yvonne troxler

brouhaha

innova 835

1. Penn 1 [8:15]
2. Shergotty I [3:41]
3. Shergotty II [3:02]

4. Shergotty III [2:49]

5. Brouhaha I [5:31]
6. Brouhaha II [5:53]

7. Susurrus [7:00]

8. Kaleidoskop I [2:05]
9. Kaleidoskop II [2:04]
10. Kaleidoskop III [2:25] 

[42:50]

Glass farm ensemble
Margaret Lancaster, flute and bass flute 

Amy Advocat, bass clarinet 

Gregor Kitzis, violin and viola 

Matt Goeke, cello 

Bill Trigg, percussion (track 1-6)

Anthony Di Bartolo, percussion (track 2-6)

Andrea J. Bianchi, percussion (track 2-6)

Yvonne Troxler, piano

Taimur Sullivan, tenor saxophone (track 8-10)

Oren Fader, electric guitar (track 8-10)

Matt Gold, percussion (track 8-10)

The pianist and composer Yvonne Troxler has performed throughout the United States and Europe. Her works have been performed at the festival “Construction in Process,” Poland, at the “Stanser Musiktage,” Switzerland, at the festival “Neue Musik in Rümlingen,” Switzerland and in numerous concerts with Glass Farm Ensemble in New York. She wrote the music for the film “Off Hour” by Daniel Frei and “Life Without Compromise” by Suzan Al-Doghachi. She has released CD’s with Innova Records and Music Suisse and is a visiting professor at the University in Lucerne, Switzerland. She lives and works in New York City.

Yvonne Troxler founded the Glass Farm Ensemble in 2000. The ensemble presents programs of new works by cutting-edge American composers, and music from Europe’s thriving new music scene. The ensemble produces a concert series in New York City, and travels frequently in North America and in Europe. The Glass Farm Ensemble has commissioned and premiered numerous works. In 2008 the ensemble’s first CD “IN FOUR” was released by Innova Recordings.

Recorded at Concordia College, Bronxville, NY,  July 25, 26, and 28, 2011 (track 1-7), and at Ovation Sound, Winston-Salem, NC, August 25, 2007 (track 8-10).

Special thanks to Maria de Alvear and World Edition, Deirdre Donohue, Bruno Jakob,
Jan Rehmann, and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture.

Producer and Recording Engineer:
Jonathan Schultz 

Photo by Ken Karp

Design by Mónica Miranda
Innova Director: Philip Blackburn

Operations Manager: Chris Campbell

Innova is supported by an endowment
from the McKnight Foundation.
www.glassfarm.org

Penn 1 for flute/bass flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone, and piano (2006, revised 2011)

Penn 1 is named after a commercial building in Manhattan. The musical material was inspired by the sounds a big city like New York produces. Since we generally categorize these sounds as noise, we push them away from us, and don’t hear the often very musical motifs. In this particular case, the facade of the Penn 1 building started to vibrate during a storm, and suddenly rang out clear notes and intervals. Once we start to listen in these unusual places, then there is an immense wealth of musical material to be found. 

Shergotty for three percussionists (2004/2011)

Meteorites from Mars are called Shergotties. They were named after a small village in India where they were found for the first time. The three movements are like found objects. At first glance, they look like some ordinary stone, but upon further inspection, they turn out to be much more complex. The first movement deals with silence and noise. The second movement traces the sonorities, resonances and overtones of the instruments involved. The third movement is made out of a couple dissonant, but very colorful, chords. Everything is pitched, but with a varying level of clarity.

Brouhaha for violin, cello, and three glass bowl players (2010)

Brouhaha uses some unusual instruments. Besides violin and cello, there are three glass bowls, each tuned to different dyads. The bowls are either played with marimba mallets or with ball bearings. The string instruments have the function to substantiate and to continue the sounds of the glass bowls. This idea came to me from hearing Talerschwinger, a wonderfully cacophonous old tradition in Swiss country music, where coins are rolled inside ceramic bowls.

Susurrus for viola, cello, and piano (2011)

Susurrus means a soft, whispering or rustling sound. The piece often uses the low register of the viola, cello, and piano. As the title suggests, the composition is a search for sound structures that arise from the simultaneity of the overlays. The three instruments get more and more superimposed, and are often not perceived as separate individuals anymore. These sounds are unified in some way, but by no means static, since the superimpositions occur mostly from extremely fast and moving passages. This seemingly apparent homogeneity is broken again and again by some clearly recognizable lines.

Kaleidoskop for tenor saxophone, electric guitar, percussion, and piano (2005)

The name is derived from the Greek kalos: beautiful, eïdos: form, and skopeïn: to view. Kaleidoskop consists of a single melodic line that is assembled in various ways throughout the three movements. As with a kaleidoscope, where bits of colored glass create, with the help of mirrors, countless geometrical designs, the harmonies, colors and rhythms change immediately with a small vertical or horizontal shift in the phases of the musical material. The notes are often in such close proximity that they create a very subtle beating.