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Last modified 24 April 2022

PROGRAM NOTE

MARKed MUSIC [SHARESPACE II] (2011)
(Contrabass and Computer Musician)

by Roger Reynolds

MARKed MUSIC is a watershed work for me. It is, more than any other, a result of close collaboration, a circumstance that will, ideally, mark not only our musical, but also our societal future.* In the present case, I first composed two short, complementary works for solo, unamplified contrabass: imAge/contrabass (Assertive) and imagE/contrabass (Evocative). These involved a long period of close interaction with Mark Dresser, try-outs and frequent re-writings. These two source pieces were then recorded by Dresser for his Guts production. Mark’s wizardry as an explorer of his instrument’s resources nourished the emergence of the two solo pieces that are completely written out. His mastery of improvisation aroused the present work which is not fully notated.

        My strategy was to devise a sectional structure with “filled” and “empty” parts. Those that are filled quote directly from the source solo pieces. The longer “empty” sections are often framed by initializing and cadential passages, but leave the remainder to what could be called “contextually-guided” improvisation. I provide the frame; the performers create an appropriate picture within it.

        The solo instrument’s progress throughout (essentially, a journey from pizzicato assertiveness to arco evocation) is supported, illuminated, and constantly inflected by a computer-musicians who manages the evolution and inflection of four, multidimensional algorithms in real time. There are 33 such “Cues” over the course of MARKed MUSIC.

        My exploration of algorithmic processes began at IRCAM in the early 80s, with David Wessel. The original pair (SPLITZ and SPIRLZ) has continued to be useful in the intervening decades and has recently been joined by four new ones (PROLIF, SMEARZ, MATRIX, and THINNR). These are, in turn, indebted to collaborative interaction with Ian Saxton and Peter Otto, but most extensively with Jaime Oliver, the co-dedicatee of MARKed MUSIC. It was Jaime whose musicianship and programming skills propelled early versions of these processes into a fully dimensional form (each in an entirely distinctive way) and into performative fluency.

* I also note, here, the pathbreaking collaborative interaction I have had since the mid-90s with percussionist Steve Schick. Together, we brought into being Watershed and the Chatter-Clatter movement of SANCTUARY.

– Roger Reynolds