Harvestworks presents Ghost Voices, featuring composers Annie Gosfield and Shelley Hirsch. Co-Presented by the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and National Sawdust
Several programs of pure electroacoustic works for live electronics, including computer processing and laptop orchestras; works combining live instruments or voices with fixed media or live electronics; video and multimedia works; and sound installations.
June 5th 2016 @ 10 pm
National Sawdust
Address: 80 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249 Phone:(646) 779-8455
Annie Gosfield, Roger Kleier, and Pauline Kim Harris play the music of Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield (sampler), Roger Kleier (guitar), and Pauline Kim Harris (violin) perform two pieces by Annie Gosfield that reference the mysterious and captivating sounds of jammed radio signals. Long Waves and Random Pulses is a duet for violin and jammed radio signals that uses jamming sounds that were used to block radio transmissions in Europe in World War II. Captured Signals and Radio Ephemera, for sampler and guitar, mixes the signals with improvisation and extended techniques.
June 5th @ 10 pm
National Sawdust
Address: 80 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249 Phone:(646) 779-8455
Captured Signals and Radio Ephemera
Performed by Annie Gosfield (sampler) and Roger Kleier (guitar)
Captured Signals and Radio Ephemera is built on original broadcasts of jammed radio signals drawn from German radio archives. Radio jamming is a wartime technique used to block an opponent’s radio transmission by broadcasting noise, speech, or other sonic effluvia on the same frequency. These odd sounds are mixed with electronically altered string sounds that evoke the unique processes of radio jamming. This atmospheric and varied palette of sounds was edited, altered, and sculpted to create a loosely structured duet for sampler and guitar that draws largely on improvisation and extended techniques.
Long Waves and Random Pulses
Performed by Pauline Kim Harris violin
Long Waves and Random Pulses is a duet for violin and jammed radio signals that incorporates original recordings of jamming sounds that were used to block radio transmissions in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union in World War II. The violin merges and emerges, shifting from music, to noise, to pure signal while fading in and out of the sounds of intentional radio interference. The electronic backing track includes a repeated six-note figure that was drawn from original recordings of an Italian radio jamming device, a buzzing pitched pulse from a German jamming device, a quote from J. S. Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor as it could have been heard in a jammed broadcast, and many extended techniques that evoke the sounds of these otherworldly radio signals. The violin part alternates between virtuosic and textural playing, shifting between notes and noise. As for the title, Long Waves refers to the long wave radio frequencies that many of these interrupted signals were broadcast on. Random Pulses represents a method of radio jamming that uses a random pulse noise to override the program broadcast on the target radio frequency.
Bios
Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider” lives in New York City and works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. She composes for others and performs with her own band, taking her music on a path through festivals, factories, clubs, art spaces, and concert halls. Her most recent CD “Almost Truths and Open Deceptions” features a piece for piano and broken shortwave radio, a cello concerto, a 5-minute blast by her band, and music inspired by baseball and warped 78‘s. Her music has been performed worldwide at Warsaw Autumn, the Bang on a Can Marathon, MATA, MaerzMusik, the Venice Biennale, OtherMinds, Lincoln Center, The Stone, The Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, and The Kitchen. Recent work includes compositions inspired by factory environments, jammed radio signals from WWII, and her grandparents’ immigrant experiences in New York City during the industrial revolution. Annie’s discography includes four solo releases on the Tzadik label, and she often writes on the compositional process for the New York Times’ series “The Score.” She was a 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, held the Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College, and has taught at Princeton University and California Institute of the Arts.
For more about the Artist