Скачать или смотреть Arborea by Grant Luhmann; Mary Rowell, violin

Arborea by Grant Luhmann; Mary Rowell, violin
For this piece Grant Luhmann won the 2016 Young Composer Competition Division 2 award.
Tribeca New Music 2016 Festival, June 26, 2016 at Nancy Manocherian's - The Cell, NYC

The violin's musical vernacular in Arborea (2015) consists entirely of open strings, natural harmonics, and extended techniques based on harmonic phenomena. These techniques, while limited in pitch, allow the violin to accomplish extraordinary technical feats and leaps that would be otherwise be entirely impossible on "normal" stopped tones. Various idiosyncracies in the patterns of harmonic fingerings are exploited to create unusual contours and crossed voicings between strings that add a mechanically virtuosic edge while maintaining a subdued dynamic.

The soundtrack extends the violin's voice and limited pitch content by featuring processed sounds derived from the instrument itself. Rhythmic ambiguity in the accompaniment throughout contrasts with the soloist's motoric gestures. Timbres of the soloist and the electronics blend in a sound world caught somewhere between the realms of the acoustic and the electronic, with occasional instantly recognizable "natural world" sounds adding a tangible outdoor coloration. Listeners are thus provided with a sort of aural garden in which they are free to appreciate, explore, and immerse themselves in a soundscape that blurs the line between the organic and mechanical.
--G.L.