Journey

A trip thtrough contrasting sonic dimensions!

(5-String Electric Violin and Electronic soundscape).
Total duration ca. 7 minutes (1999)
Published by Activist Music (ASCAP).
Commissioned in 1999 by violinist Mary Lou Newmark.
One movement work. 9 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered on November 11, 1999 in Los Angeles, CA.
by Mary Lou Newmark.

Recorded in January 2001 by Sabrina Ann Berger, violin.

Audio clip performed by Sabrina Ann Berger, violin.

Journey, written for violinist Mary Lou Newmark, was first performed at a concert of electro-acoustic music in Los Angeles in late 1999 and was recorded by Sabrina Ann Berger in 2001. Although the majority of my writing these days is for traditional acoustic ensembles, I've worked extensively with electronic music since the time I was fifteen (in the mid-seventies, when it took nearly a roomful of oscillators and patch cords to produce a mere sine wave!), and have long used synthesizers, samplers and digital audio in the context of scoring commercial film and TV projects.

Journey represents the first time in many years that I was asked to compose a concert work using electronics, and it was a great deal of fun to design sounds that could fill a space with frequencies that I wouldn't otherwise find from acoustic instruments. The piece begins with a quiet subsonic rumble that expands ominously into the concert space and sets what Sabrina Ann Berger calls "a soulful and very Buddhist-like foundation" for the entrance of the electric violin. Undulating waves of sound crest and fall, contrasting the more edgy tone of the violin and presenting the listener with a trip through several sonic dimensions.