Virtual Residency Mini-Doc Part I /  by Liquid Music

By Lauren McNee as part of Liquid Music's Artists in Virtual Residence Series

It is incredibly difficult to capture all that goes into creating projects like the ones Liquid Music strives to produce each season. Through our virtual residency initiative we saw a unique opportunity to bring the behind-the-scene to the front-of-the-scene, making the production of a project just as integral as the score or performance. There is artistry throughout - artistry that we know LM audiences will understand and appreciate. So with that, we are launching of a series of mini-docs featuring our artists in virtual residence, Poliça and s t a r g a z e. Over the course of the season, videographer Nate Matson (of Spaces) will capture the creative process leading up to the performance in the fall of 2016 (copresented with The Current), including virtual and live rehearsals, collaborative exchanges, and all the moments in between.

Watch Part I below to see Poliça move into a new physical and musical space, performance clips of each ensemble, and hear Channy Leaneagh's thoughts on the collaboration. Stay tuned for Part II for an inside look into André de Ridder's visit to MSP.   

Deeply Human: An Interview with Composer Daniel Wohl /  by Liquid Music

by Michael Hammond

Left: Michael/coffee Right: Daniel/sunlight

Left: Michael/coffee Right: Daniel/sunlight


I've known Daniel Wohl now for a few years. We first crossed paths via mutual composer friends in Brooklyn and have since worked together on Daniel's two album releases for New Amsterdam Records (2013's Corps Exquis and this year's Holographic). We also co-curated Sound / Source, an all-day electronic music festival at MoMA PS1.

Aorta (piano and electronics) mvt 1
Daniel Wohl

The first music of Daniel's I heard was a piano piece called AORTA, performed by Vicky Chow on the Ecstatic Music Festival at Kaufman Center in New York City. I remember being struck by how human the piece sounded, in spite of its highly glitched out source material. I still think that one of Daniel's greatest strengths as a composer is his ability to create something deeply human and emotionally complex out of seemingly lifeless digital sources. Temporarily setting aside my role as "label guy" with a vested interest in his albums, I can honestly say that he is one of my favorite electroacoustic composers working today, and I feel fortunate to call him a friend.

Below is a conversation Daniel and I had a couple of weeks ago over phone (he was in LA at the time, while I was in Brooklyn). I took it as an opportunity to ask about his inspirations and process, as well as the purely logistical challenges posed by the prospect of recording and touring a project as complex as Holographic.

M(ichael):  I'm always curious to learn about composer's first experiences with electronic music and electronic sound. I have my own references for growing up, listening to music and hearing sounds that didn’t sound like they were coming from any sort of source I recognized, whether it was a synthesizer in a Pink Floyd song or some computer manipulations in a Radiohead track.  Those were some of the sounds that jumped out for me.  For you, when you were growing up, what were those kinds of moments that grabbed you and made you think about sound in a different way?

D(aniel):  Hmmm, that’s a great question. It’s tough to tell.  You know how you just go through so many phases, when you’re a teenager... I guess the first song I ever really loved was a Kate Bush song.

M:  Which song?

D:  “Wuthering Heights”  It was a huge hit in France.  I was 5 or 6. I just remember loving her voice and how strange it was.  The timbre of her voice was so different. That was a moment for me, just discovering the magic of music.

M:  It’s interesting you mention Kate Bush.  Her voice is totally otherworldly. It has that quality, this alien thing. Listening to your music, I feel like you put a lot of vocal manipulations into your electronics tracks. Even if they’re not literal samples of voices, they have this cadence that’s vocal in nature.  Do you think about the voice when you’re writing?

D:  Yeah, writing for strings for example, I often sing the part first. I think it’s the best way to emulate the variation of dynamics and color for a string instrument. A lot of composers just make weird noises while we’re writing music [laughs]. Of course, you can use other tools, like virtual instruments and MIDI to do that, but you’ll never get the flexibility that the human voice has.  

For other instruments it’s not as useful. But for strings and winds, you can get a good sense of note length, phrasing, and dynamic shape. The human voice is the most flexible instrument. Sometimes I’ll do a vocal improvisation and then notate that improvisation for different instruments. Translating from the voice to other instruments can give you some  pretty interesting results

M:  Right.

D:  At the same time, I find it pretty hard writing for the human voice. Going back to Kate Bush, I really don’t like “normal” voices. I can love the music and production around it, but if the voice is too conventional it makes the whole piece a bit stale for me.

M:  Another thing I’m curious about is your process. Can you tell me a little about what inspires your writing these days?

D:  I’m always trying to find ways to make music with other people. I find that to be the most exciting. Growing up, I’d just invite friends over and we’d just improvise together. These days, because we’re able to just produce so much music by ourselves, we don’t need to collaborate as much, and it kind of takes the communal aspect out of the picture, which was a huge part of what I loved about music. I do appreciate  that we have so much control today, but at the same time, bringing other people into the process is the most exciting thing for me.

M:  Totally. It breathes new life into the work. It’s very easy to fall into your own habits as a solitary composer.

Holographic Video trailer featuring "Source" w/ Caroline Shaw and Olga Bell

D:  You can see that in some of the tracks on Holographic. For example, “Source.” The electronics were done and the vocals were written and Olga Bell and Caroline Shaw were singing them in the studio. But I always had problems with that track. While we were recording, I asked Caroline do some vocal improvisations. I took a few moments from those improvs and incorporated them into the track.

M:  Interesting. Yeah, these days that's almost an old-fashioned approach (hashing things out in the studio). Now there’s more virtual collaboration, whether it’s taking something someone’s recorded and chopping it up. Or doing remixes. Remixes have been some of my favorite things to work on. That’s always a really fun problem to solve.

D:  It’s really interesting to look into someone’s process at the level of the stems.

M:  Yeah, it’s like looking into someone’s bedroom closet. That relates to another question I was going to ask you about your writing process. I remember in Berlin you were editing sounds and constantly re-editing / re-mixing. Often the pieces would turn out very different from the way they were performed. How do you know when you’re finished with a track?

D:  I think each piece ends up having it’s own  process. All methods are available. For example, on Progression I wrote a chord progression, then I created a texture, and then I started figuring out when chords changed and what sounds would come in and out of the texture. After that it was performed a couple times and I re-edited it and worked out  some more samples to include. It had its own life. But that’s a totally different process than ”Source” – which is more of an electronic track in some ways. Also “Holographic,” for example, was a piece I originally wrote for Bang on a Can, and was much more of a straight ahead composition. When it came time to get it on an album I ended up slowing down the entire piece by about 6 BPM. I don’t think any of these are a typical process but every piece needs what it needs.

For each track, you go through a relationship. There are a lot of moments where you fall in love with it, and then you hate it, and then you love it again. You have to do the work to find something new to love about it.  

M:  You gotta keep the magic alive [laughs] And it’s totally different when you write the piece for a commission to be performed than when you’re thinking about writing for an album.

D:  I think we’re in a cross-section between performance art and album art. Classical music is very centered  around the  performance aspect. It’s meant to to be seen as much to be heard, whereas albums are meant to be heard. And what I’m trying to do is write something that can be both seen and heard. Frequently one of those elements is lacking, but I’m attempting to do both. Sometimes the best music is just one long held note, and that is really boring to watch but it can sound great. And some really impressive music to watch, when you close your eyes, just doesn’t have any meaning.  Finding that balance is really difficult.

Daniel 'at work'

Daniel 'at work'

M:  Especially because Holographic has so many moving parts. You’ve got the chamber players, the electronics, and you have the visual element. All the pieces existed before the album, so I imagine the performances have changed, too.

D:  Also, the live instrumentation is not the same as the recorded album. I had to re-arrange some of those pieces for new instrumentation [laughs].

M:  Yeah that’s a really unique, interesting way to go about it.

D:  Yeah it’s a hard balance to find.

M:  I imagine logistically it’s just way more challenging to do that kind of album and tour rather than a self-produced bedroom project. My own music has tended toward the latter, for practical reasons. I know you’re talking about how much you love collaborating, so I imagine you get a buzz out of other people performing your music, but logistically that also seems difficult.

D:  Yeah, it’s pretty challenging. I‘ve got to stop doing that [laughs]. I think on the next album, if I need to work with a  violin I’ll just ask a violinist. And I won’t necessarily use full ensembles.  Holographic has a different ensemble on almost every track.

M:  Right, but it doesn’t sound like it. If I didn’t know it was different ensembles, I wouldn’t think about it.

D:  Yeah, and that’s what I want. I didn’t want it to be a collection, or a document of a bunch of different pieces. Because that doesn’t make a good album, you know? I wanted it to have it’s own distinct sound world. And that’s the way it’s recorded. It was all recorded in the same place. Working with Paul Corley (producer and mix engineer) was another way we achieved that sound.

M: Is there any kind of narrative to music or are your pieces about anything in particular or are you just focused on the aesthetics of what’s pleasing to you in the moment?

D:  It’s a little bit of both. Invariably when you’re dealing with sound, you’re dealing with what you think is beautiful or satisfying and that comes with a certain context and culture. There’s always a narrative about what you’re doing, even if it’s not overt.

You could say this album has to do with my ideas about mixing electronic and acoustic instruments – organic vs. digital etc. There is the organic vs. electronic element, and the idea of deriving electronic sounds from acoustic instruments. But it’s hard to put everything into a neat little box. There’s the notion that we’re living, as human beings, in a time where interfacing with technologies is one of our main preoccupations. It’s about keeping some sort of human element in the electronic component, like the inconsistencies of human playing in live performance, while at the same time being able to have an infinite amount of sounds available to you and not being limited by what we can humanely produce.

Letting Ideas Grow with LM partner Scott Stulen /  by Liquid Music

Photo courtesy of IMA

Photo courtesy of IMA

Former Project Director of mnartists.org at Walker Art Center Scott Stulen gives us the scoop on his move to Indianapolis, work at the IMA, collaboration with Liquid Music, and the excitement building for Daniel Wohl's Holographic.

 

Sitting in the cafe of the newly opened Eskenazi Hospital, Michael Kaufmann, described Indianapolis as “a place where a few people can make interesting things happen quickly.” We had just finished a tour of the hospital including the 5000 square foot sky farm perched atop the downtown location. The halls were filled with numerous works by local and national artists and Michael explained plans for a music program in the facility. I was in Indianapolis for an initial interview for a new position at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I had been at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for five years as Project Manager of mnartists.org and wasn’t sure how serious I was about leaving Minnesota or moving to Indiana. Over the course of our honest and inspiring conversation, he sold me on Indy.

Nearly two year later, Michael was right. Indianapolis is a place where ideas can grow and find supportive audiences. And a few people can make a difference. In March of 2014 I became the first Curator of Audience Experiences and Performance, a new position not only for the IMA, but one of the first of its type in the country. I playfully describe my roll as a curator of people, not objects. Specifically, my role is to curate all of the public programs, performing arts and many of the interactive spaces on the expansive 152 acre campus which includes an encyclopedic museum, 3 theaters, a greenhouse historic mansion, formal gardens and 100 acre art and nature park. The position was created with an acknowledgement that audiences are changing, particularly younger audiences, and the museum needs to radically adjust if it is to remain relevant. Not a small challenge, but an amazing opportunity that I was eager to tackle.

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The approach of my department is to focus on creating social, interactive and highly accessible experiences in the context of the museum. It is an interdisciplinary and experimental approach, where failure must be embraced (and supported by the board and leadership). In addition this new wave of programming was generously kickstarted by the Efroymson Family Fund shortly after my hire. Their gift of a million dollars over four years launched ARTx, the R&D department of the IMA which my team heads. We are now a year and a half into the ARTx programming and it has already shown a dramatic shift in bringing in new audiences, establishing sustainable platforms and generating buzz. In the past year we have presented over 140 programs including an Adult Summer Camp where campers foraged the grounds to make breakfast with one of the city’s leading chefs, built cardboard forts, hiked and made cyanotypes and closed out the day with a mini opera on the pair overlooking our lake. Or, in a nod to my Minnesota roots, we  screened the film Fargo last January, outside. The event sold out with over 300 people huddled up in the 20 degree weather to watch the film, compete in a Minnesota accent contest and answer Minnesota trivia. However the best part, is that the whole front row made dishes to share with the audience as in impromptu potluck dinner. The best programs provide a platform for the audience to go in directions you never expected.

Music is my passion and plays an important role in nearly all of our programming. It sets a vibe, creates easy points of access and ties together sometimes unrelated content. Silent Night is an event we host the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when you are sick of your family and shopping,  which offered quiet, solitary experiences for our guests. One offering was a personal DJ, who would play you a track, over headphones, choose specifically for you, which creates a strangely intimate experience between DJ and listener. We have commissioned several new sound works by regional and national composers for events in our art and nature park including compositions with crickets by LA based musician Chris Kallmyer, field recordings by Seattle composer Nat Evans, live hydrophone compositions in the Art and Nature park lake by Michael Drews and Jordan Munson called Water Mining and a one-time-only public sculpture, performance and sound installation—E is for Equinox—from Grammy-nominated musician and Indianapolis-based artist Stuart Hyatt. The ephemeral, powerful performance consisted of a circle of 75 electric guitar players simultaneously strumming the E major power cord over a two minute period. The cord gradually became louder, transforming the surrounding woods into a supercharged sonic volcano, before reaching maximum volume and intensity

"E is for Equinox" by Indianapolis artist Stuart Hyatt. Photo courtesy of the IMA.

"E is for Equinox" by Indianapolis artist Stuart Hyatt. Photo courtesy of the IMA.

Now back to Michel Kaufmann. After our initial conversations which sold me on Indy, we have collaborated on several projects, mostly notably Sound Expeditions and Avant Brunch. The goal of Sound Expeditions is to create a soundtracked city in which spaces and places both familiar and unfamiliar take on a new layer of meaning and experience. It is both a collection and an archive housed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art documenting site-based sound art and composition. Sound Expeditions commissions pair sites and composers for the creation of new site-specific compositions in Indianapolis. To date sound expeditions has released pieces by Hanna Benn, Oliver Blank, Olga Bell, Roberto C. Lange and Caroline Shaw. Daniel Wohl is committed to create a new work for Sound Expeditions during his visit to Indianapolis in February.

ABOVE: Chris Kallmyer - Sundown-Suppertime-Let-Go-Piece at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A new work for guitar, amp, and 250 foot cable using a museum as an echo-chamber. Photo courtesy of the IMA.

ABOVE: Chris Kallmyer - Sundown-Suppertime-Let-Go-Piece at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A new work for guitar, amp, and 250 foot cable using a museum as an echo-chamber. Photo courtesy of the IMA.

Avant Brunch is a one-time, specially curated experience which  blends art, music and culinary delights in a unique location. The formula is to have a four course meal prepared by a leading Indianapolis Chef and not available in their restaurant paired with listening to a yet-to-be-released record, usually from the test pressing. The event is then hosted in a unique venue on the campus of the museum from the stage of the theater to a gallery, depending on the vibe of the record. Lastly the audience is instructed to remain silent through first listen of the record and savor the food.

Finally this brings us to the collaboration with Liquid Music. As I sat down to write this piece I laughed at the reality that I needed to move six hundred miles away to create this collaboration. I have long admired Kate Nordstrum and the amazing work she has supported, curated and created. Even with my close ties to the Walker, we never had the opportunity to directly collaborate. This is where Michael Kaufmann creates (yet again) another connection. Michael, Kate and I were having some initial conversations about nurturing synergy between performing arts venues and curators in the Midwest to support the creation and presentation of new work. From these early conversations the possibility of the IMA joining with Liquid Music, Mass MOCA and the Baryshnikov Arts Center in commission a piece by Daniel Wohl emerged. The IMA is honored to be included in the project, not only to help realize a new work by one by a rising star, but to bring this work to Indianapolis. Presenting new, experimental, multi-displinary work, such as Daniel Wohl is exactly what we are trying to do with ARTx and the our programming at the IMA. There is a buzz in Indianapolis anticipating this performance. We can wait and hope this is just the beginning of many collaboration in the future.

Scott Stulen is an artist, dj, curator, and programmer of Open Field at the Walker Art Center. He has developed innovative on and off-line programming including Community Supported Art (CSA) in partnership with Springboard for the Arts, Drawing Club, Headphone Festival, Analog Tweets and the Internet Cat Video Festival.

Follow Scott for updates and goings on:
@middlewest
scottstulen.com

 

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