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Sonic Assembly! – a creative opportunity for youth

Dinuk Wijeratne, Diomira, and Debut Atlantic invite all imaginative and innovative youth from the Maritime provinces of Canada to participate in an exciting musical composition opportunity entitled Sonic Assembly! As a participant, you will have the special opportunity to flex your creative muscles in assembling an original work for Diomira to perform live in concert during their February 2014 Debut Atlantic tour. One lucky person from each community hosting a concert will have their creation premiered by Diomira in concert.

Diomira (from left) – Joseph Petric, Dinuk Wijeratne, Nick Halley

The GOAL: to tell a dynamic story through music to a live audience, in the form of a 3-minute piece, created using your imagination and existing musical material provided by Diomira.

SUBMISSIONS: Online submissions will be open December 10th, 2013 – January 17th, 2014. To submit, please visit sonicassembly.debutatlantic.ca

CONTACT: Please direct any questions to info@debutatlantic.ca

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: No compositional experience is required! We are encouraging you to think about music performance as storytelling. What is music doing when it best communicates its purpose? We are not looking for original music, but we are interested in the ‘soundworld’ you have in mind. We will help you realize this in musical terms. An interior decorator, for example, may not build a chair from scratch, but in selecting and placing a particular piece of furniture in a space makes a bold and potentially transformative personal statement.

The stories which will inspire the participants’ musical storyboards have been selected by Dinuk, who turned to one of his favourite books: Invisible Cities by the legendary Italian writer Italo Calvino. Calvino’s imagined cities do not function by any of the earthly laws that govern our own cities. Incidentally, the first ‘city’ (‘Diomira’) inspired Dinuk to write Solea Di Diomira, after which the trio was named. He hopes that other Calvino stories will inspire you in turn.

RESOURCES: You will be working with the three creative, skilled, and inspiring musicians that make up Diomira. The trio includes a pianist, percussionist, and accordionist, all of whom will help you realize the original sound-world you wish to create from the instructions and storyboard you provide. It is important to keep in mind that the percussion will take on rhythmic atmosphere of your story; while the accordion and/or piano will take on the melodic and harmonic atmosphere.

To listen to Diomira:

PROCEDURE & GUIDELINES for CREATION: Guidelines should be followed closely to ensure each Sonic Assembly entry is suitable. Students interested in participating in Sonic Assembly should contact Debut Atlantic for more information.

1. Choose one story or ‘city’ from the three provided.

2. Choose between two and four motifs from Dinuk’s selection of musical motifs. These encompass a wide range of moods, but notice how they take on different meanings if they are played slower or faster, lower or higher? A melody on the accordion will sound differently when played on the piano. Exactly when and how you wish to use the motifs is entirely up to you!

3. Create a ‘musical storyboard’ in the form of a written description (1 page maximum). Be sure to mention your choice of city and motifs. Feel free to use adjectives, moods, metaphors, or any descriptive words to convey what you imagine your ‘sound-world’ to be. Feel free to create your own diagram or representation. Be sure to give Dinuk and Diomira a clear idea of the structure or narrative arc of your story.

NB: Your storyboard should be very simple for the musicians to read. It should provide them with a clear idea of how musical events unfold in time, so include instructions as to when exactly you want them to play within the 3-minute time-frame (eg, specific cues for improvisation). They will only have 15 minutes before a given performance to rehearse your creation!

4. Using improvisation guided by the storyboard you provide, Diomira will attempt to realize the story that you have imagined and assembled.

5. Please use only the instruments and resources provided by Diomira

6. Have fun!

1. ERSILIA (Trading Cities 4)

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

2. OLINDA (Hidden Cities 1)

In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squares, the horse-racing track. That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses its way toward the outside.

Olinda is certainly not the only city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring. But in other cities there remains, in the center, the old narrow girdle of the walls from which the withered spires rise, the towers, the tiled roofs, the domes, while the new quarters sprawl around them like a loosened belt. Not Olinda: the old walls expand bearing the old quarters with them, enlarged but maintaining their proportions an a broader horizon at the edges of the city; they surround the slightly newer quarters, which also grew up on the margins and became thinner to make room for still more recent ones pressing from inside; and so, on and on, to the heart of the city, a totally new Olinda which, in its reduced dimensions retains the features and the flow of lymph of the first Olinda and of all the Olindas that have blossomed one from the other; and within this innermost circle there are always blossoming – though it is hard to discern them – the next Olinda and those that will grow after it.

3. THEKLA (Cities & The Sky 3) 

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwlks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask “Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?” the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long bruses up and down, as they answer “So that it’s destruction cannot begin.” And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, “Not only the city.”

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. “What meaning does your construction have?” he asks. “What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?”

“We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,” they answer.

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. “There is the blueprint,” they say.

…for your STORYBOARD (click to enlarge):

Good luck!

© DINUK WIJERATNE & DEBUT ATLANTIC 2013 – Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. 

‘Velvet Fire’ – the Legacy of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

“Then came the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Part Buddha, part demon, part mad angel….his voice is velvet fire, simply incomparable. His every enunciation went straight into me. I knew not one word of Urdu, and somehow it still hooked me into the story that he weaved with his wordless voice. Nusrat’s upper register painting a melody that made my heart long to fly. I felt a rush of adrenaline in my chest, like I was on the edge of a cliff, wondering when I would jump and how well the ocean would catch me: two questions that would never be answered until I experienced the first leap. – Jeff Buckley1

In a powerful scene from Martin Scorsese’s (controversial) 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, we see Jesus carrying his cross for the first time. He is surrounded by people but we know that he is alone in both his suffering and his devotion – two qualities film composer Peter Gabriel sought to capture in a voice that he could place in the music underscoring the scene. Over an almost-static sonic landscape in the form of a drone and some synthesizer harmonies, we hear a lone male voice that begins in its low register and gradually thrusts itself upwards, not entirely effortlessly, but nevertheless with a quiet confidence. Soon, it is soaring. The musical metaphor is right there: something that was once desolate in an unforgiving environment has flown away to a more peaceful place.

Gabriel considered many singers world-wide who would somehow express ‘the spiritual agony of Christ in a scream’2, yet still do so in a formalistic way, in the best sense of the word. He passed on many singers before deciding on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose improvisatory approach was rooted deeply in a classical tradition. Over Gabriel’s backing track, Nusrat ad-libs within the context of the Indian Classical raga Darbari.

It is ironic but perhaps a wonderful testament to the universality of art that Christ’s agony and passion are represented here by an Islamic voice. But we simply hear the quality of the voice itself (no doubt what communicates beyond language and culture): its huskiness, its nuanced and volatile expression soaked in life experience, always betraying the herculean effort it takes to get somewhere worth getting to. If you are not familiar with Nusrat’s unique combination of technique, musicality and personality, scroll to 36’30” on the following clip, just one example of many:

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-97) was born into a Pakistani family whose distinguished vocal lineage stretched back no less than six centuries. They were Qawwals, professional musicians and exponents of Qawwali, a recognized South-Asian musical genre which serves as an essential vehicle for followers of the region’s Sufi Islam to express their religious and spiritual devotion. Through Qawwali music, Sufis seek to connect with God; to attain and sustain a state of religious ecstasy (ḥāl)3. Nusrat (or Khan-Sahib, to use the respectful suffix) is remembered as the most famous Qawwal to have lived. He was also the most recognizable of Qawwals, his immortalized in 125 albums, the largest recorded output by a Qawwali artist according to the Guiness book of World Records 20014. But Khan-sahib’s legacy extends beyond the domain of Qawwali.

ON FUSION, TRADITION & INNOVATION

I am continually fascinated by the complex interplay of tradition and innovation. The great pioneers who take art forward do so nevertheless while standing on the shoulders of their heroes, and their heroes before them. While I discovered Nusrat as a late teen through recordings, it wasn’t until I became a professional musician myself that I started ruminating seriously on how he and my other artistic heroes straddle the tradition-innovation line.

Nusrat was certainly steeped in Qawwali tradition – one might even say ‘well before he was even born’ – if you consider his family’s musical history. But there is more to him that made him unique. Nusrat’s artistry had breadth too, in that he had also achieved a complete mastery of the Hindustani (North Indian) classical ragas, as well as ‘light classical’ South Asian vocal forms such as thumri, khayal, ghazal, and geet2. The raga tradition, unlike the similarly rigourous performance tradition of Western Classical music, has never relegated improvisation as a key element. According to Peter Gabriel, who coincidentally went on to play a significant role in Nusrat’s career in the capacity of founder of Real World Records and the WOMAD festival: “….there was amazing improvising, to me of the standard of Hendrix. He [Nusrat] could take a theme and just it explode it outwards….make it much more than it was originally.”4

One such Real World release was MUSTT MUSTT, the ‘seminal 1990 fusion’ album (the Austin Chronicle, 2001). While Nusrat’s first release on the Real World label was the purely traditional 1988 album SHAHEN-SHAH (literally ‘king of kings’), in 1990 he took a surprising turn. MUSTT MUSTT, produced by Canadian Michael Brook, is indeed a true ‘fusion’ album, featuring musicians and instruments from different continents. Below is the title track, one of the album’s catchiest. Surely the last thing fans of Nusrat’s traditional output must have expected, after the brief reggae-ish intro, were age-old Qawwali lyrics set to Nusrat’s music:

Dum mustt Qallandar mustt mustt (Each breath is bliss for the one who is in love), Mera vird hai dum dum Ali Ali (My whole being is infused with the love of Ali)5

The ‘hook’ is the opening refrain, a chant that is memorable at the outset. With what sounds like a verse and chorus established (from a Western perspective), we hear a few phrases of alaap at 1’06”. The chant has now receded into the background, serving almost as a rhythmic drone in the absence of a traditional drone. Beginning at 1’40”, and for the middle portion of this song, we hear a virtuosic display of Nusrat’s improv in sargam (vocal syllables as text), punctuated occasionally by the ‘mustt mustt’ refrain. Leaving lyrics aside in this manner, it is essentially the same as an instrumental solo, with a tight arc and well-placed climaxes, lyrical phrases juxtaposed mercurially with flashes of complex sax-like lines. The solo certainly bears scrutiny for student improvisors who might wish to transcribe it. My favourite moments are at 2’00”, when he briefly hints at a triple meter with an elaborate sequential passage (executed with some real bravura!), and at 3’03” when the climax of his rhythmically intricate build-up is simply a descending phrase that, at long last, ‘locks in’ with the groove of the band. It is one of those spontaneous moments that seems so inevitable in hindsight.

MUSTT MUSTT went on to be remixed by Massive Attack, the British experimental dance music group, who were seminal in the trip-hop movement. The remix was a major seller in Pakistan and India, becoming a UK club hit and the first Urdu song to reach the charts in the UK6. It even proved so popular that it was transformed into a Coca-Cola commercial for Indian audiences with Nusrat’s blessing. According to Nitin Sawhney: “It’s astonishing how a Qawwali singer from Faisalabad, whose music has been around for centuries, can work so well with a modern band from Bristol. It truly epitomizes the universality of music.”4

And so it was that after decades of performing traditional Qawwali for traditional audiences, Nusrat’s work was now reaching new audiences both in the West and back at home. More opportunities for collaboration arose, and so did his exposure in a variety of arenas: MAGIC TOUCH (1991, w/British-Indian producer Bally Sagoo); DEAD MAN WALKING (1995, two songs in collaboration with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder for the Hollywood film directed by Tim Robbins); BANDIT QUEEN (soundtrack for 1996 film directed by Shekhar Kapur); NIGHT SONG (1996, w/Michael Brook); to name a few. At the time of Khan-sahib’s untimely death at the age of 49, he was involved in a project that would reveal the significance and scope of his influence on a whole host of well-known younger-generation contemporary British-Asian artists: for STAR RISE (1997), again produced by Brook, Real World commissioned the leading lights of the UK’s so-called ‘Asian Underground’ movement to remix and reshape Nusrat’s back catalogue: Nitin Sawhney, Aki Nawaz, Black Star Liner, Asian Dub Foundation, the Dhol Foundation, Talvin Singh, among others.

As Rehan Hyder observes in ‘Brimful of Asia‘: “many of the young Asian performers who have emerged during the 1990s have cited the singer as a source of inspiration. Through their interpretation of Nusrat’s work, [they] highlight the importance of both continuity and change in the expression of diasporic identity. Each band included written tributes to the great Qawwali maestro, praising his role in inspiring their own contemporary musical styles which have, in turn, been used to radically interpret a selection of [Nusrat’s] work on the album.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, indie rock idol Jeff Buckley referred to Nusrat as ‘my Elvis, I listen to him every day’. And consequently, and perhaps ironically, Nusrat’s collaborations were raising awareness for traditional Qawwali back home in Pakistan. In allowing his renditions of Qawwali material to be placed in such unfamiliar contexts, there were those who, according to Michael Brook, saw MUSTT MUSTT as ‘defiling a sacred and traditional music’.6 I often wondered what the purists thought of his other (more questionable) collaborations. More importantly, I wondered what Khan-sahib himself thought. It wasn’t until I began my research for this particular blog post that I came across comments that are very revealing about his views (personally instructive for me I might add) on the progressive-conservative divide:

“Our young generation which was brought up abroad is totally ignorant of our culture. They listen to Western music, adopt Western fashions. With my ‘awaaz’ (voice) I wanted to appeal to them – in our own language in their form…” – Frontline

“I cherish the tradition of classical music more than my life. I consider its protection and preservation as my spiritual duty. As an experiment, I do not mind the use of Western musical instruments. But it will [be a] great injustice to introduce any change in the Classical music. I use Western musical instruments because I believe that you can dress-up a pretty child in any clothes [and] it will still [be] pretty. But the more important thing is that the child should not get injured while putting on those clothes.” – in an interview to Italian journalist Enzo Gentile2

What I find personally instructive and inspiring is the notion that Nusrat endorsed any collaboration in which the essence of the traditional material was preserved. Like a flower in a foreign garden, our perception of the purity of a single entity is changed, perhaps even enhanced, provided that it continues to bloom untouched in a different environment to what it is used to. Nusrat’s renditions of Qawwali were able to do so regardless of their immediate contexts.  – © DINUK WIJERATNE, 2013

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Buckley, Jeff – CD liner notes to ‘Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party: the Supreme Collection’ (Caroline 1997)

2. Ahmed Aqeel Ruby (trans. Malik) – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: A Living Legend (Words of Wisdom 1992)

4. BBC Radio – Guru of Peace: An Introduction to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

5. Ahluwahlia, Khiran – artist’s website

6. Brook, Michael – Official Website as of Oct 2013

Qureshi, Regula – Sufi Music of India & Pakistan (Oxford University Press 2006)

Potter, John (ed.) – The Cambridge Companion to Singing (Cambridge University Press 2000)

Hyder, Rehan – Brimful of Asia: Negotiating Ethnicity on the UK Music Scene (Ashgate 2004)

Brooks, Daphne – Jeff Buckley’s Grace (Continuum Books 2005)

Lynch, David – CD review (Austin Chronicle July 27th 2001)

Tarte, Bob – DVD review (Miami New Times, Feb 19th 2004)

Baruah, Amit; Padmanabhan, R – The Stilled Voice, Frontline (The Hindu vol.14/no.18 Sept 6-19, 1997)

Happy 80th Birthday Claudio!

Claudio Abbado, “the most widely respected living conductor” [The New York Times], is 80 years old today. I can’t believe time has flown so fast! While his impeccable posture on the podium may have given way to a slight stoop of old age in recent years, Abbado still leads with the same authority, creating the same magic. He has, without question, been my favourite conductor – and by extension one of my favourite musicians – ever since I discovered his recordings as a mid-teen. I’d like to make a wish today that he will live forever, and keep inspiring us with unforgettable performances :)

A great conductor is a conduit – a vessel through which the music, in all its essence, passes….all the while infused with his/her unique human personality. Here is a clip of Abbado back in 2005, conducting his own crème de la crème Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler’s most complex of symphonies: no.7, a work that he truly made his own unlike no other. Using a face and body that reflect both strength and frailty where necessary; a rhythmically precise right hand in perfect harmony with an immaculately phrasing left; I marvel at how he is able to maintain a grip on multiple musical lines, driving an orchestra into a frenzy that teeters dangerously on the edge without ever spiralling into vulgarity. As is always the case with conductors of greatness, one may observe their alchemy but for it be granted no explanation whatsoever!

An interview for PASSAGES TO CANADA

It was a great privilege, earlier this year, to be invited to interview for PASSAGES TO CANADA, an initiative of the Historica-Dominion Institute – the largest independent organization dedicated to history and citizenship in Canada. Its mandate is to build active and informed citizens through a greater knowledge and appreciation of the history, heritage, and stories of Canada. The background music of the video, by the way, is my own ‘Return Ticket Overture’:


At the time of writing, I am not a Canadian citizen. But Nova Scotia – and Canada by extension – is where I presently, and very gratefully, consider to be ‘home’. I find that travelling, as much as I do, only sharpens my perspective.

People continue to ask each other the question: “Where is home?” No doubt, the various possible answers are so highly personal and ambiguous that they can only attempt to approach anything resembling a singular definition. Maybe you have a unique one? Care to share it below? Of late, I keep coming back to the words of a dear friend and esteemed, well-travelled, musical colleague: “Home….is the place to which you feel you want to contribute most”. Touché.

INVISIBLE CITIES: music inspired by the imagination of Italo Calvino

NB: This is an ongoing (continually updated) post, serving as a composition journal of my work on a new concerto for TorQ Percussion Quartet.

“He was the only great writer of my time” – Gore Vidal on Italo Calvino*

*and that’s saying something, lest we forget the line from an episode of Frasier: “Gore Vidal?! He hates everything!”

JUNE 10, 2013


Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities has long been one of my favourite books. It is a literary work like no other, singular in vision and execution. I have chosen to use a small handful of its ‘cities’ as inspiration for movements of a large scale musical composition. The final movement is inspired by OLINDA:

 “In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squares, the horse-racing track. That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses its way toward the outside. Olinda is certainly not the only city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring. But in other cities there remains, in the center, the old narrow girdle of the walls from which the withered spires rise, the towers, the tiled roofs, the domes, while the new quarters sprawl around them like a loosened belt. Not Olinda: the old walls expand bearing the old quarters with them, enlarged but maintaining their proportions an a broader horizon at the edges of the city; they surround the slightly newer quarters, which also grew up on the margins and became thinner to make room for still more recent ones pressing from inside; and so, on and on, to the heart of the city, a totally new Olinda which, in its reduced dimensions retains the features and the flow of lymph of the first Olinda and of all the Olindas that have blossomed one from the other; and within this innermost circle there are always blossoming – though it is hard to discern them – the next Olinda and those that will grow after it.”  – Hidden Cities 1

As soon as I read this, it occurred to me that the growth of OLINDA, as he describes it, is fractal in nature. Henceforth, I’ve spent many days researching fractals and related issues with geeky fascination. A good excuse to watch some TED talks, a couple of which are about fractals.

A fractal is a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. I find myself ruminating on how I could musically depict the self-similarity of OLINDA, as each new city blossoms from its ancestors over time. I think of the earth crackling in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and those fantastic effects in John Adams’ Shaker Loops (‘Loops & Verses’) which sound to me like trees growing at high speed, your mind’s ear acting as a sort of time-lapse camera (skip to 4’40”):

I’m hearing OLINDA’s ‘expansion of walls’ in sound as, for example, streams of repeating chords. They increase in pace, perhaps also in pitch and in density, and can therefore be visually represented in sketch form wedge-like shapes. Since these are essentially triangles, one can think of the famous Sierpinski triangle:

To make wedges of the equilateral triangles, I rotated and squished (technical term) the Sierpinski triangle, superimposing it on manuscript paper. The x-axis represents the flow of time. I’ve added a few thoughts such as dynamics, and some sample pitches. The ‘expansion’ begins from everyone’s favourite note, middle C:

The shape is too geometric for my purpose; I need something a little disorganized, so I thought about each little wedge (representing growth or ‘wall expansion’) breaking loose yet remaining within the overall framework:

I hope that, in this way, some self-similarity is preserved while infusing the structure with a more organic, shall we say more chaotic, quality. They abound in nature of course:

All of this has at least given me something to go on. Next, I try to figure out how to make some music out of it!

JUNE 11


I’m having fun coming up with some fractal musical FX! With a little dressing up, they make for very interesting textures, but it’s painstaking and time-consuming work as always (days like today remind me that if I’d gone into web design instead, I’d be charging by the hour and making much more money).

What I’ve done below is take a simple tone row (D# E B G# E D# A A) and set it at different tempi (from slowest to fastest: the glock moves in quarter notes; the piano in dotted 8ths; the vibes in 8ths; the flute in 16ths but then ‘mutates’, aha). And can we take a moment to say how much we ADORE Balinese pentatonics?! They make me swoon.

Listen below for the computer MIDI rendition. I’ve used some stopped horns and a timp gliss to add ‘glue’ to the texture:

I like to think that the whole effect conjures up an image of, say, that tree branch….or maybe the lightning bolt if there was more density and some good ol’ fortissimo aggressivo.

The shape of the row, incidentally, is that of the Danish composer Per Nørgård’s so-called infinity series, a self-similar melodic line. For the last few days, I must have googled this a million times; I find it utterly fascinating and will do my best to blog about it at a later date. Below is the chromatic version, whereas my version above will demonstrate that you can have fun using any pitch set that jingles your bell :)

JUNE 12


Re the ‘wedge’ shapes I spoke of above: I’m hearing them as phrases that rhythmically ‘compress’. That is, the pulses that make up a phrase get closer and closer together:

This is essentially a calculated accelerando effect, which you hear all over the place in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music. It’s not the kind of acceleration in sound you get when you hear ball bounce and come to a state of rest. Rather, it’s more mathematical since the durations of the pulses decrease in a more ‘man-made’ way, as above (half notes, dotted quarter notes, quarter notes, etc.)

In Carnatic music, there are some crazy complex phrases that rhythmically compress, which they call ‘reductions’. I’m not writing for Carnatic musicians so, to keep my material relatively simple, each pulse will sound four times before decreasing in duration. If you start with whole notes, you get a long ‘compressing’ phrase that is 52 quarter notes long (click to enlarge):

Out of this can be derived shorter and shorter phrases, by starting further and further along, as indicated by the slurs. This now gives me lots of options. For instance, If I want a ‘compression’ that is only 10 beats long, I start from the first quarter note. I made one more chart to give me some more options; but this time each pulse is heard only twice:

Methinks the charts themselves are starting to look a bit fractal(!)  I started to have fun when I used static chords for the pulses. Here is a loud, climatic compression that is 24 quarter notes long:

Hmmm, at this point I’m mildly panicing, thinking that I have unsuspectingly plagiarized Harmonielehre by John Adams. Oh well, can’t be helped. Here are two compressions played back to back – one from each of the charts above – 8 quarter notes long and 6 quarter notes long:

JULY 1


While it’s been some time since I last updated this page, I certainly haven’t been idle. Today I have a meeting with Richard Burrows, of TorQ Percussion, to show him what material I have thus far composed of this concerto. Richard and I also need to make a stage plot, which is crucial for making sure that all the musicians (possibly 60) can share the same stage. Not forgetting that the massive amounts of percussion will take up a lot of space. (At this point I usually ask myself why I keep taking on these epic projects. After this concerto is done, it’s time for little fanfare for solo piccolo).

Concerto structure & form


I am working off an 'architectural' plan for the whole concerto that is tabulated below. The fourth movement, based on Calvino's 'Invisible City' of ERSILIA, is practically done. I wrote this movement first because my commissioners very astutely and pragmatically requested that one of the movements be for the four TorQ percussion soloists only. Consequently, it may be removed from its large-scale concerto context and performed as a chamber piece in their quartet recitals. Deciding that a soloists-only movement could adequately serve as a cadenza, I came up with the following 'architectural' plan for the whole concerto. The Calvino cities I have chosen are listed in capitals:

1. VALDRADA (medium tempo)

2. ARMILLA (slow)

3. CHLOE (fast, scherzando)

4. Cadenza – ERSILIA (medium to fast)

5. OLINDA (fast, majestic)

Movement III


For the third movement (of a five movement concerto) I have chosen the city of CHLOE. When you first read it from the book, you notice that it is broken subtly into four parts. I have spread these out more obviously below:

In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.

A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on ther shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling. A tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral. Something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene: a blind man with a cheetah on a leash, a courtesan with an ostrich-plume fan, an ephebe, a Fat Woman.

And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised.

A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop.

It certainly contains some kind of narrative. Below, I have continued to break apart its structure, adding and naming sections which will serve to outline my (personal) interpretation of the text. I have also coloured any words that inspire me musically:

NARRATIVE I – In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.

CHARACTER SKETCHES I – A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on ther shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling. A tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral.

NARRATIVE II – Something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene:

CHARACTER SKETCHES II – a blind man with a cheetah on a leash, a courtesan with an ostrich-plume fan, an ephebe, a Fat Woman.

NARRATIVE III – And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised.

EPILOGUE/CODA – A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop.

Removing Calvino’s text and adding some more musical detail of my own:

PROLOGUE/INTRO. – X
          NARRATIVE I – A1 (‘street scene’ theme?)
                    CHARACTER SKETCHES I – B1
          NARRATIVE II – A2
                    CHARACTER SKETCHES II – B2
          NARRATIVE III – A3
EPILOGUE/CODA – X1?


When you add a prologue, or perhaps just a short introduction to mirror the epilogue, the whole structure takes on some sort of palindromic, palindrome-ish quality. I think there is some scope for adventure here.

JULY 2


Typing up my notes from a great meeting in with TorQ percussionists Richard Burrows and Jamie Drake. I’m a little closer to finalizing the list of percussion instruments I will need. In no logical order whatsoever:

4 snare drums, bass drum(s?), tom toms, roto toms, 16 (2-octave diatonic) tuned pipes, vibes, glock, toy glock (maybe), crotales, 20″ Chinese cymbal, bender gong, sizzle gong w/chains, mbao gongs (maybe), triangles, shakers, cajon, djembe, darabuka, ewe drum, cabaca, anklung (maybe, but yes please).

If food be the love of music….

If you think that incredible food cannot inspire creativity, think again. Whenever I am in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I lunch (at least twice per trip) at the Paradise Road’s Gallery Cafe. Their superb menu includes justly talked-about desserts, of which my favourite for years has been the infamous Chocolate Nemesis (below). It is all kinds of chocolate fabulousness over a biscuit base, topped with a dollop of freshness. And that drizzle of sunshine is in fact a passionfruit coulis. Oh yes. The whole ensemble is drool-worthy and I yearn to be able to compose a little piece just as good:

Tsimo!

The first piece from my 2012 Halifax JazzFest show is finally out on video, thanks to the boys at the CBC! I have used this blog to follow the gestation of this epic ‘song’, so if you would like to explore this in more detail please click on a tag at the bottom of this post.

In case you are wondering about the lyrics, I mentioned them in a previous post. I used one of the quatrains from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, in a very beautiful (and liberal) translation by Edward Fitzgerald:

I sent my soul through the invisible, 
some letter of that after-life to spell,
and by and by my soul return’d to me, 
and answer’d: “I myself am heav’n and hell”

This after attempting to write my own lyrics and deciding, shortly thereafter, that it is something best left to the professionals. My favourite section of the whole piece is the very last one, beginning around 15’30”, when young Reeny Smith (20 years of age at the time of recording) quite simply knocks the lyrics out of the park :)

One last JazzFest teaser: the beatz, they are approachin’….

It has been several months since a beautiful, balmy summer evening in July 2012 saw us debut the WijeratneWorks project, featuring DJ Skratch Bastid. Boy did I have a ball that night. Many of you have asked to see/hear some footage from the show; I can tell you that it has certainly been an agonizing wait for me especially. I only recently got the call from the CBC saying that we would be going into the studio to begin mixing and editing, not forgetting that all the audio will ultimately be synced to video, yeh. It won’t be long now until the whole show hits the airwaves, but if you need something to keep you going until then, here is an excerpt of my favourite piece from the show:

Tsimo!




Notation

Thanks to a harmonious collaboration of GOOGLE Docs, LOGIC Score Editor, and MAC screenshots (I stand in awe of technology and btw how would I survive without shift⇧-command⌘-4, the world’s most useful keyboard shortcut?!), my ‘score’ for this section ended up looking like I’d been armed with scissors and glue, yet never had to worry about paper cuts and sticky fingers:

Skratch Bastid burns up the Schubert (please forgive us Franz)

the young Reeny Smith belies her age

no time like the Dave Burton

me

In the studio

To finally hear all the recorded audio footage was cathartic, to say the least. I’m quite proud that Tsimo! has come out so well. Notably, there is quite a symphonic arc to it; gratifying considering that it was a world premiere, ambitious in scope, with all of us on stage slowly working our way down an untravelled musical path. Once in the studio, I was blessed to work with mixer/editor Pat Martin and the very visionary Karl Falkenham. Karl and his fellow CBC producer Glenn Meisner recently retired after a combined seventy years (gasp) at the CBC.

Glenn & Karl @ their farewell shindig

I feel so special that my WijeratneWorks debut marks Karl’s last official work as a CBC producer, and that he even came out of retirement to wrap everything up, his enthusiasm and expertise ever-present. He has been a catalyst for the creativity of artists through the decades, and I salute him.

Karl pouring over his mix and edit notes

Pat just can’t help touching all the buttons

Whatever did we do before we had [….]?!

Since everyone loves stories of the almost-gone-wrong, I’ll leave you with my personal anecdote of mid-session studio angst. I’m paraphrasing conversation amongst composer, producer and mixer/editor, but you get the gist:

ME: “Oh noooooo! The balance of all the samples in this climax is completely upside down. The most important loops are too quiet….while the least important ones are too prominent. We are able to adjust the levels of individual samples right?”

PAT: “Actually, no.”

KARL: “It’s not possible because we don’t have the DJ’s material on separate channels at this point in the piece. Everything is lumped together; we can’t change the balance.”

[Silence]

PAT: “Do you have the samples with you now?”

ME: (my state of anxiety worsening) “Arggghh, they’re at home….Oh wait! I may have put them all in a mobile folder….”

[Subsequent note to self: there’s no point in having the DROPBOX app on your does-everything-but-make-toast iPhone 5 if you don’t fill its folders with the files that you actually need]

ME: (depression at rock bottom) “Well that’s that then. So much for the mix.”

KARL: “Would Skratch have them?”

ME: (glimmer of hope) “I could text him right now! Gawd, I hope he’s not on tour.”

Amazingly for me, this story had a happy ending. If ever DROPBOX were to have a competition calling for the most eulogized story of how their service saved someone’s *ss in a moment of crisis, here’s my winning entry: a mere 5 minutes after thinking that my whole mix was doomed, my dear colleague responds immediately to a text sent from the studio by transferring all of the 100+ samples I constructed for the whole project, directly to our man at the console. Karl grins.

The moral

Well, make better use of DROPBOX, obviously ;)  Having individual samples at our disposal allowed us to overdub them onto the live track, fine-tuning via automation exactly according to the dictates of how this particular climax of the piece should grow organically. To my ears the transformation was so stark; from the muddled to the emotionally coherent. It was a powerful exposé of how ‘balance’ is just as expressive a musical parameter as phrasing or any other. The acoustic equivalent would be to have, say, an orchestra playing perfectly in time and in tune but not expressing anything meaningful due to the fact that all the various musical lines were utterly out of balance.

(concert photos by kind permission of Stefan Massing)

Disc of the ? – the Art of Ignaz Friedman

This is actually a regular blog entry attempting to masquerade as a ‘disc of the month’ post (he said sheepishly). In my defence, owing to a terribly hectic yet artistically rewarding summer of great music-making and much intercontinental dining, I have fallen behind and thereby come to the sad realization that this whole ‘disc of the month’ series is not destined to be as, cough, ‘monthly-ish’ as it suggests. However, when I am struck by the urge to recommend something, I will certainly do my darndest not to keep it to myself!

♠♣♥♦

As a music student in New York City I enrolled in an analysis class with the great Carl Schachter. By this time he was already a bit of a legend; arguably the most influential Schenkerian analyst since Schenker himself. Each week I would look forward to Prof. Schachter’s class with much enthusiasm. He strikes a wonderful balance between elucidating music cerebrally and intuitively – a rare gift possessed by college professors, in my opinion. One day he decided to discuss tempo rubato (literally, ‘robbed time’ in Italian, referring to rhythmic flexibility in musical performance). He played this crackly old recording for us, without first announcing the either the title of the piece, the composer, or the performer:

I remember instantly thinking that, until that day, I had not heard such sophisticated pianism. Firstly, I didn’t think that someone could elicit a tone from a piano that was so singing that it could completely defy the percussive nature of the instrument. The melody here floats so freely that it seems disembodied. When it’s in the treble, it glows; when it’s in the bass (check out 0’49”), it booms with rich orchestral resonance. All the while, a hushed accompaniment pulsates with a heck of a lot of momentum….but boy can it turn on a dime. And this brings me to the ultra-expressive, swoon-worthy rubato. Personally I find it totally sincere and never indulgent. Indeed, the virtuosity of this playing is not in the speedy fingers or flashy runs, but in how everything else is precisely controlled to evoke an emotional response. Yes, it’s never felt this good to be manipulated ;)

Ignaz Friedman (b. Poland 1882, d. Australia 1948)

Listening to this recording even today, many years later, I marvel at a testament of how the art of Ignaz Friedman can be transmitted through a haze of pops, crackle, and hiss. And all in a mere 2½ minutes, in the form of an unassuming little ‘Song Without Words’ by Mendelssohn (op.53 no.2). Within a miniature exists an entire world of musical expression that evokes the so-called ‘golden age’ of piano playing in full force.

Now that I have your attention (wry smile), let me ask you whether you think anyone will ever surpass Friedman’s 1936 recording of the Chopin E flat Nocturne op.55 no.2…..

At 0’23”, after the delicate balance between the melody and its accompaniment has been established, we are suddenly yet subtly made aware of a secondary voice (also played by the right hand). Subdued but with its own intensity, Friedman presents it as a quietly assured dissenting opinion, imbuing it with a human quality (hear it again for instance at 0’30” and 0’42”). His exquisite handling of voicing and balance reminds me of a Daniel Barenboim quote:

“The most important part of piano-playing is the symphonic element.”  –  from ‘I was reared on Bach’

Not forgetting that the two right hand voices – one dominant, one subversive – are imbued with such human qualities in this recording that they might represent ‘real’ characters in the listener’s mind. Sound takes on meaning, and then comes to life. In my previous post, I expressed that the spiritual significance of musical counterpoint for us listeners or performers might represent some kind of Utopia, in which conflicts and resolutions play in out in a more ideal way than they do in real life.

a great collector’s item (2CDs), now sadly out of print :(

Friedman’s recorded legacy is preciously small. It fits on about five CDs, and really doesn’t comprise any large pieces. I would recommend the NAXOS albums. However, we should be wary of branding him as a miniaturist (despite his genius for it) since he was in fact a globe-trotting repertoire-hound who, in 1904 for instance, performed the Brahms D minor, Tchaikovsky B flat minor, and Liszt E flat concertos all in one evening! (I’m still trying to get my head around that one). And for his most lasting impression on posterity? It is said that nobody could play a Chopin Mazurka like old Ignaz :)  The great pianist Stephen Hough, in his fantastic blog, even refers to the ‘charisma’ of Friedman’s Mazurka playing. Also, a brief but much appreciated webpage talks about Ignaz Friedman’s sorcery here. They include two complete Mazurka recordings. Have you ever heard such classy left hand swing?! He danced the Mazurka as a child in Poland; little wonder that it is ‘in his blood’.