Christopher Adler

Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze

Innova 694

1 Iris 16:25

NOISE:

Lisa Cella, flute Franklin Cox, cello

Colin McAllister, guitar Morris Palter, marimba

2 Signals Intelligence 5:46

Robert Dillon, percussion

3 Liber Pulveris 4:18

Colin McAllister, guitar

4 I Want to Believe 14:14

Alan Lechusza, soprano saxophone

Christopher Adler, piano

5 Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze 16:39

pulsoptional:

Carrie Shull, oboe Todd Hershberger, bassoon

John Mayrose, guitar Marc Faris, electric guitar

Thom Limbert, percussion with Christopher Adler, piano

The five compositions collected on this recording comprise a multifaceted examination of musical groove—the ineffable resonance between sonic rhythm and bodily movement that overwhelms intellect and order with feeling and energy. Within groove there is an irreconcilable tension between the enforcement of order—the martial music of social control, the relentless rigor of Signals Intelligence and unisons of Iris and I Want to Believe—and the ecstasy of liberation, as realized in the improvisatory Liber Pulveris, Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze, and I Want to Believe.

My own sensibility towards groove is indebted to jazz, funk, American minimalism, and the musical traditions of Southeast Asia. These musics share their groove-centrism and their structure of musical organzation (which I discuss in “Reflections on Cross-Cultural Composition” in Arcana 2: Musicians on Music, ed. John Zorn, Hips Road, 2007). Hidden throughout the compositions on this recording are sonic homages to each.

Iris (2003)

Iris exemplifies the structural commonalities between Southeast Asian ensemble musics and early American minimalism. I selected quiet instrumental colors and playing techniques that blur the aural distinctions between instruments resulting in a static, pulsating musical texture akin to that of Javanese gamelan. The rhythmic surface is inspired by the early compositions of Philip Glass, where groupings of steady sixteenth notes expand and contract without regular meter. This static structure is enlivened through the use of hocket, in which each instrumental part fills the gaps in another. Here, those gaps are not rests but idiomatic instrumental techniques to create hushed tones, such as hammer-ons for the stringed instruments and dampened strokes on the marimba.

The open strings of the guitar and cello in their standard tunings provide the harmonic basis of this piece. The piece begins with the instruments playing in pairs, flute and cello, guitar and marimba, playing only the pitches of the lowest two open strings of the cello and guitar. The number of open strings used is gradually increased as the work progresses, expanding the pitch register—an aural analogue to the opening of an optical iris. In the final section, the guitar and cello play all of their open strings in sweeping arpeggios. Two new processes of expansion continue the ‘opening’ through this section: the flute and marimba diverge from their nominal unison doubling and now double the guitar and cello in harmony, while rhythmically the two parts collapse onto one another—the beginning of each new arpeggio overlapping the end of the previous—culminating in an eight-part hocketing polyphony.

Iris was commissioned by San Diego New Music and NOISE.

Signals Intelligence (2002)

Signals Intelligence explores the experience of hearing an electronic transmission in which order is clearly audible but the information density is too high for a human to parse. The experience is one of being made aware of that which is always just out of reach, just beyond comprehension. Two related algorithms are employed to generate melodic material using from one to six pitches. One algorithm generates a self-similar pitch series which replicates itself when played at different speeds, in effect comprising a mensuration canon in compound melody. The second algorithm generates a self-similar series which is also non-retrogradable (identical when played in reverse order). In the ensemble version (previously released on Epilogue for a Dark Day, Tzadik, 2004), the algorithmic outputs are creatively orchestrated for six players. In the solo version, sixteen algorithmic outputs are presented successively without alteration. The compositional result was sculpted through the careful selection of input parameters and length for each section.

The solo version of Signals Intelligence is to be performed on six indefinitely pitched objects of the same type, arranged in ascending pitch. The performer is free to choose from a wide variety of objects, resulting in performances ranging from raucous to noisy to delicate. For this performance, Robert Dillon has selected six rectangular ceramic tiles arranged in two rows on a small table.

The solo version was composed in tandem with the ensemble version of Signals Intelligence, which was commissioned by the Duke University Department of Music for the Milestones 2002 Festival.

Liber Pulveris (2005)

Liber Pulveris was commissioned by Colin McAllister for his Albus/Ater tour and was written to simultaneously address his dedication to new complexity and his engagement with jazz. I employed a very precise rhythmic notation in the attempt to capture in composition the dense, percolating rhythmic energy characteristic of my improvisations for piano. From this percolating field of rhythmic energy, a groove gradually crystallizes before being fragmented into mutliple tempi.

The Liber pulveris (“book of dust”) is one of four Latin translations from the twelfth century of Kitab al jami’ wa’l tafriq bi hisab al hind (The Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation) by ninth–century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. In this text, known only through these Latin translations, Al-Khwarizmi instructs on the use of the nine-digit system of numerals, inherited from India, for mathematical computation. The title of Liber pulveris refers to the method of inscribing calculations into sand or dust spread on a board, which was widely practiced in India and in the Arab empire before the use of paper become ubiquitous. These ‘ghubar’ (dust) numerals, made their way to the West through these Latin translations, where they were referred to as algorismi, and are now called Arab numerals.

I Want to Believe (2002)

I Want to Believe is named for the UFO poster made famous by its appearance on Fox Mulder’s FBI office wall in the X-Files. I wrote the piece with woodwind player Alan Lechusza in mind based on our experience working together in a free improvising duo and trio since 2000. The piece is based on selected musical configurations (certain grooves, textures or ‘feels’) which had become characteristic of our collaboration to that point, here realized with a greater rhythmic coordination than is possible for two players to achieve through improvisation alone. On these grooves are superimposed different passages calling for constrained or open improvisation, in effect recreating the form and style of a collaborative improvisation but with heightened compositional coordination. Here the juxtaposition between groove-as-control and groove-as-liberation is most severe. This piece was premiered as a trio with Nathan Hubbard on vibraphone, and may be adapted to a variety of instrumentations.

Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze (2005)

Aurally marked by the grooving high C’s in the piano, this piece offers a subtle homage to the famous American minimalist Terry Riley and his seminal composition In C. The first part of Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze is in a semi-open form, in which each performer plays a number of short patterns with the number of repetitions and the dynamics left to their decision in the moment. These patterns are, for all instruments except percussion, ordered (as in Riley’s In C) with the instruction that once a new pattern is played, the performer may still return to old ones. Thus each performer plays from a progressively expanding palette of possibilities. As this process is carried forward, a determinate structure gradually coalesces along a groove which first appears in the bass register.

Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze was commissioned by pulsoptional, Durham, North Carolina’s Band of Composers.

Christopher Adler

Christopher Adler is a composer, performer and improviser living in San Diego, California. His music draws upon over a decade of research into the traditional musics of Thailand and Laos and a background in mathematics, and he is the world’s leading innovator in the creation and performance of contemporary repertoire for the khaen, a free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand. He has been commissioned by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and the Silk Road Project, the University of Kentucky Percussion Ensemble, the Seattle Creative Orchestra, and by many performers, ensembles, and universities, and his works have been performed at prominent venues on four continents including Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Tanglewood, Merkin Hall, and Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo.

He has performed his own compositions and traditional repertoire for khaen at Carnegie Hall, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Music at the Anthology, the Cultural Center of Chicago, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and at many universities across the U.S. and Thailand. As a soloist and pianist with the San Diego New Music resident ensemble NOISE he has appeared at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of California at San Diego, and the California Institute of the Arts, and he is a co-founder of the soundON Festival of Modern Music.

His compositions have been released on Tzadik, and his improvisations and performances may be heard on Tzadik, pfMENTUM, Nine Winds, Vienna Modern Masters, Circumvention, Accretions, and Artship Recordings. His retrospective analysis of his first ten years of cross-cultural composition has been included in John Zorn’s Arcana 2: Musicians on Music (Hips Road, 2007).

Christopher Adler is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego. He received Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in composition from Duke University and Bachelor’s degrees in music composition and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studied composition with Scott Lindroth, Stephen Jaffe, Sidney Corbett, Evan Ziporyn, Thai music with Panya Roongruang, and pipe organ with James David Christie and Haig Mardirosian.

www.christopheradler.com

About the performers

NOISE

NOISE is dedicated to the performance of the most challenging complex, minimalist, experimental and grooving music of our time. NOISE has commissioned and premiered works by many of the most exciting young composers emerging today, including Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Matthew Burtner, Derek Keller, David Lipten, Rosalind Page, Abigail Richardson, Edward Top, and Erik Ulman.

NOISE is flutist Lisa Cella, guitarist Colin McAllister, percussionist Morris Palter, and pianist and composer-in-residence Christopher Adler. Lisa Cella is a champion of contemporary music who has founded many active new music ensembles including inHale, C-squared, NOISE, and the faculty ensemble Ruckus at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she is an Assistant Professor. Morris Palter has performed internationally as a soloist and with red fish blue fish. He received his DMA from the University of California San Diego and now teaches at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. On this recording, NOISE is joined by guest cellist Franklin Cox, one of the leading performers, composers and theorists of complex music, and Assistant Professor at Wright State University.

Founded in 2000 as the ensemble-in-residence with San Diego New Music, NOISE presents the soundON Festival of Modern Music annually at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California. In addition, NOISE has given performances and residencies at many leading academic institutions for new music, including Stanford University, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the University of California, San Diego and the University of San Diego.

Robert Dillon

Robert Dillon is a founding member of the Third Coast Percussion Quartet and an active performer and teacher in the Chicago area. He has performed as a substitute with the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and has appeared numerous times on the Chicago Symphony’s contemporary music series, MusicNOW. He has served as principal percussionist in the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and has previously held positions in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra. He has been a member of Pierre Boulez’s Lucerne Festival Academy and the Lucerne Festival Percussion Group (Switzerland), has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and a member of the Spoleto Festival USA, National Repertory Orchestra and Pacific Music Festival (Sapporo, Japan). Robert holds a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory, where he received the John Cage Award for Outstanding Contribution to Contemporary Music Performance. His teachers include Michael Burritt, James Ross and Will Hudgins.

Colin McAllister

Guitarist Colin McAllister is widely recognized for his innovative concert programming, versatility, and dedication to adventurous contemporary repertoire. He has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Mexico. Recent highlights include the XIII Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra (Tijuana, Mexico), Pacific Rim Music Festival in Santa Cruz, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, San Francisco sfSoundSeries, Unruly Music (Milwaukee), Breda Jazz Festival (NL), Bohem Ragtime and Jazz Festival (HU), California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and the Colorado College New Music Symposium. In addition, he has presented performances and seminars at major universities including CIEM in Mexico City, DePaul University, Stanford University, California Institute of the Arts, University of Maryland, Arizona State University, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and the Colorado College, where he was a visiting artist-in-residence. He is a founding member of the new music ensemble NOISE and the Executive Director of the soundON Festival of Modern Music in La Jolla, California. With xylophonist Morris Palter, he performs in the SpeakEasy jazz and ragtime duo. His two books, The Vanguard Guitar: Etudes and Exercises for the Study of Contemporary Music and Fourteenth Century Counterpoint: Music of the Chantilly Codex are published by Les Productions d’Oz (Saint-Romuald, Québec). He has recorded for the Old King Cole and Tzadik record labels. Colin earned the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of California, San Diego, where he is a Lecturer in Music and director of the guitar program.

Alan Lechusza

Alan Lechusza is a highly evolved multi-instrumentalist and composer who’s playing has been compared to everything from Eric Dolphy (Jazz Notes) to Paul McCandless (LA Times). His mastery of all the woodwinds and vast knowledge of music from all genres around the world makes him a well-respected resource for composers and performers alike. Alan Lechusza continues to perform around the world in numerous contexts and settings with the worlds best performers and composers such as James Newton, Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, and Earl Howard. In addition to maintaining an active recording schedule, Alan Lechusza has recorded on Tzadik, Nine Winds, Lira Productions, pfMENTUM, Plutonium Records, Black Phone Records, and many others.

pulsoptional

pulsoptional, Durham, North Carolina’s Band of Composers, challenges and enthralls audiences with its innovative new music programming. From its inception in January of 2000 through the recent release of its debut CD, the non-profit new-music ensemble and composers’ collective has developed a diverse, devoted audience and continues to attract listeners new to contemporary music with its boundary/genre-defying, high-energy concerts. pulsoptional creates and performs new experimental works for its eclectic instrumentation, commissions new music by emerging American composers and maintains a repertoire of experimental “classics” with an emphasis on the American experimental tradition. pulsoptional has performed in music festivals, rock clubs, dance spaces and other non-traditional venues, as well as prestigious concert halls. pulsoptional’s commitment to performing in non-traditional venues has attracted audiences of diverse ages, ethnicities, and social and economic backgrounds. pulsoptional has offered performance residencies at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, Greensboro College, Tufts University, and Duke University. The group has received grants and awards from The Alliance for Improvised Music, The American Music Center’s Henry Cowell Performance Incentive, The Durham Arts Council, The Duke Institute of the Arts, The Duke University Department of Theater Studies, and Duke University's Graduate Student and Professional Committee.

Credits

This recording was funded by the Office of the Provost and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Diego.

Iris recorded and mixed June 18-19, 2007, by Josef Kucera at UCSD Music Center Studios, University of California, San Diego, California

Signals Intelligence recorded September 23, 2007 by Todd A. Carter, Chicago, Illinois, and mixed by Christopher Adler and Nathan Brock, San Diego, California

Liber Pulveris recorded and mixed June 12, 2006, by Peter Sprague at SpragueLand Studio, Encinitas, California

I Want to Believe recorded and mixed April 22, 2007, by Kellogg Boynton at Studio West, San Diego, California

Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze recorded and mixed September and November, 2007, by Thom Limbert at Duke University and HotWire Studios, Durham, North Carolina

Original photography by Lauren Sharon, San Diego, California. Lauren Sharon’s photographs are made on film and are minimally altered during printing. All colors are true to each photographic experience. The photographs were commissioned for this recording. www.laurensharon.com

Artist photograph by Supeena Insee Adler

Special thanks to San Diego New Music, the Duke University Music Department, Percy Kelley, Evan Rowe, Nathan Hubbard, Vikas Srivastava and Galoka, Supeena Insee Adler, Philip Blackburn, Julie Sullivan, Nicholas M. Healy, Carmel Raz, Gene Coleman and Soundfield, Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Lauren Sharon, and all the performers.