Inside Voice (2018)
Instrumentation: bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, bassoon, trombone, contrabass, midi keyboard (+Indian harmonium or melodica), percussion, harp, classical guitar, hammered dulcimer or cimbalom
Electronics: Yes
Duration: 12'
Commissioned by GMEM and the Christ Church Preservation Trust and was written for Ensemble CBarré and the International Contemporary Ensemble, with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and The Camargo Foundation.
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Notes: Inside Voice depicts an organ in a state of becoming. It was inspired by my recent work exploring a new organ by Fisk that is being installed in Philadelphia. At that point, many of the ranks were in place, but some were not. Therefore the keys would always produce air through the system of hoses, but when certain stops were engaged (those with no pipes installed) they produced only filtered white noise. It is a wonderful sound. Other stops were installed but not voiced, therefore sounding much less polite than one expects from an organ. A glimpse inside the workings of a living instrument, this was a moment that will not happen again — neither in performance nor until some 150 years hence when this organ is in an advanced state of decay.
Translating these sonorities for ensemble, both metaphorically and musically, the musicians form a human bellows and tracker system. Each instrument has a microphone, which can be selectively unmuted by using a midi keyboard as a network of virtual valves. The air sounds are further filtered and spatialized, together with the plucked transients, within the speaker array in a system developed with the assistance of GMEM.