Journey
Alex Shapiro
About this work:
Journey, written for violinist Mary Lou Newmark, was first performed at a concert of electro-acoustic music in Los Angeles in late 1999 and was recorded by Sabrina Ann Berger in 2001. Although the majority of my writing these days is for traditional acoustic ensembles, I've worked extensively with electronic music since the time I was fifteen (in the mid-seventies, when it took nearly a roomful of oscillators and patch cords to produce a mere sine wave!), and have long used synthesizers, samplers and digital audio in the context of scoring commercial film and TV projects. Journey represents the first time in many years that I was asked to compose a concert work using electronics, and it was a great deal of fun to design sounds that could fill a space with frequencies that I wouldn't otherwise find from acoustic instruments.
The piece begins with a quiet subsonic rumble that expands ominously into the concert space and sets what Sabrina Ann Berger calls "a soulful and very Buddhist-like foundation" for the entrance
of the electric violin. Undulating waves of sound crest and fall, contrasting the more edgy tone of the violin and presenting the listener with a trip through several sonic dimensions.
Year composed: 1999
Duration: 00:07:00
Ensemble type: Electronic Instruments and Sound Sources:Prerecorded Sound
Instrumentation: ,1 Violin soloist(s), ,1 Prerecorded Sound (Tape/CD/Other) soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: 5 string electric violin and prerecorded electronic soundscape on CD.