SOLO
Escape Velocity: The lead track from the album, Man In Space, Escape Velocity evokes the excitement of lift-off and the attempt to violently break free of the pull of gravity. The sounds and speech of Mission Control, checking and re-checking launch systems are heard mixed in with layered rhythms and a propulsive guitar ostinato and fuzz-driven melody.
Dark (Cold) was recorded live during a 2018 solo performance on guitar and modular synthesizer. Inspired by the Voyager gold record which contained examples of human artistry including Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”. Accompanying the improvised guitar and live processing, the modular synthesizer churns, re-samples, resonates and ultimately abstracts Johnson’s seminal blues recording, pondering what it might sound like to an alien species that encounters it during its eons-lasting flight through the galaxy - a message lost to time and place.
Persistence Blues: for solo guitar.
CHAMBER MUSIC
As Alice: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is used as a looking glass, holding a mirror to the enigma of childhood/creativity. Each of the seven movements uses a scene in Alice’s story to reflect upon a childhood situation or act of imaginative play. This is true for both the musical and the visual components of the piece. The electro-acoustic score was derived solely from recorded sounds chosen because of their association with the Alice story. Adding to these recordings were conversations I had with my then six year-old daughter on the subject of the story of Alice, and what it means to her. All of these collected sounds (including voice) were manipulated, processed, and ultimately used as fodder for invented (or imagined) instruments performed by the percussionist. As for the projected visuals, both Cecil Hepworth's age-deteriorated 1903 film of Alice in Wonderland, and whimsical illustrations drawn by my daughter were used as raw material to be processed, triggered, and controlled by the musicians interactively, reacting to their performance.
See all videos: HERE