for percussion ensemble, poetry, and avian ecoacoustics duration = c. 33’ instrumentation: * 24 plastic egg rattles * 4 small electric fans with front grill removed * 8 stiff feathers * 2 large concert bass drums * 4 guiros * 4 snare drums * 6 ocarinas * 4 vibraslaps * 4 flexatones * 4 cabasa * […]
an immersive 360-degree audio visual artwork by Matthew Burtner and Mona Kasra, 2020 Dwelling in the Enfolding (2020) is an immersive audio-visual environment of interconnected landscapes that were never inhabited yet are able to inhabit imaginations. These moving landscapes are so vast, so confident, and so subdued, they almost seem stationary and eternal. The surrounding stillness, […]
“Elegy (from Muir Glacier, 1889-2009)” for violin and glacier ecoacoustics (4’30″), or for stereo sound installation (26′) Since Thomas Hill painted “Muir Glacier, 1889,” in 1889, the glacier has experienced a ruinous melt and retreat. The tidewater glacier left the water altogether by the early 1990s and continued to shrink up the valley away from Muir Inlet, […]
Festival of Whispers (2017.2019)was commissioned by the Athenaeum Library of Art and Music in La Jolla, CA as a sound installation for the SoundON Festival of Modern Music. The piece is about coastal erosion as cultural erosion. It includes a chamber ensemble work (expanded in 2019), a multichannel sound installation, and a series of headphone […]
Profiled from Atmospheres (2017) for alto saxophone, percussion and greenhouse gas atmospheric sonifica- tions was commissioned by the Weiss/Soflin Duo with a consortium of commissioners. The piece tracks the three primary greenhouse gasses emitted by humans across the years 1959, 1987, 2015 and projected to 2050. The atmospheric profiles result in four chords that define the […]
for percussion and computer duration = 9′ “Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier” (2014) was commissioned by Brandon Bell with support from the Presser Music Award. The music was created from a recording of Alaska’s Root Glacier. The unique and visceral presence of glaciers is disappearing across the planet because we live in a time […]
Sound Cast of Matanuska Glacier (2015-2019) is a multichannel surround sound installation and a concert work for chamber ensemble and glacier ecoacoustics. Instrumentation: flute, Bb clarinet, F horn, 2 violin, viola, cello, bass The sound installation mixes many channels of coincidental audio into a multichannel diffusion for a gallery installation context. Listeners can walk around the […]
version for open instrumentation ensemble and glacier ecoacoustics (2015) Threnody (Sikuigvik) was composed at the request of the US State Department for performance during President Obama’s 2015 visit to Alaska. The work was first presented as an installation in the Anchorage Museum of Art as music emanating from inside an 800lb block of glacier ice, […]
for ice rain field recording, two marimbas each with one or more players, vibraphone with two players, two glockenspiel, and xylophone (2016) duration is 9′ I listened to the sound of an ice rain crackle on the leaves of a magnolia tree, and imagined how the changing density, temperature and humidity of the air effects […]
A work of sonic architecture, Sound Cast of San Giorgio Maggiore, created in collaboration with architect Anselmo Canfora, remaps a sonic cast of Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice onto another space through multichannel audio. Within the multichannel sound installation, a chorus performs an original composition based on the interior of the cathedral. The work can be […]