This Friday, FearNoMusic presents “Grounded: An Evening of Electroacoustic Music,” as part of their all-Oregonian season. Five composers are featured on the program: William Campbell, Ravi Kittappa, Caroline Louise Miller, Kirsten Volness, and Anwyn Willette. Violinists Keiko Araki and Emily Cole perform, with FNM Executive Director Monica Ohuchi on the piano. 

Electroacoustic music is a vague and unhelpful term. There are acoustic and electronic elements, sure, but it says nothing about what those forces are or how they interact. It’s like describing orchestral music as music that combines strings, winds and percussion. There’s a codified tradition to the orchestra that creates expectations and conventions for composers, performers and listeners. The history of electroacoustic music, however, is measured in decades rather than centuries. Because the genre is relatively new, there is still ample room for growth and experimentation. Each composer then finds their own way to unite the electronic and the acoustic.

Many of the works featured at “Grounded” combine live instruments and tape. “Tape” is an anachronism, referring to when the electronic part was played from magnetic tape. Now, the “tape” parts are often all digital, and can be played from a phone or computer. With a predefined tape part, acoustic performers have to line up their performances with the “tape,” synchronized via in-ear metronome or through careful pre-planning. In electroacoustic music specifically, the “tape” often contains manipulated samples of acoustic instruments, leaving a trace of the organic within the artificial.

Live effects processing can be another approach to electroacoustic music. This is where composers record and manipulate sounds in real time coming from a mic’d-up acoustic instrument. Sometimes composers create a “set it and forget it” system of pedals and effects; other times, they write specific instructions for how the effects are manipulated during a performance. The music of American composer, trombonist, and computer music pioneer George E. Lewis takes this approach the furthest, where the electronic sounds act as a semi-autonomous force interacting with an improviser, through algorithmic manipulations. The relationship between the performer and the electronics becomes unpredictable, and the performer must be willing to adapt to whatever the program spits out. 

Electroacoustic music then has a different relationship to time than acoustic or electronic music alone. Acoustic music is always at the whims of human imperfections, tempo fluctuations and errors–but this allows for dramatic effects like rubato, accelerando and ritardando. Electronic music, especially digital music, is tied to a precise clock and is entirely deterministic. Any changes to the flow of time are pre-planned by the composer. 

Sponsor

Electroacoustic tries to square this circle through different means. One is to let the fixed “tape” part command the beat, keeping a steady pulse throughout for the performers to which they synchronize. Another tactic is to give the performer freedom to not play perfectly along with the “tape” part, acting more as a background texture to the live performance. With live effects processing, the electronics are at the mercy of the musician. 

Balance is also key: whether human performance or electronics take center stage says something about our relationship with technology. Technology can be a tool we use to our benefit. It can also be a powerful force we try in vain to tame. We can see this at play in the current debates surrounding Artificial Intelligence. Some artists see Artificial Intelligence as the next step in the nonstop march forward of progress; others see it as a threat to the artist’s way of life. Some see AI art as a fun tool for self-expression; others see existential horror. 

Artists will always seek new ways to communicate and create, and technological progress provides a constant source of new tools. Electroacoustic music makes use of these new tools without abandoning thousands of years of acoustic music. It bridges the gap between the two worlds that split after the earliest electronic music came to be. Early electroacoustic composers like Varèse, Stockhausen and Pousseur wanted to get as far away from traditional music as possible, and used the electronic instruments available to them to create otherworldly, strange sound pieces. Others such as Reich’ Electric Counterpoint create jagged textures as one live guitarist plays over eleven pre-recorded parts. One could also include within electroacoustic music the vast worlds of new age, ambient music and quote-unquote art pop.

All of these forces are at play in “Grounded.” Keep your ears and mind open. 

Sponsor

William Campbell

William Campbell is the department chair and music technology instructor at Linfield University (read Daryl Browne’s profile here to learn more about his teaching). Campbell is well-known for his piano music and his film scores. His score for the film Hunger Ward won the Best Original Score at the Luminous Frames film festival. And his score certainly played its part in the film’s depiction of famine in Yemen. The score itself is a series of short, atmospheric vignettes for strings and electronics. 

His most recent album, Together We Rise, combines his solo piano performances with electronic string textures that dance along in the background. Campbell’s piano technique reminds one of Keith Jarrett’s solo piano music, straddling the line between jazz and classical with an aggressive touch, groovy syncopated melodies and head-bobbing bass lines. FearNoMusic gives the west coast premiere of Beyond Mountains, which recently debuted in Davenport, IA. 

Ravi Kittappa

Ravi Kittappa studied at Columbia University, one of the important centers for electroacoustic music, as well as the University of California, Berkeley, an important spot for electronic music in its own right. He moved to Portland recently to join the faculty at Portland Community College, teaching creative coding in the Music & Sonic Arts program.

Sponsor

Kittappa also started Permutations, a concert series that has put on shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Permutations have recently expanded into Portland, bringing avant-garde guitarist Elliott Sharp and accordionist Ben Richter to the Old Madeleine Church on April 9. His artistic temperament is in line with the European avant-garde, emphasizing texture, extended techniques and novel forms. 

Pouse vše for violin and electronics runs the gamut of various techniques and virtuosic solo passages. Contrasting the violin part is a delicate, slowly morphing tape part suffused with inharmonic tones. To hear more of Kittappa’s music, visit his soundcloud page. For a taste of what his music is like take a look at this score video for his vocal work Decantations. 

Caroline Louise Miller

Caroline Louise Miller is the Assistant Professor of Sonic Arts at Portland State University. Last summer, Miller opened the art installation Here There: (Re)collecting Labor on the American Railway at the University of North Carolina, in collaboration with Alarm Will Sound and Stefani Byrd. 

Their music often combines field recordings, synthesis and live instrumentation. With these sound design techniques, they explore natural phenomena and the soundscapes of the world. The instruments move in animalistic ways, through fluid rhythms and improvisatory melodies, as if they were living creatures within the “tape” part’s environment. 

FearNoMusic will be performing Miller’s Phobiaphages, from 2013. The title could be translated to “fears of being devoured,” or “devouring fears,” a startling turn-of-phrase. The music reflects the title via the conflict between the two violin parts and the mediating electronics. 

Sponsor

Kirsten Volness

Kirsten Volness is at her best in her electroacoustic works. FearNoMusic will perform “River Rising,” the title track from Volness’ 2021 album. It is a spacious elegy in free time, with the violin sitting atop a spacious “tape” part of reverbed accordion and delicate bass drum hits. For a more in-depth look at the album and Volness’ oeuvre, check out Matthew Neil Andrews’ interview with her from the album’s release. 

Andrews had this to say: 

The harmonies and melodies are nicely “pitch-centric,” in a traditional-yet-fresh sort of way that stands out in a landscape often dominated by the aesthetics of field recording and musique concrète. Volness’ surreal electroacoustic layers borrow from both without dominating the music, providing counterpoint to the acoustic instruments and also something of a crinkly frame (in the post-modern sense), not totally unlike the acousmatic dramas of Éliane Radigue, but even more not unlike the pop dramas of Radiohead and Björk.

He also said in that same article that Volness’ music would “be the best seven to ten minutes of the whole show,” at a FearNoMusic or Cascadia concert. Music is not a competition, of course, but the other four representative composers are pulling their weight against “River Rising.” 

Sponsor

Anwyn Willette 

Anwyn teaches at Portland State University alongside Miller. She is most well-known for her administrative work, teaching and sound engineering. She has a number of recording credits and helped develop PSU’s SAMP program. Not much about Anwyn’s music came up in my research. Instead, I learned about her transcription of the Aurora Colony’s music. 

I imagine that the time commitment to teach has left Willette little time to compose. I’ve known Willette for nearly a decade, having taken classes with her at Portland State, yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard her music. “Grounded” will feature the world premiere of Willette’s Mortality for violin and electronics. 

The concert is at 7:30 on April 25, inside the Eliot Chapel at Reed College. You can buy tickets here. For more, their Demystifying New Music performance is at 11 am on April 27, also in the Eliot Chapel.