The Squid's Ear Magazine

Pisaro, Michael

Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds

Pisaro, Michael: Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds (Gravity Wave)

Michael Pisaro-Liu & Greg Stuart collaborate on a work scored for bowed crotales and sine tones in 4 large pieces, a challenging work that provide hallucinatory overtones that shift with the listener's perspective.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Michael Pisaro-Liu-Liu-composition, sine tones

Greg Stuart-crotales


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Label: Gravity Wave
Catalog ID: GW 010
Squidco Product Code: 18580

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2013
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardstock Oversized Sleeve
Mastered by Michael Pisaro-Liu and Joe Panzer.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"This record consists of four crotales, each bowed for 16 minutes. Against each crotale I have placed sine tones, one after another, for four minutes each (four for each crotale note). The score gives 10 possibilities for each crotale (over the two octave range of the instrument there are 250 possibilities). Greg selected four instruments, and then sent me the recordings. I took some time to select and scale the volume of the sine tones, work with the stereo balance and mix each crotale/tone combination in a slightly different way.

What emerges from the vast possible selection is four connected pieces, working their way up in range, each having a distinct profile, structured perhaps with a distant echo of a four movement symphony." "-from the liner notes



"It's a rare enough event: someone creates work that you find very challenging initially and you work at it, gradually acquiring at least a decent grasp on it, coming to enjoy it deeply...and the artist continues to move forward, often frustrating you and making you go through the whole process again and again. Rare and great. That's been my experience with Pisaro's work, having first come to it via the earlier, often quite spare Edition Wandelweiser releases, making myself comfortable with them, more recently dealing with the warmer and more "melodic" (if you will) content of work from the past several years, often equally challenging, though in a different manner. Needless to say, apart from the occasional live performance, I'm largely going from what happens to be released and have no real idea how representative this is of the actual music he's writing. But then along comes Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds and, once again, I found myself up against a very difficult wall to penetrate and understand.

In one sense, there's a superficial return to the spareness of earlier work. The piece is scored for bowed crotales and sine tones. It's large--four 16-minute sections, each followed by a two-minute silence--and requires standing way, way back to even attempt to fathom it as a whole. Or, I think, to just submerge oneself into and allow the structure to seep in via osmosis rather than attempting to somehow mentally limn it. Like many of his compositions, there's a near symmetrical framework within which much variation and vibration is understood to occur. Greg Stuart (who is, I surmise, just as responsible for the work's success) recorded the crotales, four long, bowed notes, and sent them to Pisaro who constructed the sine waves. Each sixteen-minute section has four, four-minute sine patterns superimposed, each mixed in a slightly different manner.

That's the rough technical detail. Experiencing it is something else again. I remain unsure of how the vagaries of a given stereo set-up affects the substance of what hits your ears here. My system here in Paris is a notch below the one I had in the States, I think and that one, while fine, wasn't of Niblockian proportions. So take all this with that caveat. It's not a piece to listen to while stationary. We're all, those of us who've had much experience with sine-based work from Lucier (to whom the composition at hand is dedicated) to Sachiko M, used to at least moving our head during performances or playbacks, creating individualized sensations of the music. More than swiveling the noggin, actually walking through the room can be rather incredible, getting the very physical feeling of passing through sound waves. This is the case here, as well. Although there are other odd effects in play. Once, when I was lying on my back, my left ear facing the speakers, my right fairly close to the back of the futon, which was against a wall, I heard about 90% of the sound in my right ear. Very strange. More to the point, it's a work that I find I really have to concentrate on to glean the structure and semi-hidden beauty therein, no mean feat for 72 minutes. As background music, it doesn't work at all! :-) And, despite the workings of the piece being clearly delimited on the jacket's interior, it's still tough for me to grasp on a more than a gross level. So, for me, there's this tension between thinking there's an important aspect I'm missing and reveling in the actual sounds, both as produced by Pisaro and Stuart and as being created in my ears as I both move and try to perceive. Those bell-like tones that emerge on occasion, for instance--I think they're more "there" in the disc than in my cochlea, but I'm not sure; they fade in and out when I move my head.

It's also surpassingly hard to write about. I do think Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds is a great piece of music. Hoping in a few years to figure out why I have this notion."-Brian Olewnick, Just Outside


Get additional information at Brian Olewnick's Just Outside

Artist Biographies

"Greg Stuart is a percussionist whose work draws upon a mixture of music from the experimental tradition, Wandelweiser, improvisation, and electronics. His performances have been described as "a ghostly, gorgeous lesson in how close, concentrated listening can alter and enhance perception" (The New York Times). Since 2006, he has collaborated extensively with the composer Michael Pisaro, producing a large body of music comprised of pieces that focus on the magnification of small sounds through recording and layering, often in combination with field recordings and/or electronic sound. His role as an interpreter of Pisaro's compositions has been called "a David Tudor to Pisaro's Cage" (The Boston Globe). Stuart's most recent collaboration with the composer, Continuum Unbound, a three-disc box set on Gravity Wave, grew out of the pair's field recording work in Congaree National Park and was selected by The Wire as one of the best albums of 2014.

Stuart currently performs with fellow percussionists Tim Feeney and Sarah Hennies in the percussion trio, Meridian, and with computer musician Joe Panzner. Other recent collaborations include projects with Ryoko Akama, Erik Carlson, Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey, Manfred Werder, Kunsu Shim, Phillip Bush, Nomi Epstein, and Speak Percussion. He has appeared as a featured performer at numerous festivals and notable venues presenting experimental music including MaerzMusik (Berlin), the Melbourne Festival, Café Oto (London), Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Arts (Bristol), Gallery Kapelica (Ljubljana), Cha'ak'ab Paaxil (Mérida), Issue Project Room (New York), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Dreamland (Louisville), Elastic Arts Foundation (Chicago), New Music Co-Op (Austin), Philadelphia Sound Forum, and Non-Event (Boston) among others. He has recorded for numerous labels, including Edition Wandelweiser, Gravity Wave, Erstwhile, Cathnor, New World Records, Accidie, L'innomable, caduc, Lengua de Lava, Crisis, and Senufo Editions.

An enthusiastic educator, Stuart has given lectures, workshops, and performances at the University of Huddersfield, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Victorian College of Arts, Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Louisville, the New England Conservatory of Music, Harvard University, Florida State University, Georgia State University, and Tulane University. Stuart holds a D.M.A. and M.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and a BMus from Northwestern University. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Music in Columbia, SC where he teaches experimental music, music history, and runs the Experimental Music Workshop."

-University of South Carolina, School of Music (https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/music/faculty-staff/Stuart.php)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. C#6/ 1141, 1117, 1057, 1103 18:00

2. F#6/ 1622, 1412, 1586, 1492 18:00

3. D7/ 2357, 2340, 2347, 2364 18:00

4. G#7/ 3415. 3399, 3105, 3575 18:00

Related Categories of Interest:


Compositional Forms
Electro-Acoustic
Ambient & Minimal Music
Electronic Forms
Electroacoustic Composition
New in Compositional Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Gravity Wave.


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