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LP
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GREYFADE 002LP
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$27.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/9/2024
Originally released in 2021. The first volume in an ongoing collaboration between composers Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte, From the Machine explores the application of software-based compositional techniques -- including algorithmic processes, generative systems, and indeterminacy -- to the creation of new music for acoustic instruments. Featuring members of Flux Quartet and International Contemporary Ensemble. Although digital approaches to music-making are most closely associated with the use of electronically generated (or modified) sound, computer-based composition opens up a vast space of possibilities beyond timbre, into fundamental questions of basic musical structure. This collaborative project between composers Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte sets out to explore some of these possibilities by adapting techniques from electronic composition -- including algorithmic processes, generative systems, and indeterminacy -- to the creation of new music for acoustic instruments. From the Machine, Vol. 1 documents two pieces that were composed using non-linear software techniques, translated into traditional musical notation, and performed by acoustic ensembles: Kenneth Kirschner's "April 20, 2015" for piano and two cellos and Joseph Branciforte's "0123" for low string quartet. Recorded by pianist Jade Conlee and cellists Mariel Roberts and Meaghan Burke, the acoustic adaptation of "April 20, 2015" brings a new level of nuance and a heightened sense of drama to a piece originally composed without the human performer in mind, while preserving the expanded sense of rhythmic, harmonic, and structural possibility that Kirschner unearthed in the digital realm. "0123" was recorded by a distinguished ensemble consisting of violinist Tom Chiu (Flux Quartet), violist Wendy Richman (International Contemporary Ensemble), cellist Christopher Gross (Talea Ensemble), and double-bassist Greg Chudzik (Talea Ensemble). An entryway into Kirschner and Branciforte's ongoing experiments with digitally mediated chamber composition, From the Machine, Vol. 1 also represents a point of departure for the Greyfade Label as a whole, which seeks to be a vital outpost for algorithmic and process-based music in the coming years. Whatever novel results lie ahead, Kirschner and Branciforte's first release provides a model for a music that is elaborately constructed, exactingly realized, and deeply personal all at once.
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