performance

Daniel Walden, harpsichord Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra Thomas Cunningham, conductor 06 October 2017 | 8 PM Evan Williams | Dead White Man Music The great man theory was a view of history popular in the nineteenth century that posited that society was advanced by a succession of "great men," who influenced history through the centuries.

Uploaded by tristanperich on 2015-10-29.

Live performance, 29 March 2019 at DAM Festival, Prishtina (Kosovo) as part of the first edition of the Balkan Composer Competition in Prishtina (BCCP). conductor, Gregory Charette alto flute, Susanne Peters bass clarinet, Daniel Boeke piano, Daniel Walden percussion, Christian Smith violin, Mariana Hutchinson Siemers cello, René van Munster www.oerknal.org

Anisa Xhomaqi, Eduard Hernandez, Adri Canadad, Video Recordings Anisa Xhomaqi, Daniel Boeke, Video Editing Frerik de Jong (7Mountain Records), Recording Engineer Gregory Charette, Conductor Mariana Hutchinson Siemers , violin Lidwine Dam, Viola Steuart Pincombe, Violoncello Susanne Peters, Flutes Daniel Boeke, Clarinets Daniel Walden, Piano Christian Smith, Percussion

Composed for Oerknal! and Damask Vocal Quartet in 2016 Co-Commissioned by the two ensembles. Premiered in Amsterdam and The Hague, May 2017 Recording from the performance in Korzo Theater, The Hague http://www.lewisnielson.com http://damaskquartet.com https://www.oerknal.org Program Note: I could write a great deal on the subject matter of this piece.

Since its founding in 2012, the Chicago-based ensemble Fonema Consort has championed music that explores the expressive capacities of the human voice. For the ensemble’s fifth birthday, Fonema Consort presents five new works that operate at the boundary between singing and speech, speech and noise, voices and instruments. Chris Mercer’s Octoid, finally, leaves voices behind for a thick wall of instrumental sound. Performed by a pianist with three assistants playing inside the piano, Octoid builds an ensemble around the most ubiquitous of percussion instruments. The music is frenetic and jagged, with different sounds and textures closely abutting, at times almost as if different bodies of material were interrupting or overlapping one another. The subordination of roles among the players is unstable: it is difficult to say whether Octoid is a heavily assisted piano solo or a quartet for piano and percussion. As Mercer puts it, the ensemble is like a shape-shifting, octopod creature, “splitting into parts and then reforming into an eight-armed beast.” The beast changes form as the work moves toward its finale and two of the assistants join the pianist at the keyboard in a cacophonous passage for six hands. As the assistants return to their stations beside the piano, the music settles down into a deceptive lull before a final, chaotic push to the cadence. Notes by Samuel Rowe PERFORMERS: Daniel Walden, piano Weston Olencki, piano assistant I Shawn Lucas, piano assistant II Joan Arnau Pàmies, piano assistant III CREDITS: Recorded at Northwestern University by Chris Mercer Edited by Chris Mercer Mixed by Alex Inglizian and Mastered by Chris Mercer Video by Arlen Parsa Produced by Pablo Santiago Chin Special thanks to Seth Bousted for facilitating rehearsal space at Access Contemporary Music, the Aaron Coplan Fund for Music, Inc. and to all our donors through Indiegogo for partially funding this album. www.fonemaconsort.com www.parlourtapes.com

Fonema Consort: Nina Dante, soprano Dalia Chin, flute Jonathan Thompson, oboe d'amore Danny Walden, piano Ryan Packard, percussion Recorded and Mixed by Dave Zuchowsky Elastic Arts Chicago - 11.16.18