13th
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.
06th
To celebrate the reopening of the Whitechapel gallery in London, five top contemporary artists took over the Art & design site of the Guardian newspaper. The first installment saw the Chapman Brothers filmed by their Staffordshire bull terrier Kylie.
Listening to the grunts and battles this beast has with the web cam, as well as the overall effect of the ‘dog’s eye view’, results in a playful and engaging video experience.
31st
“The people of Northern Thailand also have a variation on sky lanterns. These are known as Khoom Loy. Northern Thai people use sky lanterns all year round, for celebrations and other special occasions. One festival in particular is the Loy Kratong festival in which lovers and partners gather on the riverbanks to float flowers and candles, launch fireworks and release sky lanterns together. It is considered good luck to release a sky lantern, and many Thais believe they are symbolic of problems and worries floating away.”
Source: Wiki
Wimp.com has a beautiful video of sky lanterns, including the afore mentioned fireworks. The effect of these lanterns aggregating in the sky is incredibly beautiful – like being closer to the stars for a fleeting moment.
26th
“Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonality, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.”
I have now seen three performances/compositions of Duane’s. Last night’s program, one of four of this Artist in Residence @ ISSUE Project Room, entailed:
(taken from Duane’s program notes)
- A sine tone “tape piece” that utilizes ISSUE’s 16-channel overhead sound system. The listener’s seating location in the space will vary the results of this work as the sound will be transferred, randomly, between speakers at a rate that allows the listener to perceive movement, also giving a sense of amplitude change, though this is not programmed into the piece itself.
- A solo contrabass performance from comrade James Ilgenfritz. James will be doing his interpretation of a graphic/word score I created for him last summer (which was from a series of five, titled “Words and Lines for…”) – view page two of James’s graphic score
- James will then join me for a planned-improvisation duo performance. I myself will man a table of guitars strung with multi-unison heavy gauge strings to be excited via bowing and a high-speed rotary tool. James will again man the contrabass, although detuned for this piece. This work will focus on low-end frequencies and relatively higher register string harmonics.
The first piece was very immersive, and had the effect of a small herd of animals moving over head. The sounds would build and travel, and at times move through you. I felt as though the space had been visited by beautiful sound creatures, who were not inhibited or thrown by the audiences’ presence.
The second piece was very abstract, and was a response to a very unique score. The piece successfully journeyed through several sound scapes, but I must say my favorite part was the simple and continuous sound made with repetitive strokes of the musician’s bow.
The third piece, which was very much the finale, was incredibly engaging and vibrationally consuming. The amplified contrabass had a sound reminiscent of Buddhist chanting, this is is because of “the low end frequencies and overtones, similar to those heard in throat singing” explains Duane. After a session of almost brutal bowing on an electric guitar, the frequencies let loose to bounce off the walls, had the effect of electric seagulls flying above.
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