Symphony of Seasons
Priscilla McLean
About this work:
“July Dance”, a music video, is a brief frolic with summer, with all the Northeastern U.S. in celebration, from jiving birch trees to children playing with balloons. The composer accompanies all with her ad hoc percussion “table” of skinned firewood logs and croquet posts strewn upon resonators and placed in a neighbor’s 200-acre field, to dance with the blowing wind as she plays. The main video instrument used is a Videonics Digital Video Mixer. Some of the other amazing visual effects were created thanks to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and their artist-in-residence 2001-2 McLean Mix commission and use of the iEAR Electronic Arts Studio. Priscilla McLean worked with Joseph Reinsel and the Photoshop Video After Effects computer program, which allowed McLean as percussion player to roll up in a ball and blow away in the wind! Besides the logs, other sounds are a wooden recorder and ocarina, a microphone cord and balloons squealing, a metal pizza pan, flexatone, violin -- all performed by the composer, with children laughing, and music created on the Korg WaveStation Digital Synthesizer.
Version: "July Dance"
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:07:00
Ensemble type: Electronic Instruments and Sound Sources:Prerecorded Sound
Instrumentation: