live instrumental music XXVIII (2019)

Premiered by TAK Ensemble at Cluster New Music Festival in Winnipeg, Canada.

live instrumental music XXVIII is a title that both affirms and negates the nature of the work. Indeed, it is performed live on Western classical instruments but their expressivity is largely dependent on a digital counterpart, achieved through mimicry and fusion. The pre-recorded sounds heavily sample transmission dialogue between BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner and mission control during a free fall from the stratosphere. This dialogue, once live-streamed, is now reincarnated in another live context, along with incidental sounds of transmitters, receivers, and a suit pressurizer—instruments in their own right. Though instruments and electronics co-exist in this composition, the distinction between the two media is blurred through the use of exciters and resonators which transform electronic sources into acoustic phenomena.

The Roman numerals in the title recall those found in generational suffixes, names of monarchs and popes, years of construction on building faces, all of which evoke much longer time scales than the human experience. Its usage in this title acknowledges composing as the act of recalling one’s listening history. It chronicles the twenty-eight years of my life thus far, in which my listening habits have been conditioned by both musical and non-musical experiences.