Fall 2025 Cinema for the Ears, Concert 2

Fall 2025 Cinema for the Ears, Concert 2 - Program Notes

This concert was held in Ford-Crawford Hall on November 3, 2025 at 7 pm. All pieces use a quadraphonic sound system.

Wesley S. Thompson: Vortex

Having grown up in “Dixie Alley” during some of the worst tornado outbreaks in history, it was only a matter of time before I wrote a piece like Vortex. I have been fascinated with weather, especially twisters, since I could talk. During Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and the 2011 Super Outbreak, my family spent much of our time in an interior closet, which was the closest thing we had to a basement. Despite having heard and felt many twisters during those years, I never actually saw one with my own eyes. That changed earlier this year when I had a front-row seat to the EF2 tornado that struck south of Bloomington on May 16th. Tornado sirens screeching, suction vortices passing around the main circulation, the storm lifting only to suddenly re-cycle stronger than before, and the iconic, subsonic freight train roar: Vortex is an all-too-real account of what it’s like to be in the path of a twister. And as anyone who’s been affected by one of these monsters from the sky can attest, audio can only approximate the terror they strike into our hearts.

Pavle Gavrilovic: Hesse’s Dream

Hesse’s Dream is a sonic electroacoustic portrait of Hermann Hesse’s famous quote. Through the chaos of existence and the search for meaning, the piece reflects the idea that there is no ultimate truth or perfect philosophical system to be found — only the continuous striving for the perfection of one’s own self.

Textures and spatial gestures evolve organically, suggesting a movement from confusion toward introspection. Rather than reaching resolution, the work embraces transformation as its destination, echoing Hesse’s belief that truth is not taught, but lived.

Rui Zhu: Robotics, Transcendence, and Gnosticism

This piece draws inspiration from Gnostic ideas: the world wasn’t crafted by a benevolent God, but by a lesser force, with redemption found in rising above the physical and seeking the soul’s light. It portrays a robot desperate for humanity — it mimics, probes, awakens — only to shatter and drift in confusion amid heat and clamor. The composer pulls from twelve ordinary sounds: rustling paper, scribbling pens, far-off orchestras, and synthetic voices, all stretched and splintered to trace a path from life’s vital throb to cold mechanical logic. The four-channel soundscape wraps around the listener, raising the questions: How do we humans really transcend? And between us and what we’ve made, who edges closer to the divine?

Baijin Liu: Haven

Haven is a hallucinatory sound journey about guilt and redemption. It tells the story of a man tormented by his own sins, who seeks solace in a temple, hoping to cleanse his conscience. At first, the distant bells and chanting seem to offer peace — a fragile spiritual refuge. Yet as layers of sound unfold, harmony begins to fracture: deep resonances and ghostly echoes reveal the unrest beneath his calm. The temple’s serenity becomes a mirror, reflecting his hidden guilt. Instead of easing it, the space magnifies his torment. In this shifting sonic landscape, the line between reality and illusion dissolves; redemption and self-punishment collapse into one another. Ultimately, Haven portrays not a sanctuary, but a psychological echo chamber — where salvation and suffering coexist, and the sound of peace carries the unbearable weight of sin.

Zhiyang Zhang: Intellectual Snobbery

Intellectual Snobbery is my first electronic music piece; when I composed it, I had only been engaging with electronic music for two months. Its sound sources are the percussive click of a desk lamp’s knob, the friction of two pieces of coarse fabric, and the scraping of a heavy metal plate, which, after processing, yielded several distinct sonorities. In creating the piece I largely drew on my experience and thinking from traditional composition, but I minimized the “pitched” component as much as possible so that it would not sound like a tonal work for instruments. As a beginner, exploring electronic music has given me an experience unlike any I’ve had before; it has greatly expanded the boundaries of sound and opened up many more possibilities for me.

Feihong Yu: The Vanishing Realm

The Vanishing Realm is a four-channel fixed-media electroacoustic work which is inspired by the ancient Chinese tale “The Peach Blossom Spring” (桃花源记) — a story of a hidden utopia glimpsed only once.

In the original text, a fisherman accidentally discovers a secluded valley that is filled with blossoming peach trees — peaceful, harmonious, and untouched by time. Yet when he tries to return, he can never find the path again. The world drifts somewhere between reality and dream, revealed only once and never again.

In this work, I seek to translate the imagery and atmosphere in the text into an auditory experience and also bring my own interpretation of “The Peach Blossom Spring” into the realm of sound. I hope the listeners, like the fisherman, may briefly step into this dreamlike world, experiencing its mystery, its fleeting beauty, its elusive and vanishing presence.

Jeremy Makkonen: Dalle de Verre

Dalle de Verre (from the French “glass slab”) takes its inspiration from the glassmaking practice of the same name. In this, shards of thick colored glass are arranged in various manners and set in epoxy resin. The resultant stained glass creates deeper colors as light passes through their window panes.

Similarly, I use thick fragments of sound — some shimmering in a way akin to light passing through a rose window, others fragmentations of broken up words that describe glasswork in various ways, and still more that are much harder to define but still relate to my efforts to portray sonic glass slabs — that I arrange in a manner to create refractions of sound that links back to the way a glassmaker’s work may refract light.