Sonic Ecosystem

Sonic Ecosystem is a group exploration though overlapping worlds. Each movement of the work blends seamlessly into the next without a break. The audience is invited to participate in the piece by freely moving and conversing during the performance.

Prelude — The Courtyard (for fixed media)

Welcome to this concert and to the courtyard. This first section is based on sounds in and around the courtyard; join the soundscape and participate in this exploration of sonic events. Events over large temporal and spatial distances collide here in an imaginary landscape.

Les Vents (For Open Instrumentation)

Exploring the border between noise and pitch, this section combines recordings of wind with pitches based on stretched harmonic series and frequencies within wind recordings from around Texas. As

Interlude — Green Study (for fixed media)

Time spent contemplating the interlocking web of natural events.

An ever-bubbling spring echoes;

8 hours of cicadas last 3 minutes

Birds

Rainstorms in the desert—

A part of the forest falls

Slivers Wavering into Horizons (for Clarinet)

On the eastern edge of Texas there are stretches of barrier islands separating the mainland from the Gulf of Mexico. One of those is Padre Island, with more than 60 miles designated as a national seashore reserved for preservation. On the western edge of the island, the Laguna Madre stretches southward— one of only six hyper-saline lakes in the world and home to the intercostal waterway. The island itself is a diverse conglomeration of biomes with rolling sand dunes, grasslands, and ephemeral ponds all in close proximity. But wherever you are on the island, you can’t escape the sound of the ocean waves battering Malaquite Beach. Each wave crests on top of another, and as they recede the bubbles crackle and spit in a high-pitched chatter—the laughing gull above sounds its unending cackle.

Interlude — Resonance Structure (for Fixed Media and Metal Grate)

During this movement the audience is encouraged to play the courtyard as an instrument. The metal grate at the back of the courtyard has been set up to resonate in a particular way, but feel free to explore the sounds you find around the courtyard.

Further Down the Old Park Road (for Quartet)

Denali National Park and Preserve stretches for miles through the Alaskan Wilderness, moving from boreal forest, to alpine tundra, and on to towering peaks. Further Down the Old Park Road is a meditation in some of the unique ecosystems in the park—the different scenes fade one in to the other, with the perspective of the listener constantly in flux. At times the wind can be heard howling through the trees, and at others the permafrost slowly melting under the ground cries out in glassy shrieks. All of the sounds weave together into an ever-changing sound mass that is never the same twice.

33.21092° N, 97.15014° W