WORK SAMPLE I
Meditations for Himalayan Singing Bowls
Score: http://bit.ly/3anYmT7
Starting Point in Score: Pg. 13 in the pdf, start of Mvt. II.
About the Work: For this piece, I was interested in the materiality of the singing bowl, how performers interact with the instrument, its sound, and the fantasies we instill in objects and their histories. Through these questions I sought to evoke different conceptions of meditation in the musical narrative while also exploring the sonic palette of the singing bowl and its techniques for activation. It was written for John Ling and Chris Hadley and uses only singing bowls and various percussion implements.
Work Sample II
Scratched and Polished
About the Work: Scratched and Polished is a short work for upside down singing bowl, wool kerchief, pencil, fingernail, and 1/8″-1/4″ adapter, contact microphone, and MIDI controller. In the work I was interested in exploring the materiality of the both the bowl and the implements I used. At the same time, I wanted to take advantage of the unique acoustics of recording via a contact microphone. The profile of the microphone allowed me to manipulate the timbre of the bowl with electroacoustic techniques like spectral resonators and filter delays to great effect.
Work Sample III
Astraeus
About the Work: Astraeus // Consort of Eos // God of the Dusk.
Work Sample IV
From Elemental Complexities to Unified Singularities: A Microcosmic Journey
About the Performance:
Composed by Eric Lemmon and Anne Sophie Andersen
This work was commissioned by the Danish festival New Music for Strings in 2021 as part of a triptych of collaborative compositions that were linked by the theme “remote connections.” My collaborator Anne Sophie and I were challenged by the pandemic to think of new ways of creating remotely. For this work, we were inspired by writings on communications, systems theory, telematics, as well as notions of autopoiesis, where sonic elements could development life-like agency as they circulate among performers. In it, performers are asked to interpret notated and graphic score cards as well as listen to and respond to the other performers’ interpretations through instructions led (but not proscribed) by an automated GUI. Anne Sophie and I developed the score cards and concept together in the winter of 2020-2021. I built the score GUI and sound synthesis system in Python and SuperCollider, respectively.
In this performance, I am collaborating with Melody Chua and Eric Larrieux. Eric Larrieux is using no-input mixing on found objects: activating them with attached transducers and sometimes feeding their sound back into other objects. Melody Chua is performing on her personally developed Chaosflöte. I am managing several different electronic instruments, a sequencer, samples, and manipulating both Eric and Melody’s sound throughout the piece via the custom, live-performance setup that I developed for the piece.
Work Sample V
Connections
About the Work:
Composed and performed by Edward Enman, Eric Lemmon, Rose Naggar-Tremblay, and Viktoria Nikolova.
This work was composed, performed, recorded, shot, and edited by myself, Edward Enman, Rose Naggar-Tremblay, and Viktoria Nikolova in the span of three weeks during the 2021, Westben Performer-Composer Residency. A web opera, the work moves through a series of vignettes drafted by individuals and pairs in the group before arriving at a climax that features each member of the group.
The representative timing given here is the ‘duet’ between myself and Viktoria Nikolova, which features Viktoria’s voice, and me on both keyboard and as a digital audio producer. Some of the themes of the opera are featured here, including the aesthetics and virtuality of digital mediation as well as questions of mistranslation. The notes associated with the web-opera are as follows:
\\ 23.7.21, Westben Performer-Composer Residency
Three weeks ago, we were four strangers in two time zones speaking three different mother tongues, gathered together in a virtual space.
While wanting to address the theme of post-pandemic hopes, we felt compelled to observe the processes that could lead us to communicate about it in the first place.
How could we translate each other’s thoughts into our own musical or linguistic identities, and what could be found in that welcoming and active listening?
Could we really be seen through the lenses of our devices?