Journey

A trip through 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.

Although the majority of my solo and chamber music writing has been for traditional acoustic ensembles, I've worked extensively with electronics 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 and later, wind orchestra works.

Journey was the first time I was asked to compose a concert work using electronics, and it was a lot of fun to design sounds that could fill a space with frequencies that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get from acoustic instruments. The piece begins with a quiet subsonic rumble that expands ominously into the concert space, setting a meditative 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.