About this work:
Rhapsody on a Desert Spring came about through a commission from North Adams State College. We had improvised with Jonathan Aceto in our studio previously and I was impressed with his ability to not only play beautifully but also with his creative intelligence in working with an experimental piece such as this. So we decided to do a formal piece together. Using the haunting background sounds from Priscilla's Desert Spring tape (from a new desert installation just premiered at Northern Arizona University) as a start, I decided to use the Korg Wavestation as the principal live synthesizer instrument, due to its evocative sound quality. The Zeta MIDI violin is an instrument that can either sound like a traditional amplified violin, or can be used to trigger a synthesizer sound that can be anything at all. So sometimes when you see Jonathan drawing his bow, the resulting sound coming out of the speakers may not bear much resemblance to what he seems to be doing, at least in violin terms. Perhaps that is one of the intriguing aspects of this piece--the very familiar with the completely unforeseen. This can be heard most clearly in the many passages where the violin plays and then an evocative string-like sound seems to follow it like a shadow. This is the violin triggering a long sequence on the Korg Wavestation.The wild desert sounds heard at the beginning and halfway through are from a desert Gopher snake (courtesy of the Nature Sounds Society). Occasionally you will hear fragments of Navaho Indian poetry recorded by us last year in Arizona. And of course there is the wind, a constant companion in the desert.
My website (where you can find my email as well)
http://www.fairpoint.net/~rainfor1/McLean_MAXMSP/Main_page.html
Phone: 518 658 3595
YouTube playlist (with 32 videos and counting)
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3ACAB7BAD86CE7B4
Also check out my entry in Wikipedia
Although I, Barton McLean, hold the copyright, I nontheless hereby gladly authorize anyone to make copies and perform the work for noncommercial and/or educational purposes providing that my name is reasonably displayed as the composer. I do not under any circumstances authorize selecting portions of the work to appear intact in another person's composition, or to appear under any other composer's name, without my written signed authorization.