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Saturday April 11th 09 saw the the third installment Duane Pitre’s Artist in Residency performances at ISSUE Project Room. This show involved a 17-piece string/woodwind ensemble performing the long-tone composition, ED09 (Ensemble Drone 2009). Duane simultaneously conducted and played bowed guitar at times, while he also “mixed” the performers in real-time.
I describe Duane’s drone compositions as minimalist symphonies. They are incredibly melodic with a strong narrative. 
For me, the most compelling part of the ED09 piece is the second movement – the quarter tone cluster.
Duane conducts his performers in a unique score approach of classical notation and hand gestures. The quarter tone cluster begins when Duane’s interlocked hands are above his head. What follows is a delightfully unsettling period in which every performer plays a different pitch, each exactly one quarter tone apart. Inspired by Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, the sound scape is remisinscent of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick sound tracks. This comes as no surprise, considering Penderecki wrote the score for ‘The Shining’.
For a teaser of the show check out the ED09 performance at Roulette, SOHO.
