HOTEL ST. GEORGE ARCHIVE : WINTER 2007

VIEWINGS

12 BOOKS

by Erik Niemi

MUSIC

Sarah Kirkland Snider: Thread and Fray

[with Sam Phillips, Beth Meyers, and Alex Lipowski]

Sarah Kirkland Snider belongs to a diminishing margin of composers whose work is as easy on the ears as it is demanding of the mind. Mellifluous and vulnerable, this short piece for bass clarinet, viola and marimba weaves a single, middle-register melody through an increasingly fragmented musical landscape.

1.   Thread and Fray

Judd Greenstein: Sonata for Cello and Piano

[with Jody Redhage and David Hanlon, respectively]

Judd Greenstein's Sonata for Cello and Piano is a musical triptych which explores three distinct realms. The first is a languorous cycle of slews; the second, a spiky nest of syncopated rhythmic bursts and persistent modulations from which an optimistic melody struggles to dislodge itself; the third, a sobering blues which departs dramatically from the first two movements while paradoxically resolving them.

1.   Slow (sometimes I imagine)

2.   Fast (she is still)

3.   Slow but Driving (alive)

David T. Little: How We Got Here (Fourth Evolution)

[for Thirteen Players]

How We Got Here is an exquisite and slightly terrifying work which perambulates through a number of chimerical episodes, each comprised of sharp percussive dashes evolving and devolving across an acrid harmonic terrain.

1.   How We Got Here

SONIC EVENTS

James Sizemore

[Aleatory]

Sound designer and film composer, James Sizemore, wrote an original computer program which filters out frequencies of a given sound source and maps the remaining pitches to their approximate musical tones. This particular piece was extracted from a children's cartoon on television and transposed for MIDI piano. Both are presented here, synchronously, for the first time.

1. Not for Kids

Rama Gottfried

[Creative Static]

This piece is a collection of raw transmissions captured from a transistor radio. The result is an eerily deliberate-sounding blend of biting, Stockhausen style cacophonies and meditative, Brian Eno-like soundscapes.

1. Rambox:1 (Track 5)

Billy Joel

[with The Hassles]

Must be heard to be believed.

1. Hotel St. George

RADIO PLAYS

A KIND of MADNESS

A spoken word collaboration between author Aaron Petrovich and guitarist Chris Forsythe, serialized in six parts.

Part One:

1. Try not to think about it.

Recorded by Josh Clark at Seaside Lounge in Brooklyn.
Words: Aaron Petrovich
Music composition and Guitar: Chris Forsythe
Percussion: Mike Pride.

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