World Premiere of Matthew Burtner’s “Glisten of Places”
For the 2014 ZeroSpace concert I gave the world premiere of a new work by Matthew Burtner entitled, Glisten of Places. ZeroSpace is a conference …
“Auricle” for microtonal berimbau & live processing
Auricle was the culmination of a project that has been a long study in graphic score development, stochastic & algorithmic music, and getting Processing to work with Pure Data (truly the most painstaking part of the process) …
Polyrhythms Workshop
As a percussionist, I often get to experience the liberation of polyrhythms because composers know that they can, “give it to percussionists, they’ll figure it out.” This blessing/curse has certainly placed us at the center of a lot of innovative and experimental ideas. One of these has been the advancement of rhythm (which really needed a boost to catch up with advancements in pitch over the past few centuries) …
Quocíente : Laços for berimbau and computer
Quociente : Laços is the solo version of my original work for berimbau sextet. Laços uses the assistance of a computer to layer the accompaniment parts in a complex system of delays …
27’10.554″ for a Percussionist and Computer
I re-realized this classic work of John Cage’s by adding the decision-making of a computer. By using the software, Pure Data, I’ve built a patch that will make decisions based on chance (using the I-Ching). The choice the computer has is which respective sample to use for Metal, Wood, Skin, or Anything …
Materiali: Dentro do dentro
As part of a collaborative project, I commissioned a new piece from composer Alexandre Lunsqui. In this work, the idea Lunsqui and I wanted to explore were the sounds that are often overlooked or “overheard” – the inside sounds …
Quocíente for six berimbaus
The Northern Illinois University “Bau House” (berimbau ensemble) directed by Greg Beyer, recently premiered a new work of mine entitled, Quociente in April of 2012. I am very excited with the work they put into this performance and pleased with the result. Watch the video from youtube below …
Music for Botany
This is an original work of mine and part of a project to place folkloric instruments in a contemporary musical idiom. Music for Botany is for maracas, caxixí, and pre-recorded audio. As the name may imply, it is modeled after Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood. Read my notes from the score and my doctoral thesis excerpt to understand the relationship to Reich’s work while maintaining musical styles of Venezuela …
Javier Alvarez’s Temazcal
My video performance of Javier Alvarez’s Temazcal is finally finished. This increasingly-known work is for maraca solo and electronic accompaniment – the solo part is often in the style of the Venezuelan maraquero. Bill Sallak helped me with this project with his great recording engineering, and I pieced the video together …