LINER NOTES

Composer, author, and researcher ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER (b. 1964) is an IT support director in academic computing at the University of North Texas.  She is the author of Crossing the Line: WomenComposers and Music Technology in the United States (Ashgate, 2006) and is beginning a new edition of that text. An avid martial artist and an (ill-advisedly) aspiring gymnast, she is currently working on a new piece exploring current aspects of her life in connection with electroacoustic music.

Spellbound (2006/2015) was composed for saxophonist, pedagogue, and conductor Shelley Jagow (Wright State University) for live and pre-recorded soprano saxophone. Jagow can be heard in the prerecorded fixed media of this performance. The work was inspired by Warren Beatty’s character in the movie Heaven Can Wait. As a 14-year-old, Hinkle-Turner was ‘spellbound’ by the timbre and flexibility of the instrument played by Beatty’s Joe Pendleton. Throughout the film, Pendleton performs an Italian ballad, ‘Ciribiribin’, by the composer Albert Pestalozza. In Spellbound, Hinkle-Turner focuses on the bright timbral quality of the soprano saxophone and expands the composition from the tone of the opening single note. 

Though originally composed for soprano saxophone, Spellbound has most often been performed by clarinetists. The clarinet lends a different resonance than the soprano saxophone. The contrast between the two instruments can be heard as the clarinet weaves in and out of the texture of the soprano saxophone in the fixed media part. The work is composed in clear sections, each highlighting a different performative aspect of the clarinet. In the beginning, the long sustain builds from the overtones of a single oscillating note. This builds into melodic singing passages and later, technical virtuosic displays. Though tempos are indicated, there is flexibility within each section in the musical conversation between clarinet and electronics. The clarinetist must choose when and how to relate to the electronics in different passages.

MOLLY JOYCE (b.1992) focuses on disability as a creative source in her work. Using an electric vintage toy organ purchased from eBay, she has found an instrument perfectly suited for her performance and composition. Her debut full-length album, Breaking and Entering, featuring toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling, was released in June 2020. Molly is a graduate of The Juilliard School, Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and Yale School of Music, and currently serves on the composition faculty at New York University Steinhardt and Wagner College.

Attack and Sustain (2020) for clarinet and fixed media was commissioned by Lucy Abrams-Husso for this album. The work combines live acoustic clarinet with pre-recorded processed clarinet sounds. Abrams-Husso recorded the fixed media on E-flat, B-flat and bass clarinets, with sound engineering by Tuukka Tervo and Michael Hammond. The pre-recorded electronics incorporate the full clarinet range, from the high octave of the E-flat clarinet to the lowest register of the bass clarinet. They also make use percussive elements including key slaps and slap tongue on the bass clarinet. Unlike the prerecorded fixed media in Spellbound, the fixed media of Attack and Sustain was processed to manipulate sound, balance, and sonic effects. The acoustic clarinet part in both works, however, contains no live processing.

The piece explores the process of going between sustain and arpeggiation, and the relationship between the two states. As the clarinet moves from sustain to motion, the electronics shift from arpeggiation to sustained chords and finally dense polyphony. The fixed media is constant, mechanic, and unyielding. The acoustic clarinetist, meanwhile, must navigate between the rigid backing sounds and her own musical expression. Though all sounding elements are clarinet, the processing of the pre-recorded sounds distinguishes the live clarinet sound from the choir for the entirety of the work. The live player must navigate not only rhythmic alignment but timbral space with a distorted version of herself.

RIIKKA TALVITIE (b. 1970) – composer, oboist, pedagogue – graduated as an oboist from the Sibelius Academy in 1997 while continuing composition studies with Tapio Nevanlinna and Paavo Heininen. Recently, her interest has shifted to the field of community and performing arts, particularly the question of how authorship could be shared. Talvitie is preparing her artistic doctoral degree on the changing role of the composer at Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, where she also works as a lecturer in composition.

Seireenietydi (Etude of Siren’s) (2006), composed for bass clarinet, soprano and live electronics, is the first of two chamber music works in this album. Soprano Tuuli Lindeberg’s siren song is the musical source for the live electronics, operated by the composer on this recording. The text is inspired by Franz Kafka’s short story “The Silence of the Sirens”, a retelling of Ulysses' encounter. In Kafka's version, Ulysses places the wax in his own ears and orders himself tied to the mast of the ship. While Ulysses was convinced that the sirens were singing and the wax saved him, Kafka argues that the sirens were so in awe of Ulysses' face, his faux-enrapture at their non-existent song, that they spared him. That Ulysses survived is not thanks to the wax, but rather a testament to the strength of the man's naiveté in thinking he could outsmart the sirens.

In telling Kafka’s story, the solo soprano voice takes on the role of narrator as well as the sirens themselves. Utilizing whisper, electronic looping, canon, melisma and distortion, the soprano becomes a cacophony of voices, narrating as well as acting out the story. In contrast, the bass clarinet anchors the work, providing a contrast in range, musical content and at times, reality. The soprano extends beyond the realm of the living, like the sirens themselves, while the bass clarinet is of the Earth.

MINNA LEINONEN’s (b. 1977) compositions are inspired by extramusical phenomena and sounds of everyday life. Her music has been performed by the BBC Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony, the Tampere Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, and Defunensemble amongst others. She works across artistic disciplines in projects involving acrobatics, documentary film, video, and installation. Leinonen is a doctoral candidate at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and lives in Tampere.

Pheme (2011, rev. 2021) for clarinet and fixed media also combines clarinet with the human voice. The fixed media part features soprano Meeri Pulakka and the acoustic clarinet part has slight live processing. The work was commissioned by the 2011 Crusell Festival and is dedicated to clarinetist Harri Mäki. Pheme (pronounced FEE-mee) was the Greek goddess of rumor and gossip, often portrayed in antiquity as easy to provoke but hard to pacify. The work begins with a unison line in the clarinet and electronics where clarinet and voice are indistinguishable. Quickly, however, the texture transforms into a duet and then into a dense choir of voices. The music continues to gather momentum, like a rumor mill, and does not cease until the end of the work. 

Leinonen employs several unique playing techniques to add texture and timbral density to the clarinet part. In the beginning of the work, the clarinet is played without the mouthpiece by blowing air into the top joint and fingering normally. While blowing into the top joint, the clarinetist articulates various notated vocalizations on different syllables to match and imitate the soprano in the fixed media. The clarinetist also sings and whistles, creating a polyphonic texture that completely blends the clarinet and the electronics. Later, after the clarinetist reattaches the mouthpiece, the clarinet part continues to incorporate whispered vocalizations, air sounds, multiphonics and improvisation. The clarinetist, utilizing all creative possibilities, performs as both singer and instrumentalist.

NINA SHEKHAR (b. 1995) explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including Eighth Blackbird, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the LA Philharmonic, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Albany Symphony, JACK Quartet, and Alarm Will Sound. Current projects include performances by the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic (with soloists Nathalie Joachim and Pamela Z), and New World Symphony. Shekhar is pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University.

Honk if you Love Me (2018) for clarinet and electronics was inspired by the traffic sounds of India, particularly the sound of car horns. In most places, car horns indicate aggression or frustration. However, in India, the melodic nature of car horns is almost joyful and serves as a reminder that honking is a communicative gesture. Rather than simply traffic noise, the sounds assume a form of self-expression and a reclamation of technology. The electronic part is assembled from various types of car sounds alongside Indian percussion. The clarinet part is performed with and without live processing. Shekhar indicates in the score specific sections where live processing should be used. The processing aims to make the clarinet completely blend with itself and increase the density of clarinet sound when combined with the electronics. 

Composed in sections, the conversation between electronics and clarinet alternates between energic and meditative. In the exciting sections, the upper range of the clarinet is featured in technical and improvisatory ways. The timbre is varied using vibrato, glissando, multiphonics and growl. These variations allow the clarinet sound to ring out against an increasingly dense electronic environment. The expressive sections focus on sustained tones in the middle and lower registers of the clarinet. Live processing in the form of reverb and delay help provide depth to the sound and enable the clarinet to resonate more audibly. The work was commissioned by the Third Angle New Music and can be performed live with a Bharatanatyam dancer, a style of classical dance from southern India. 

JOVANKA TRBOJEVIC (1963-2017) was born in Bosnia (formerly Yugoslavia) and moved to Finland in 1986. She studied piano in Belgrade and Prague, and later composition at the Sibelius Academy. A composer of many chamber works, she is perhaps best known for her opera, film and electroacoustic music. Her radiophonic work CreationGame won the Prix Italia grand prize in 2009. Trbojevic’s works have been performed internationally across the Nordic countries as well as in South America, Japan, and Australia. Her orchestral works have been premiered by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Le fantôme du vent (The Phantom of the Wind) (1999) for bass clarinet and live electronics demonstrates Trbojevic’s stylistic experimentation of playing techniques and reimagining soundscapes. The work was commissioned by bass clarinetist Heikki Nikula and was previously recorded on Nikula’s album Piping Down the Valleys Wild, which features works for bass clarinet by Finnish composers. Le fantôme du vent was inspired by Trbojevic’s Le fantôme du Ondes (1998) for ondes Martenot and tape, which was commissioned by Japanese virtuoso Takashi Harada. Whereas Le fantôme du Ondes was composed without any contact between composer and the ondes Martenot, Le fantôme du Vent was a close collaboration between Trbojevic and Nikula. The electronics contain manipulated field recordings alongside live processing of the bass clarinet part. 

The field recordings utilized in the electronics part are taken from an ice skating rink using very close microphones. The movements of the skaters in the opening electronic solo create a shadowy atmosphere, joined by the bass clarinet in the low register. The layering of the wind builds to virtuosic moving lines in the bass clarinet part matching the quickening whooshing of the electronic sounds. As the work evolves, the bass clarinet changes from a monophonic to a polyphonic instrument. The work becomes more static and the listeners perspective changes from moving through the wind to being suspended within the soundscape. The clarinetist must balance musical priorities, understanding changing multiphonic chords as both ambient sound and pitched harmonies.

MAIJA HYNNINEN (b. 1977) works in the areas of concert music, electronic instrument design and multidisciplinary performance. Her music centers on finding unique moments where the limits of this world can be changed so that we may peek into another reality. These moments can result from a surprise timbre in acoustic writing, or when electronics project sound to another domain, space and reality. Hynninen received her Master in Music in Composition from the Sibelius Academy and is a current PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley.

Earthship (2015) for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, cello and electronics was composed for the final round of Feeding Music international Composition Contest at the Italy Pavilion of the EXPO Milano 2015. Inspired by the idea of living in harmony with nature, Earthship is a house designed to be completely in harmony with its surroundings. Made completely of natural and recycled building materials and powered by solar energy, its inhabitants nurture and survive within nature rather than resist its forces and act in destruction. In this work, the ensemble has the narrative role of creating the utopian Earthship space acoustically, without sound processing. 

The sections of Earthship are subtitled as ‘habitats’ and ‘portraits’. The habitats refer to the building itself, while the portraits depict the endangered animals outside and around the building in nature. The instrumentalists, in sounding these environments, employ unusual playing techniques and microtonal harmonics. The goal of the extended techniques is to create the widest range of timbres and textures, such that it becomes indiscernible which sounds are coming from which instrument. The electronics were created from pre-recorded sounds of endangered birds and insects. The fixed media enters seamlessly as the ensemble reaches the musical climax of the piece. When the ensemble enters after a prolonged tape solo, they blend again completely with the electronics. The concluding textural duet of the work is performed by the pianist playing inside the piano and the percussionist using Styrofoam prepared to the composer’s specifications and amplified using contact microphones.

Composer, multimedia artist and teacher CAROLYN BORCHERDING (b. 1992) is interested in building embodied sound and visual worlds through compositions. She composes for a wide range of solo instruments as well as multimedia ensembles. Her works experiment with listener perception of space, and more recently explore narratives relating to historical, cultural, and personal matters. Her compositions are performed internationally, and she is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Composition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

Frenetic Disintegration (2018) for bass clarinet and fixed media is the sonic representation of unraveling energy. The notated score combines graphic and metered notation with timings to align with the fixed media part. The score also includes both improvised and specified phrases. The work opens chaotically with the bass clarinet performing fast improvisatory gestures, independent of the energetic sounds in the electronics. As the work continues, phrases become longer and less disjunct. Similarly, the electronics get smoother, and the bass clarinet and fixed media come together to form one sounding body. Unlike Le fantôme du Vent, the bass clarinet is performed without any live processing, emphasizing further the timbral difference between the bass clarinet and electronic sounds.

The work offers tremendous freedom for the bass clarinetist. The score has suggestions for interpreting the graphic notation, however, there is opportunity to experiment with sound effects and various methods of sound production. Musical momentum is developed through rapid movement from the lowest to the highest ranges of the bass clarinet. The bass clarinet aligns exactly with the fixed media in time, but the musical connection with the electronic sound develops more strongly through the second half of the piece. As the energy dissipates, time seems to pass more slowly, and virtuosity gives way to melodic sustain and harmonic connection. In the final passage, the bass clarinet performs a short motive containing all previously performed pitch material.