| David Rosenboom & William Winant |
| Zones of Influence |
David Rosenboom — Zones of Influence
ZONES OF INFLUENCE — LONG AWAITED COMPLETE & FULLY REALIZED RECORDING BY ROSENBOOM AND WINANT RELEASED ON POGUS
ξ° First-ever, fully realized recording of the major, concert-length composition by Rosenboom for percussion and computer/electronics that in 1984-1985 introduced new virtuoso performance techniques along with significant developments in real-time algorithmic composition and advanced interactive linking of percussion instruments with software. Hear extraordinary percussionist William Winant driving electronics, noise, real-time algorithmic composition models, interactive morphological dynamics, auxiliary keyboard and glissando instruments, and the new Touché II software instrument. Package includes two CDs and booklet with illustrated article about Zones of Influence and its history.
ξ° David Rosenboom, composition and electronics
ξ° William Winant, percussion
David born: September 9, 1947 in Fairfield, Iowa
Location: Santa Clarita, CA
Album release: June 15, 2014
Format: 2 CDs
Record Label: Pogus
Duration: 51:16 + 44:29 => 95:45
Tracks:
Disc 1:
1. The Winding of a Spring: The Stochastic Part 11:25
2. The Winding of a Spring: The Tripartite Structure 12:10
3. Closed Attracting Trajectories: Melody Set 1 13:53
4. Closed Attracting Trajectories: Melody Set 2 13:48
Disc 2:
1. Given the Senses the Real Pregeometry 8:40
2. Epigenesis, Ontogenesis, Phylogenesis, Parthenogenesis 9:11
3. The Buckling of a Spring 17:33
4. Study for 'Zones' 9:25
Description:
ξ° David Rosenboom (b.1947) is considered a pioneer in American experimental music. This release of his Zones of Influence (1984-85) documents for the first time the complete version of a major composition for percussion and computer/electronics that introduced new virtuoso performance techniques along with significant developments in real-time algorithmic composition and advanced interactive linking of percussion instruments with software. Few solo percussion works exist with the scope of this composition. Though the work has been performed extensively, it has never been fully recorded for public release until now.
ξ° Zones of Influence is a five-part cycle of works for in which the percussionist's performance is processed and transformed in a special way. This way involves not just transforming the percussion instruments' sounds on an acoustic level, but processing based on information contained in complex patternings manifested in the percussionist's performance. This constitutes real-time algorithmic processing or algorithmic composition driven by the musical structure of what the percussionist plays. ξ° For its time, Zones of Influence introduced historically innovative approaches to how real-time compositional algorithms may be considered as key components of a score. It also introduced a technique for making sequences of continuously evolving variations on musical materials, called morphological transformations. These transformations, in turn, outlined musical trajectories in what qualities; and from a system of multi-part counterpoint made with these trajectories , the musical materials of Zones of Influence emerged. Indeed, all the musical materials for Zones of Influence were generated with these tools, starting with the musical features contained in two long, 60-note, melodies, which were freely composed in advance.
ξ° Each of the five works in this set involves entirely different percussion setups, written scores and computer algorithms. Since the piece was composed before the proliferation of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), special interface electronics were constructed to connect the percussion instruments to a computer assisted digital instrument known as the Touché . This innovative, computer instrument was collaboratively designed by Donald Buchla and David Rosenboom in Berkeley, Ca, in 1979-1980. Zones of Influence was written for percussionist, William Winant and the Touché.
ξ° David Rosenboom is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, author and educator known as a pioneer in American experimental music. During his long career, he has explored ideas about the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system.
ξ° William Winant (b. 1953) is a multi-faceted percussion artist with over 200 recordings, has collaborated with such renowned artists as John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Joan LaBarbara, Oingo Boingo, Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth, Mr. Bungle, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. Composers who have written for him include John Cage, Lou Harrison, John Zorn, Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, David Rosenboom, Larry Polansky, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, and Wadada Leo Smith. ξ° He teaches at Mills College and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
REVIEW
Dan Barbiero, Avant Music News
ξ° David Rosenboom’s Zones of Influence, composed in 1984-1985, is a five-part work for solo percussion and computer generated compositional algorithms. The composition, which is significant for the innovative way in which it connected acoustic instruments with real-time processing, was written for percussionist William Winant, who performs it here.
ξ° Although the work was written as a solo for Winant, in a sense it serves as a feature for a second performer as well. This “performer” is the Touché computer assisted digital instrument, a keyboard designed by Rosenboom and Donald Buchla at a time when MIDI technology being developed but had not yet come into wide use. With Touché, Rosenboom was able to combine Winant’s varied array of pitched and unpitched percussion instruments with live processing in a way that was groundbreaking at the time and still is provocative today. Happily, Pogus has issued the complete work, the first time ever on a recording.
ξ° Touché’s role in shaping the overall texture of the work is immediately apparent in the way it supplements the instruments’ timbral qualities. Like many processing interfaces, Touché creates novel timbres, some of which conserve something of the acoustic instruments’ sound characteristics and some of which appear quite alien. Overall there is a tendency toward timbres of a sleek-surfaced, metallic cast — sometimes sounding as if they were produced by a hypertrophied toy piano–which contrast markedly with the sounds of Winant’s wood and membrane instruments. ξ° Particularly dramatic examples of this contrast can be found in Winding of a Spring Tripartite Structure for three snare drums, and Closed Attracting Trajectories Melody Set 2, for marimba and xylophone.
ξ° Beyond the surface stratum of sounds, the electronics’ interventions alter Winant’s performances at the compositional level. Rosenboom takes patterns of tones or sounds produced by the performer and processes them with real time compositional algorithms. A good example of this is in Zones’ final section, where a set of arpeggios and glissandi on violin — played by Rosenboom, as it happens — is subjected to accelerating changes. By using recombinatory operations the program alters the violin’s pitches, phrasing and tempos, sometimes quite dramatically. The traditional value of thematic development is abstracted and augmented by a multiplication of contrapuntal lines, leading to a densely complex surface sound. Extended to the work as a whole, Rosenboom’s compositional processing makes for an especially dynamic structure built up of proliferating and interpenetrating lines.
ξ° Also included in this two-disc set is Study for Zones, a kind of prototype work in which Rosenboom experimented with early versions of the algorithms that would go into the making of the final work.
Website: http://davidrosenboom.com/
David Rosenboom
Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music
Dean, The Herb Alpert School of Music
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Santa Clarita, CA 91355-2397 USA
Office: (661) 253-7816
Fax: (661) 255-0938
_______________________________________________________________
ξ° Since the 1960s David Rosenboom (b. 1947) has explored the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system. His work is widely distributed and presented around the world.
ξ° Rosenboom holds the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music in The Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts, where he has been Dean of the School of Music since 1990, a conductor with the New Century Players, CoDirector of the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, and member of the Center for New Performance. In 2011 he also served as Acting Co-President for CalArts. He taught at Mills College from 1979 to 1990, held the Darius Milhaud Chair, was Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department, and Director of the Center for Contemporary Music. His independent career outside institutions has spanned international performance and composition, consulting, recording, writing, instrument design, interdisciplinary research, and multi-media production.
ξ° He studied at the University of Illinois with Salvatore Martirano, Lejaren Hiller, Kenneth Gaburo, Gordon Binkerd, Bernard Goodman, Paul Rolland, Jack McKenzie, Soulima Stravinsky and John Garvey among others and has worked and taught in innovative institutions, such as the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York's Electric Circus, York University in Toronto — where he was Professor of Music and Interdisciplinary Studies —, University of Illinois — where he was awarded the prestigious George A. Miller Visiting Professorship —, New York University, Banff Center for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, Bard College, Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale, and Ionian University in Greece.
ξ° His music, performances, and productions have been recorded on various labels and commercial entities, most recently including New World Records, Mutable Music, EM Records, Centaur Records, Lovely Music Ltd., Cold Blue, Pogus Productions, Tzadik, Black Saint, West Wind, Elektra Nonesuch, Frog Peak Music, Nine Winds Records, Big Pink Music, Music Gallery Editions, and others. Examples of his recent projects include developing a new scoring technique using configuration spaces in, Zones of Coherence, for solo or multiple trumpets — written for Daniel Rosenboom — and in Twilight Language for solo piano — referring to a mystical language of Tibetan Siddahs and written for Vicki Ray; collaborations with director, Travis Preston, to create unique theatrical expansions using live video of his musical works, Bell Solaris — Twelve Metamorphoses in Piano Theater, and Systems of Judgment for piano, violin, and computer music system; live electronic music for Rain Coloring Forest, a dance theater work made in collaboration with Indonesian choreographer and multi-artist, Sardono W. Kusumo, lighting designer, Jennifer Tipton and animation designer, Maureen Selwood; and AH!, a new approach to opera as emergent interactive process with poet, Martine Bellen, and director, Travis Preston, an international group of collaborating composer-performers known as A Counterpoint of Tolerance Composers, and a theatrical and new media team from The Herb Alpert School of Music at Calarts and CalArts’ Center for New Performance, see: http://www.ah-opera.org/
ξ° Rosenboom is author of influential books such as Biofeedback and the Arts and Extended Musical Interface with the Human Nervous System and many articles and monographs, such as Propositional Music: On Emergent Properties in Morphogenesis and the Evolution of Music and Collapsing Distinctions: Interacting within Fields of Intelligence on Interstellar Scales and Parallel Musical Models. He is also coauthor with Phil Burk and Larry Polansky of the widely used software environment for experimental music, HMSL (Hierarchical Music Specification Language). Currently, he is working on a book about compositional models and exploring the universe through experimental music, entitled Propositional Music, a variety of recordings and new musical projects.
ξ° David Rosenboom is a Yamaha Artist.
ξ° See listing under Jazz Pianists at Yamaha Artist Services, New York:
http://www.yamaha.com/yasi/
ξ° “Perhaps no composer has used more complex logical processes than David Rosenboom, a brilliant and multi–talented musician who also performs virtuosically on both piano and violin ... If Rosenboom's concepts are among the most abstract in the business, his sonic results are often sensuous and arrestingly meaningful.” Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century | Schirmer Books, New York, 1997
_______________________________________________________________
| David Rosenboom |
| Zones of Influence |
ZONES OF INFLUENCE — LONG AWAITED COMPLETE & FULLY REALIZED RECORDING BY ROSENBOOM AND WINANT RELEASED ON POGUS
ξ° First-ever, fully realized recording of the major, concert-length composition by Rosenboom for percussion and computer/electronics that in 1984-1985 introduced new virtuoso performance techniques along with significant developments in real-time algorithmic composition and advanced interactive linking of percussion instruments with software. Hear extraordinary percussionist William Winant driving electronics, noise, real-time algorithmic composition models, interactive morphological dynamics, auxiliary keyboard and glissando instruments, and the new Touché II software instrument. Package includes two CDs and booklet with illustrated article about Zones of Influence and its history.
ξ° David Rosenboom, composition and electronics
ξ° William Winant, percussion
David born: September 9, 1947 in Fairfield, Iowa
Location: Santa Clarita, CA
Album release: June 15, 2014
Format: 2 CDs
Record Label: Pogus
Duration: 51:16 + 44:29 => 95:45
Tracks:
Disc 1:
1. The Winding of a Spring: The Stochastic Part 11:25
2. The Winding of a Spring: The Tripartite Structure 12:10
3. Closed Attracting Trajectories: Melody Set 1 13:53
4. Closed Attracting Trajectories: Melody Set 2 13:48
Disc 2:
1. Given the Senses the Real Pregeometry 8:40
2. Epigenesis, Ontogenesis, Phylogenesis, Parthenogenesis 9:11
3. The Buckling of a Spring 17:33
4. Study for 'Zones' 9:25
Description:
ξ° David Rosenboom (b.1947) is considered a pioneer in American experimental music. This release of his Zones of Influence (1984-85) documents for the first time the complete version of a major composition for percussion and computer/electronics that introduced new virtuoso performance techniques along with significant developments in real-time algorithmic composition and advanced interactive linking of percussion instruments with software. Few solo percussion works exist with the scope of this composition. Though the work has been performed extensively, it has never been fully recorded for public release until now.
ξ° Zones of Influence is a five-part cycle of works for in which the percussionist's performance is processed and transformed in a special way. This way involves not just transforming the percussion instruments' sounds on an acoustic level, but processing based on information contained in complex patternings manifested in the percussionist's performance. This constitutes real-time algorithmic processing or algorithmic composition driven by the musical structure of what the percussionist plays. ξ° For its time, Zones of Influence introduced historically innovative approaches to how real-time compositional algorithms may be considered as key components of a score. It also introduced a technique for making sequences of continuously evolving variations on musical materials, called morphological transformations. These transformations, in turn, outlined musical trajectories in what qualities; and from a system of multi-part counterpoint made with these trajectories , the musical materials of Zones of Influence emerged. Indeed, all the musical materials for Zones of Influence were generated with these tools, starting with the musical features contained in two long, 60-note, melodies, which were freely composed in advance.
ξ° Each of the five works in this set involves entirely different percussion setups, written scores and computer algorithms. Since the piece was composed before the proliferation of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), special interface electronics were constructed to connect the percussion instruments to a computer assisted digital instrument known as the Touché . This innovative, computer instrument was collaboratively designed by Donald Buchla and David Rosenboom in Berkeley, Ca, in 1979-1980. Zones of Influence was written for percussionist, William Winant and the Touché.
ξ° David Rosenboom is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, author and educator known as a pioneer in American experimental music. During his long career, he has explored ideas about the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system.
ξ° William Winant (b. 1953) is a multi-faceted percussion artist with over 200 recordings, has collaborated with such renowned artists as John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Joan LaBarbara, Oingo Boingo, Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth, Mr. Bungle, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. Composers who have written for him include John Cage, Lou Harrison, John Zorn, Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, David Rosenboom, Larry Polansky, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, and Wadada Leo Smith. ξ° He teaches at Mills College and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
REVIEW
Dan Barbiero, Avant Music News
ξ° David Rosenboom’s Zones of Influence, composed in 1984-1985, is a five-part work for solo percussion and computer generated compositional algorithms. The composition, which is significant for the innovative way in which it connected acoustic instruments with real-time processing, was written for percussionist William Winant, who performs it here.
ξ° Although the work was written as a solo for Winant, in a sense it serves as a feature for a second performer as well. This “performer” is the Touché computer assisted digital instrument, a keyboard designed by Rosenboom and Donald Buchla at a time when MIDI technology being developed but had not yet come into wide use. With Touché, Rosenboom was able to combine Winant’s varied array of pitched and unpitched percussion instruments with live processing in a way that was groundbreaking at the time and still is provocative today. Happily, Pogus has issued the complete work, the first time ever on a recording.
ξ° Touché’s role in shaping the overall texture of the work is immediately apparent in the way it supplements the instruments’ timbral qualities. Like many processing interfaces, Touché creates novel timbres, some of which conserve something of the acoustic instruments’ sound characteristics and some of which appear quite alien. Overall there is a tendency toward timbres of a sleek-surfaced, metallic cast — sometimes sounding as if they were produced by a hypertrophied toy piano–which contrast markedly with the sounds of Winant’s wood and membrane instruments. ξ° Particularly dramatic examples of this contrast can be found in Winding of a Spring Tripartite Structure for three snare drums, and Closed Attracting Trajectories Melody Set 2, for marimba and xylophone.
ξ° Beyond the surface stratum of sounds, the electronics’ interventions alter Winant’s performances at the compositional level. Rosenboom takes patterns of tones or sounds produced by the performer and processes them with real time compositional algorithms. A good example of this is in Zones’ final section, where a set of arpeggios and glissandi on violin — played by Rosenboom, as it happens — is subjected to accelerating changes. By using recombinatory operations the program alters the violin’s pitches, phrasing and tempos, sometimes quite dramatically. The traditional value of thematic development is abstracted and augmented by a multiplication of contrapuntal lines, leading to a densely complex surface sound. Extended to the work as a whole, Rosenboom’s compositional processing makes for an especially dynamic structure built up of proliferating and interpenetrating lines.
ξ° Also included in this two-disc set is Study for Zones, a kind of prototype work in which Rosenboom experimented with early versions of the algorithms that would go into the making of the final work.
Website: http://davidrosenboom.com/
David Rosenboom
Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music
Dean, The Herb Alpert School of Music
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Santa Clarita, CA 91355-2397 USA
Office: (661) 253-7816
Fax: (661) 255-0938
_______________________________________________________________
ξ° Since the 1960s David Rosenboom (b. 1947) has explored the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system. His work is widely distributed and presented around the world.
ξ° Rosenboom holds the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music in The Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts, where he has been Dean of the School of Music since 1990, a conductor with the New Century Players, CoDirector of the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, and member of the Center for New Performance. In 2011 he also served as Acting Co-President for CalArts. He taught at Mills College from 1979 to 1990, held the Darius Milhaud Chair, was Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department, and Director of the Center for Contemporary Music. His independent career outside institutions has spanned international performance and composition, consulting, recording, writing, instrument design, interdisciplinary research, and multi-media production.
ξ° He studied at the University of Illinois with Salvatore Martirano, Lejaren Hiller, Kenneth Gaburo, Gordon Binkerd, Bernard Goodman, Paul Rolland, Jack McKenzie, Soulima Stravinsky and John Garvey among others and has worked and taught in innovative institutions, such as the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York's Electric Circus, York University in Toronto — where he was Professor of Music and Interdisciplinary Studies —, University of Illinois — where he was awarded the prestigious George A. Miller Visiting Professorship —, New York University, Banff Center for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, Bard College, Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale, and Ionian University in Greece.
ξ° His music, performances, and productions have been recorded on various labels and commercial entities, most recently including New World Records, Mutable Music, EM Records, Centaur Records, Lovely Music Ltd., Cold Blue, Pogus Productions, Tzadik, Black Saint, West Wind, Elektra Nonesuch, Frog Peak Music, Nine Winds Records, Big Pink Music, Music Gallery Editions, and others. Examples of his recent projects include developing a new scoring technique using configuration spaces in, Zones of Coherence, for solo or multiple trumpets — written for Daniel Rosenboom — and in Twilight Language for solo piano — referring to a mystical language of Tibetan Siddahs and written for Vicki Ray; collaborations with director, Travis Preston, to create unique theatrical expansions using live video of his musical works, Bell Solaris — Twelve Metamorphoses in Piano Theater, and Systems of Judgment for piano, violin, and computer music system; live electronic music for Rain Coloring Forest, a dance theater work made in collaboration with Indonesian choreographer and multi-artist, Sardono W. Kusumo, lighting designer, Jennifer Tipton and animation designer, Maureen Selwood; and AH!, a new approach to opera as emergent interactive process with poet, Martine Bellen, and director, Travis Preston, an international group of collaborating composer-performers known as A Counterpoint of Tolerance Composers, and a theatrical and new media team from The Herb Alpert School of Music at Calarts and CalArts’ Center for New Performance, see: http://www.ah-opera.org/
ξ° Rosenboom is author of influential books such as Biofeedback and the Arts and Extended Musical Interface with the Human Nervous System and many articles and monographs, such as Propositional Music: On Emergent Properties in Morphogenesis and the Evolution of Music and Collapsing Distinctions: Interacting within Fields of Intelligence on Interstellar Scales and Parallel Musical Models. He is also coauthor with Phil Burk and Larry Polansky of the widely used software environment for experimental music, HMSL (Hierarchical Music Specification Language). Currently, he is working on a book about compositional models and exploring the universe through experimental music, entitled Propositional Music, a variety of recordings and new musical projects.
ξ° David Rosenboom is a Yamaha Artist.
ξ° See listing under Jazz Pianists at Yamaha Artist Services, New York:
http://www.yamaha.com/yasi/
ξ° “Perhaps no composer has used more complex logical processes than David Rosenboom, a brilliant and multi–talented musician who also performs virtuosically on both piano and violin ... If Rosenboom's concepts are among the most abstract in the business, his sonic results are often sensuous and arrestingly meaningful.” Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century | Schirmer Books, New York, 1997
_______________________________________________________________