Vessels – Sally Decker and Brendan Glasson New Work
All Vessels is Sally Decker and Brendan Glasson. Sally and Brendan explore relationships of sounds. With synthesizers, organ, and electronic feedback, their first collaborative release, “An Opening” (Full Spectrum, 2020), sought to create a harmony not of pitches but of forces—weak/strong, energetic/subdued, steady/chaotic. In a recent piece composed for the High Desert Soundings festival, they examined dependence, independence, and interdependence with tape, reed organ, electronics, and acoustic feedback. The duo is creating a new multichannel work for the Surround Sound Salon Series.
3)
Chris Brown Vav (2008) a sound installation
commissioned by the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum realized by the computer network music band The Hub
VAV was inspired by congruencies between associations of the hebrew letter vav and the musical practices of The Hub. The association of vav with the principle of connection is embodied in a music in which every sound is connected to every other one through the exchange of binary data (bits). The association of vav with a pillar, and of the six spatial pillars of three-dimensional space, is represented in the spatial movement of sound, encoded ambisonically to ascend in trajectories towards a middle point, centered and above the installation floor. The association with the number six is reflected in the six players of the group who provide six sound sources for the piece, that plays through six loudspeakers of the surround installation. VAV creates a meditative, three-dimensional soundscape entirely from mathematically synthesized sound that reflects on the symmetries of space and time, concealment and revelation. The Hub players are
John Bischoff,
Chris Brown,
Tim Perkis, Mark Trayle, Phil Stone, and Scot Gresham-Lancaster.
SSSS is curated by
Chris Brown. Send proposals including title to present surround sound pieces in future shows to: cbmuse@gmail.com. Proposal requirements include: 1) Title and duration of the piece (must be less than 20 minutes); 2) a short bio of the composer; 3) a link to a stereo version of the piece.