PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 24 April 2022

ACTIONS [SHARESPACE V] (2018-2020)
(Piano and Computer Musician)

by Roger Reynolds with Jacob Sundstrom and Eric Huebner

Since 2010, I have been exploring the possibilities for an intimately responsive relationship between live instrumental performance and the simultaneous algorithmic manipulation and dissemination (also in “real-time”) of materials they share. The first of these works was SHARESPACE I: Dream Mirror, for guitar and computer musicians (2010). Other similar works followed for contrabass, clarinet, violin, and, now, piano. The process involves the creation or discovery of complementary materials for the subject instrument (one articulate and assertive, the other evocative and reserved). These contrasting materials have been realized in their own, independent musical contexts. They then become a resource that is “mined” in order to form new elaborations that heighten the contrasts and potential of the complementary sources.

        In short, I cultivate a range of behaviors for a particular instrument of interest. I – and also the performers and technical experts with whom I have been working – come to know and appraise the potential of an already realized resource and then use it in new, unexpected and elaborated ways. ACTIONS (the fifth in my series of duos for instrumentalist and computer musician) has a yet more extensive “genealogy”. When I began work on two books of piano etudes, under a Fromm Commission, I decided to identify works in the repertoire of piano music that spoke to me particularly – works by Mendelsohn, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, and Ligeti. I selected short, distinctive passages from each and used these prompts to generate my own etudes. This newly composed music flowed through and was effected by the prompts as it approached and passed through them. Pianist Eric Huebner, a longtime friend and ally, had previously performed and recorded several of my works, and – having performed my Piano Etudes: Book I on a number of occasions – expressed interest in learning the second book. This, in turn, led me to the decision that Book II would be the source from which I drew the essential seeds for the new duo, ACTIONS. So, there is a continuing, transformational evolution between etudes from the repertoire, revisiting them in six etudes of my own, and finally sampling the new etudes to form the basis of a more elaborate and expansive new duo for pianist and computer musician.

        Three algorithms are in play, SMEARZ, PROLIF, and MATRIX. Each has a characteristic process of elaborating, in a principled way, whatever “seeds” are offered to it. These algorithms have built in, programmed procedures, but they are also continuously malleable, so that their impact can vary dramatically or subtly during a performance. The computer musician can provide an atmospheric background for what the instrumentalist is doing or interact in a challenging or comradely way – whatever is needed.

        ACTIONS involves six ways in which we interact with the world. I think of them as “categories of action”: OBSCURING, FIXATING, FRAGMENTING, ACKNOWLEDGING, ELABORATING, and RESONATING. Each movement has its own agendas. In each, the pianist and computer musician interact in different ways. Although there is not an imposed arc shaping the whole experience, it is dimensional and dramatic. ACTIONS involved an intensely interactive process between the three collaborators over several years in La Jolla and Buffalo: pianist Huebner, computer musician Jacob Sundstrom, and me. I express, here, my deep gratitude to them both.

– Roger Reynolds