String Noise - Giga Concerto Booklet by DOTDOTDOTMUSIC

Giga Concerto I

Giga Concerto IV

W I E M EL OD IEN Z IEH T ES MIR

AU F D E M K I R C H H O F E

Giga Concerto II

Giga Concerto V

I M MER L EI SER W IRD MEIN SC H LU MME R

VE R R AT

Giga Concerto III

Giga Concerto VI

KL AGE

composed by E R I C LYO N

4:59 1:24 2:53 2:14 4:27 1:19

5:21 1:3 0 4:49 3 :48 7:23

recorded, mixed, mastered, produced by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio on Sep. 7 – 8, 2019

STRING NOISE performed by

Giga Concerto

violin

Conrad Harris

drums

G R E G S AU N I E R

violin

Pauline Kim Harris

I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N T E M P O R A RY E N S E M B L E conductor violin violin viola cello cello bass harp

Nicholas DeMaison Josh Modney (project manager) Leah Asher Wendy Richman Christopher Gross Meaghan Burke Randall Zigler Nuiko Wadden

FCR293 newfocusrecordings.com

℗&©

classical guitar flute/piccolo clarinet saxophone bassoon french horn trombone percussion, timpani

Daniel Lippel Isabel Lepanto Gleicher Campbell MacDonald Ryan Muncy Rebekah Heller Nicolee Kuester Mike Lormand Dennis Sullivan

E R IC LYON ’s music draws on chaos, digital interventions, post-hierarchies, and the inspirations of performer-based creativity. Lyon’s creative work has been recognized with a ZKM Giga-Hertz prize, MUSLAB award, League ISCM World Music Days, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lyon teaches composition at Virginia Tech, in the School of Performing Arts. STRING NOISE, New York’s most daring violin duo comprised of violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris, has expanded the repertoire with over 50 new works since their debut at Ostrava New Music Days in 2011. Nearly a decade later, they continue to break down the boundaries of traditional expectations and inspire innovative compositions, displaying formidable virtuosity, integrating multimedia art, electronics, improvisation, video projections, opera and dance. Premieres by String Noise include works by George Lewis, Christian Wolff, Michael Byron, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, John King, Phill Niblock, Caleb Burhans, Catherine Lamb, David Lang, Petr Kotik, Du Yun, Annie Gosfield, Bernhard Lang, John Zorn, Greg Saunier, Alex Mincek, Tyondai Braxton, Richard Carrick, to name some. With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE — as a commissioner

and performer at the highest level — amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble’s 36 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present. NICHOLAS D E MAISON is an American conductor and composer based in New York City. Passionately devoted to the music being made in our own time, he has led premiere performances of new works for orchestra, opera, choir and various mixed ensembles with new technologies by well over a hundred living composers, and appears on albums released by New Focus, Mode, and Con d’or Records. He is currently the Co-Director of Wavefield Ensemble and Director of Orchestral Studies at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. GREG SAUNIER has written for, produced, and played with many musicians including Anthony Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Ron Miles, Wadada Leo Smith, Nels Cline, String Noise, Stargaze, Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Dal Niente, yMusic, Jherek Bishoff, and his own band Deerhoof.

y dad always said Brahms made him M constipated. All those octave doublings and tedious sonata forms and plodding rhythms and enforced gloom. Solution: Remove the meat and stop overcooking the vegetables. In Biosphere 2 they started running out of food so they had to ration and when everyone was eating less they all got healthier. Eric Lyon professes admiration for the Mark E. Smiths and Lil Peeps of the world but the musical reality is he is giving us all reason to be more alive rather than less, because his music is fun and exciting. I don’t mean to listen to, I mean to play. I mean to think about and talk about. Try talking about his music or any music or any topic with Eric Lyon, and you will be rewarded with whatever is the opposite of enforced gloom. Thin the texture down to two violins and one very noisy conductor and Brahms becomes the means of our escape from gloom. Lyon travels a mile a minute on manuscript paper and keeping up with him means savoring each

moment and then letting it go and it means a heightened quality of life because everything you do matters. Playing with String Noise is very high pressure because we all overreact to every inlection of bow touching string or finger touching drum. You’d think two violins makes it scrawny and you’d think adding drums makes it rock or Hooked On Classics. And it fact when we first played together it was on rock covers. But it was when we first tried a Brahms arrangement of Eric’s that we started to really find our eruptive voice as a trio. No two notes are the same volume and no three notes are in the same tempo. It is really hard to drum quietly enough to match two violins but the effort to do so is very physical and all three of us are very sweaty after each attempt. When Eric heard our style on his Brahms arrangement he wrote more Brahms arrangements. I love playing Eric Lyon’s music with Pauline and Conrad. G REG S AUNIER

ehind each new work for String Noise looms the question, “what can I do to unleash this avalanche of feral intensity?” One answer — put String Noise into collision with a virtuosic chamber orchestra that has its own strong identity. A commission from Eli Spindel and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn lit the fuse. With the concerto moving forward, I heard Greg Saunier accompany my String Noise arrangement of “Wie Melodien” by Brahms at a loft concert in Tribeca. With Greg’s mindblowing Brahms performance burning my ears, I immediately decided to arrange the remaining four Brahms op. 105 songs for String Noise with Greg, and to interleave those arrangements with the concerto movements. As composing commenced, former president Trump exchanged a series of nuclear war threats with Kim Jong-un on Twitter. This could not pass

without comment, and I began sneaking snippets from nuclear war songs into my concerto — “Nuclear War” by Sun Ra, “Little Rocket Man” by Elton John, and several others. As an homage to Greg, I used the melody from Deerhoof’s “Giga Dance” as the ritornello theme for the final concerto movement. Following a beautiful premiere performance with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn at Roulette, we were given the opportunity to recreate the concerto with the International Contemporary Ensemble, allowing for the original conception to be realized — String Noise in conversation with an orchestra of virtuosi. The calm majesty of the International Contemporary Ensemble collided with the frenetic String Noise + Saunier energy, and the Giga Concerto was born.

cover art “The Coming Storm”, 2014 by Will Cotton

design by Chippy (Heung-Heung Chin)

E RIC L Y ON