Harp Set
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See harpset blog for more info! (this is just a stereo version of an 8 channel surround sound affair but it gives you the idea!) Program Notes:
**Due to the size restrictions on myspace tracks some pieces of music are only partialy available i.e. the first half in some cases, I will endevour to ensure that each track is available in its entirety at some point. Sorry for any frustration this may cause...let's all petition myspace for more, well, space!**
Enough~?
for Clarinet and live computer
Clarinet: Sioned Eleri Roberts
Composition and programing: Edward Wright 2006
Enough~? is a piece for solo Clarinet and live signal processing using max/msp. The only sounds that you hear on the track are created live, i.e. no samples were pre-recorded and it was all done during performance, what you hear is the result of one clarinet playing and a lot of computer number crunching!
The piece falls into roughly four musical sections (three here due to myspace time constraints) In the first we find a frantic world, constantly changing and shifting, breathless in its haste to get onto the next thing. In the second section we crash into an area of peace and tranqility, such as many of us are looking for in out busy day to day lives and a sense of euphoria, or a glimpse of something better can be seen through the mist. In the third section one finds oneself coming away from this, back into the real world with all its issues and worries and problems, which to all intents and purposes have not gone away. In the final section the sound finds some sort of resolution between these two worlds, the light and the dark, the blissfull and the mundane...
Enough~?
First performed Electroacoustic Wales Thanks to Sioned, Ben and 'Dr Rob' for all their help.
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En masse
Edward Wright 2006
We live in a world dominated by information technology and a culture of mass multimedia communication. Some would argue that this is a bad thing, citing the effects of violent images on impressionable minds, and the intrusion of the media into the lives of not just those that it views as subject material, but all of us by way of mass broadcast. Alternatively such ease of access to information and ideas can be a massive power for good, helping to avert (or at the least alleviate the symptoms of) war, famine and act as a massive catalyst for social change.
En masse is an exploration of these extremes drawing in part from a variety of audio based media and is an attempt to throw a spot light on one of the key social issues of our time. Although intrinsically electroacoustic the use of these resources and the need for them to remain perceivable at times presents something of a departure from the acousmatic style of composition most often associated with the genre. Many other traits from this remain however such as the gestural use of sound and the use of transformation combined with the juxtaposition of sonorities to name but a few.
Most of us like to grumble about the media, some are positively hostile, others see potential for good, whilst some of a more thoughtful inclination would put forward ideas of alienation and social decline. We are all party to this phenomena, we watch it, we fund it and we are ultimately responsible for it. Ultimately in a free society what we hear, see and retell is of our own choosing.
Quotations sourced from terrestrial television and radio broadcasts Oct 2005 - Feb 2006
First performed Bangor New Music Festival 2006
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Botany
Edward Wright 2006.
Music: Edward Wright, Text: Robert Minhinnick The Looters (Seren Books, 1989).
Performed By Amici Del Canto and the Llandudno Festival Strings cond. Bill Connor
Live Recording
This piece was commisined by the Llandudno Festival, and uses the poem of the same name as its basis. The poem its self proved an interesting object to work with, leaving a lot to the imagination of the reader, at times it is joyful, at others it is romantic (in the best sense of the word) and at others it could be read as a lament. It is this shifting balance of emotions that have been reflected in the music. The piece was recorded unknown to me live in the opening concert of the festival on minidisk by a friend who sat behind me half way bach in the audience, so please forgive the (in the circumstances suprisingly good!) sound quality.
Botany
All I know is, we were together,
Perhaps for the last time.
The chase ended, and you in red sandals,
Ankles cut by the pipes of the stubble,
And the dog flung down in the restharrow,
A lace of spittle on his tongue.
Below us lay the hot limestone
Of the fields's incline, and above,
A magpie's flight blurred like a dice
That rolls unreachably away.
You are still there, with your sunburn
Darker than a ladybird,
And on a pillar of coconut-smelling gorse
A stonechat, pierecing with
Its song the cushions of the air.
Years later I come back
With a camera and crouch down
Under the thorn, pushing the blue
Bead of the lens towards
The orchid that grows in the place where you lay. From The Looters By Robert Minhinnick
"...The first half closed with Amici Del Canto and the Festival Strings giving the first performance of a setting by Ed Wright of Botany, a poem by Robert Minhinnik. The poem mixes present and past, memories of love and vivid images of nature, all reflected in the shifting patterns of strings and voices, resolving itself into an a capella rendering of the whole poem at the climax. A lovely piece beautifully performed." Victor Hallett
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The Way I Saw It
Edward Wright 2005 (live violin E.W.)
This piece explores the age old idea of the duet, in this case it is between live violin and a pre-recorded tape part . The source sounds for it were recorded as a journey from home in Bangor, along the coast and up through the woods to Aber falls, and it is this motion between the man made synthetic and the natural organic that underpins the musical exploration here. To state it more exactly , it is the tension between our perceptions of order and chaos, and the natural and the man made, that is being explored.
Any sound, or collection of sounds could be given a position in such a space, equally many other opposites could be applied; notated and improvised, acoustic instruments and electronic sounds, the tempered scale and a continuum of pitches, and so on, the list is probably endless. From the first note or impulse, the state of centred equilibrium is blurred slightly, and any general movement away from this zero point implies an increase of musical tension until such time as the sound comes back to the centre or is thrown past it into another area of the space, coming to an eventual rest with the end of the piece.
The music draws from a number of genre which is unsurprising given the instrumentation and the time and place of writing, as a result a certain amount of interplay between these languages occurs. For example not only does the violin improvise and mimic heavily synthesised sounds at times, but the tape part has been edited to incorporate elements of rubato and other primarily acoustic traits. Above all it is intended to be interesting and rewarding, if challenging in places to listen to. Enjoy.
Performed Sonic Arts Network Expo 966 June 2005