The following pieces were composed for the Aronson gallery exhibit, DisFluency.

Inspired by Christian Marclay’s Zoom Zoom as well as John Coltrane’s Psalm, I composed three pieces of music for the upcoming DisFluency exhibit happening at The New School’s Aronson Gallery. The three pieces explore the affordance of words as a form of expression and use the sound of language as the basis for musical composition.

The compositions are in text form (ex. dialogue between multiple participants), and the performers interpret the text as musical notes and enact the conversation through the sound of their instruments. Each piece makes use of a different system of organization and technique.

Words of the Day makes use of William Burroughs’s cut-up methods. Inspired by the dynamic narrative lectures I heard from Nicholas Fortugno and my own readings of Burroughs’s The Ticket That Exploded, I had produced many experiments with text. Through the making process, I developed a plan for this particular composition using two newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and The New School Free Press. I cut out specific words that caught my attention and represented specific actors and actions that felt relevant to the times. I then arranged the words into loose phrases and, with the idea of tonal languages in mind, indicated specific intonation.

Instructions: Interpret each phrase using the intonation noted above each word.

A Way With Words is based loosely on traditional board games that use maps and provide choices that offer differing levels of reward and feedback. In preparing for the composition, I kept a list of sounds and words that I felt had strong sonic and figurative relationships. The word map provides unique rhythmic paths that the performers are free to interpret tonally.

Instructions: Each performer chooses a word to begin. The performer interprets that word as sound and is free to select the note and inflection. The following word must be connected to the previous word. Performance length is determined by performer(s).

Welcome Aboard is based loosely on my own experiences of interviewing for jobs after graduating this May. The piece involves a dialogue between two persons, and the performers are to repeat the short piece as many times as they deem necessary. I’ve experimented with loops in purely sonic form in my previous musical pieces, so I had several versions of this piece that I read aloud.

Instructions: Each performer selects an actor. The performer interprets each word as sound and is free to select the note and inflection. Multiple performers per actor is encouraged. Repeat as desired, and stop at any portion of the reading. Performance length is determined by performers.

DisFluency Exhibit Performance Series
December 1, 8, and 15
Aronson Gallery, The New School

Here is a video from the December 1st performance: