Tag: trio

Culture no.2 (or, Shoot Like a Film Star) (2007)
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Instru­men­ta­tion: pno, pno, perc, performers’ speak­ing voices
Dura­tion: Vari­able, 3’00–15’00
Com­mis­sioned by Toca Loca with assis­tance from the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts
score view score
mp3 listen to Cul­ture no.2 (or, Shoot Like a Film Star)
cmc get per­for­mance materials
Per­form­ers: Toca Loca: Gre­gory Oh – piano, Simon Dock­ing – piano, Aiyun Huang – percussion
Pro­gramme Note

This is the mid­dle piece in my Cul­ture series, which is an explo­ration of the effects that today’s cul­tural con­text has on mak­ing our music what it is. The text for the piece is taken from a junk e-mail mes­sage—cer­tainly among the more recent of lit­er­ary gen­res. It attracted me because it is com­posed entirely of mono­syl­labic words, with no rep­e­ti­tion; a kind of het­ero­ge­neous stream that strikes me as contemporary.

The mid­dle sec­tion of the piece is inde­ter­mi­nate or open: the per­form­ers decide how the musi­cal mate­ri­als will be pre­sented. This is also some­thing that I take from the Cul­ture theme, because the mul­ti­plic­ity of pos­si­bil­i­ties, end­less var­ie­ga­tion, and the impos­si­bil­ity of find­ing “right” answers seem to me impor­tant cul­tural prob­lems today.

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