"Cast Poetics" for Solo Cello. Bil Smith Composer.

"Cast Poetics" 

for Solo Cello.  

Bil Smith Composer.

Link to PDF Score File (Hi-Res)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/131pybkiB2U6R6VRQj_Nf_i7XgQsNcGcp/view?usp=sharing

I’m intrigued by this notion of surprise and sudden change in sound; so that one state of something could change into something totally different at times during the piece, and there would be no apparent connection from the process that manifests one sonic structure to the next one. 

I was working on this composition, which had this very direct, maybe literal, idea of a pseudo-sonification of turbulent equations as the source of sound. 

Nonetheless, many pieces I have been working on don’t have such a literal relation of using nonlinear functions to synthesize certain sounds. Rather than the idea of making a sound directly ‘out of’ chaos, I was interested in how it could be used to explore this notion of surprise and abrupt change: to bring this acute dynamic form into the piece.

"An Aggregation of Dipsomaniacs..." A New Recording for Orchestra. (Commentary from Ai Weiwei)

"An Aggregation of Dipsomaniacs (The Facile Identification of People by the Floors On Which They Lived)"

Bil Smith Composer.

For Orchestra.

LISTEN HERE: https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/an-aggregation-of-dipsomaniacs

In the program notes we read:  I’D LIKE YOU / TO CONSUME PART(S) / I PROMISE

"This is a manifestation of Smith's open-ended approach, and a suggestion of intimacy between the composer and his performers.

With its many layers, "An Aggregation..." successfully undermines the exiguous, cause/effect trajectory between the performative act and its archiving:  execution, conception, and documentation were collapsed and then restacked.

Smith's repetition is relentless yet evolving, approaching a point of excess well suited to the context of a club scene.   Energy drinks appeared in piles around the performers were imbibed during the performance (part of the performance directives)—a mischievous nod, perhaps, to performance art’s tests of endurance, and one that effectively dislodged the cliché of that practice’s discipline and orthodoxy.

Smith's work deals with stamina, but his vision is fortified by late-night “performance” enhancers: Going to the club is about “letting go,” and here the ostensible rigor of the Judsonesque improvised gesture is nudged toward a caffeinated, youth-cultural counterpart."

-Ai Weiwei

RECORDING: "Pharoah Flypole". From The Concertzender Program.

LISTEN:

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/pharoah-flypole

Pharoah Flypole is an exploration of the extended sound world in which the ideated electronic instrument dwells. The two most evident features of the composition are: the tutti, and the avoidance almost completely of the use of pitched material.

My use of approximate notation in highly dense and rhythmical settings further allows for an erratic sound-quality when performed, which not only helps alter the instrument output, but also obliterates the clean, well phrased and ‘well behaved’ performance.

The ideated instruments are organized around a physical model of an 8 stringed instrument capable of producing a huge amount of distortion and internal feedback. This instrument responds to the material played by the virtual performer/percussionist, attempting to track the pitch of these sometimes “unpitched” instruments as best it can.

This work is part of a series on Concertzender curated by Roland Kuit.

http://www.concertzender.nl/programma/electronic_frequencies_362603/

Roland Kuit