Program Notes — “Instruments and Electronics” I — March 25, 2025, 5 PM

An-Ni Wei: bubble gun and marbles

bubble gun and marbles is a solo viola and live electronics piece that captures a sense of nostalgia, portraying scenes and emotions from childhood. Like faded old photographs, the color of the melody and the electronic effects bring memories from my own childhood to life, recreating the atmosphere of that time.

Feihong Yu: A Fever Dream

A Fever Dream is an exploration of the expressive possibilities of classical singing in combination with real-time electronics and fixed media inspired by the operatic “mad scene.” It tells a journey through the fractured consciousness of the character caught in the delirium of a dreamlike state. The vocalist moves between lyrical singing and more experimental sounds, interacting with electronic effects that blur the line between natural and processed sound. Rather than telling a clear story, the piece invites you to a chaotic and unpredictable world of shifting memories and emotions. Hope you enjoy it!

Woodrow Murray: Exposition

Exposition is a piece for piano and electronics that explores the uses of live audio effects and triggered fixed media with piano. The piano part takes inspiration from a previous work I composed for solo piano, and the clear motive at the beginning gradually becomes more distorted and loses clarity and the electronics become more involved.

Tianqi Zhang: Kitsch

This piece is for djembe and electronic music. With simple rhythmic patterns on the djembe and water drops, it‘s just a normal kitsch...

William E. Hawkins: Silhouettes at Sunset

In Sunset Silhouettes, I attempt to capture the moment when color drains against a setting sun. The complex visual hallucination, an afterglow of color and then calming blackness against a still colored sky, has thrilled me since observations made during soccer practices after school. There is a creepy sense of loss but also a profound beauty in the simplification to a silhouette. In this case, I interpreted color in the beginning as a sort of tension, an uncomfortable complexity, and the eventual silhouette as a release into simplicity.

The same sound plays throughout the whole piece — viola sul ponticello on open D — made more rich through five different avenues of effects. I thought of this setup like an instrument and subtly manipulated it over time to create form. Another sound source, representing the blissful simplicity, blends live input with synthesized sound.