Over the last few years, I started shifting my focus as a composer from acoustic to electronic music. I was becoming a bit frustrated with writing music on staff paper for acoustic instruments, and at the same time had a growing interest in improvised music. Beginning in 2017, I started experimenting with combining field recordings, mainly natural soundscapes, with keyboard improvisations. Other elements found their way into the work, including voiceover recordings (getting over my discomfort with hearing my own recorded voice was a challenge), archival recordings, and sound effects. The first piece in this new project was Koivu, composed during a residency in Finland, which was very much a product of the place in which I made it. It was focused on field recordings of rural Finland, which gave it a quality that I think of as very similar to what wine enthusiasts call terroir, a sense of place. I think of these compositions as having grown in the soil of the place in which they were created (grandiose, I know, but bear with me), not only because of the locally made field recordings, but also because of how my musical taste and state of mind were affected by the unique environment.
KOIVU
I felt an immediate connection to the birch trees surrounding me when I started on my project at Arteles Creative Center in Finland during the summer of 2017. The title of this work, Koivu, is the Finnish word for "birch," and the piece is constructed of several elements: 1. field recordings made around Arteles and within a 10-minute walk, including birdsong, wind in trees, footsteps, cars on the road, and other incidental sounds, 2. spoken excerpts from an adaptation of an old English translation of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and 3. piano/rhodes solos plus other added MIDI instruments. All of the references from the Kalevala concern either birches specifically or trees more generally, and the mood changes from sweetness and light to darkness and hunger, ultimately to a sort of bittersweet resolution.The end result is a work that is primarily a form of storytelling – not so much of the Kalevala itself as of my time in Finland, my experience of the landscape around Arteles, and my relationship with the plants and animals of this place.
I felt an immediate connection to the birch trees surrounding me when I started on my project at Arteles Creative Center in Finland during the summer of 2017. The title of this work, Koivu, is the Finnish word for "birch," and the piece is constructed of several elements: 1. field recordings made around Arteles and within a 10-minute walk, including birdsong, wind in trees, footsteps, cars on the road, and other incidental sounds, 2. spoken excerpts from an adaptation of an old English translation of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and 3. piano/rhodes solos plus other added MIDI instruments. All of the references from the Kalevala concern either birches specifically or trees more generally, and the mood changes from sweetness and light to darkness and hunger, ultimately to a sort of bittersweet resolution.The end result is a work that is primarily a form of storytelling – not so much of the Kalevala itself as of my time in Finland, my experience of the landscape around Arteles, and my relationship with the plants and animals of this place.