Creative Work

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Glyptic Channels (2019) — 36 min.

Two trombones, organ, laptop ensemble, fixed media.

View score here.

A composition-installation for two trombones, organ, laptop ensemble, fixed media, and cathedral. Designed for and installed in the Princeton University Chapel through a collaboration with Facilities, the Music Department, and the Office of Religious Life. Written for and performed by a fourteen-person mixed ensemble: RAGE Thormbones, Eric Plutz, and the Princeton University Laptop Orchestra.

The audience moves freely about the space. First-person field recordings of walking through the woods are punctuated by time-warped trombone samples, close recordings of fingers on a bass drum, and phonemes arranged in semi-sung gestures. Each member of the laptop ensemble plays a tether-controlled digital instrument called a Metall’Ocean, creating choreographed waves of microtonal sound. The live instruments articulate a long process of harmonic clarification from free-frequency microtonality to the vertical extension of a single fundamental F. The trombones move from the balcony to the rafters, coaxing “non-musical” elements out of the soundscape and into the musical present.

“Glyptic Channels” has been reimagined and restaged at the Museum of Human Achievement in Austin, TX (as “Glyptic Channels II” with the Mood Illusion) and as an interactive installation at the Outhaus in Los Angeles (as “Glyptic Gardens”).