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Video
M.
Manion: Part I (live version) for malletKAT/MSP
(3:57)
First performed
at the Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Colgone, November 16, 2005
M.
Manion: Combinations (15:00)
Dennis Báthory-Kitsz:
Theremin, James Fulkerson: Trombone, David Gunn: Piano, Brian Johnson: Acoustic
Percussion, Michael Manion: malletKAT/MSP. Live recording, October 2005,
Zaal 100, Amsterdam.
Combinatinons written in 1976 is an open form, "controlled improvisation",semi-graphic
score. First performed in 1976 at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Clarence
Barlow: ...until... malletKAT/MSP
(3:22)
...until...
was conceived in 1972 as a variable piece. It consists essentially of
a cycle of pitches, initially highly consonant to a given drone, but gradually
increasing in dissonance. At the final, most dissonant stage, a small
shift in the drone reveals that the present cycle is nothing but a phase-shifted
transposition of the original.
RatGeyser was written
for Michael Manion. Samples were recorded from several voices - mine, my
wife Stevies, sculptor Pavel Kraus, Bill Gates (the interview I did
with him in 1980), slam poet Shannon Williams (from my sound sculpture for
Manifest poetry), and a few clips from commercials - and devolving/re-evolving
architecture created from complexity to simplicity and back. The malletKAT
uses these samples as does the accompanying stereo playback track, giving
the performer a challenge to articulate the solo line while at the same
time struggling to bring it together with the evasive electronic accompanyment
Just as I was conceptualizing Manion's commission, Lila Bennett told me
a story. A dressage rider studying in Florida, Lila was also the barn manager
there. One morning, the barn's owner saw a rat scurrying into a drainage
pipe, and so she and Lila took a powerful cleaning hose and stuck it in
the end of the pipe to flush it out. The other end of the pipe normally
captured roof rain. But when the pair turned on the high-powered hose, not
one, but dozens of rats flew up into the air in a zooming geyser of rodents.
The title RatGeyser was inevitable as I imagined Michael Manion fending
off a torrent of MalletRats with his malletKAT. The first performance was
on August 25, 2001, at the Ought-One
Festival in Montpelier, Vermont, by Michael Manion.
Using MAX or KeyKit
MIDI echoing processes and a quartertone-tuned synthesizer, the piece explores
territory charted in my Acid Bach series but with a more dramatic and longer
tension-building form. Periodically, in the slower sections, the percussionist
lets quartertone clusters sustain, creating a night-like atmosphere.
Áki
Ásgeirsson: Könguló Könguló for malletKAT/Crotales/Pure
Data (MAX/MSP)
(5:32)
Könguló
means spider in Icelandic. The piece was written in 2003 for Michael Manion.
Recording of the first performance at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague,
April 12, 2003.
PWAP plays with two
principal rhythmic textures: one consists of soft, underwater - type sounds
generated with granular synthesis techniques, while the other has a more
percussive feel that suggests contorted alien dance music.