fold (2023)

Read DigiScore's analysis of fold

fold was commissioned to reflect the theme of “Location Sharing” for the 2023 Browser Sound Festival in Stuttgart. The ensemble in residence for the festival was a pianist who is in the room during the performance and a saxophonist and bass clarinetist who are remote (as in, in other countries). I chose to reflect the theme of “location sharing” by using audio feedback to “sound out” the resonant frequencies of the remote performers’ locations. Using the resonant tubes of their instruments, they create and manipulate audio feedback tones, which are broadcast over the internet to the performance space where the audience hears them as calmly swelling timbres and melodies.

Additionally, each remote performers’ sound is analyzed for pitch content and sent to the performance space as data, which directs the pianist’s playing. Their gestures and phrases are precomposed as rhythms and registral shapes, but their pitches will be (mostly) supplied by the remote analyses of the audio feedback. The hope is that the physical properties of the remote performers’ instruments and spaces will manifest in the performance space as acoustic sound filtered through the pianist and their instrument. The equal tempered quantization of the piano and therefore detuned relationship between the feedback tones and the piano will make for some lovely dissonant beating patters, as well as expressing the close, yet distant, nature of the collaboration.