Transient Canvas: Crossroads

INTRO

TEERATH MAJUMDER: “Crossroads” (2020)

PLAYLIST 1—Internal

KITTY XIAO: “Emphysema feathered his appetites” (2020)
JOÃO PEDRO OLIVEIRA: “Angel Rock” (2010)
SYDNEY DOEMEL: “in the teeth of” (2020)

PLAYLIST 2—External

KIRSTEN VOLNESS: “Year Without a Summer” (2017)
CAROLINE LOUISE MILLER: “Impressions of the Sky from Underwater” (2020)
DAN VANHASSEL: “Epidermis” (2017)

Tonight’s program examines both our environment's impact on us and our impact on our environment. That’s what I find most fascinating about performing with electronics: they evoke a new kind of landscape made even more tangible to us after spending the last few years inside and online. 

Teerath Majumder’s “Crossroads,” which opens tonight’s concert, represents this dichotomy by fabricating a small sonic ecosystem by processing live events in real time. The first musical set, PLAYLIST 1—Internal, performed without pause, represents our environment’s psychological impact. Kitty Xiao’s restlessly static “Emphysema feathered his appetites” perfectly captures the existential malaise where I sometimes find myself after spending too much time inside, online, and in my own head—a fabricated environment. In an attempt to escape this, João Pedro Oliveira’s “Angel Rock” evokes the shocking/exhilarating/overwhelming experience of going out into the bright and noisy soundscape of an in-person social environment. Sydney Doemel’s “in the teeth of” rounds out this first set with a soothing respite inspired by trips to Acadia National Park in Maine, a non-fabricated environment. 

The second set, PLAYLIST 2—External, also performed without pause, serves as a tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale centered on our collective environmental impact. Kirsten Volness’s “Year Without a Summer” is inspired by a natural climate disaster in the late 1900s that cooled the planet, causing mass starvation in New England and Europe. The parallels to our current situation aren’t particularly subtle, with Volness including a musical dance party halfway through the piece that represents our natural instinct to distract ourselves from the real work that needs to be done. In the end the rains fall, the party fades, and the sea levels rise. This leads us into “Impressions of the Sky from Underwater” by Caroline Louise Miller. The title says it all: this is a preview of what life will be like underwater when the ice caps melt. What environment does that leave us in for Dan VanHassel’s visceral and intense “Epidermis”? The robot uprising, of course. 

Dark humor aside, I hope you enjoy tonight’s program. It represents wildly diverse styles from some remarkable living composers. 

—Matt Sharrock, Artistic Director of Transient Canvas

KITTY XIAO: “Emphysema feathered his appetites” (2020)

This work is inspired by Australian artist Dale Frank’s series of paintings of the same name. The series of paintings offers the viewer “a portal to another place; a place that transcends the physical to encompass the psychological.” For me, the paintings offer a place of wild imagination, a portal in which fears can be relinquished, and hunger can be replenished—yet, the paintings also reveal an introspective loneliness and sadness. I was interested in exploring polar states of interior and exterior. I wanted to create sounds which flowed between these two states, between solid and liquid, and colors that mixed and dripped into one another like the colors on the canvas.
—Kitty Xiao, Composer

JOÃO PEDRO OLIVEIRA: “Angel Rock” (2010)

"Angel Rock" was inspired by Berio’s treatment of folk material and its adaptation to a contemporary setup, as he did in works like “Coro” or “Folk Songs.” This piece gets its sound influences in hard rock and progressive rock music of the 1980s. The explosive gestures, contrasting with high-pitched sustained notes, try to emulate in my own personal language, some memories I still have in my mind, from those times. The electronics are used as an expansion of the instruments, acting like a “ghost” of the instrumental gestures. Those “ghost” sounds somehow “distort” the pure instrumental sounds, in the same way my recollections of the rock sounds from the eighties are “distorted” in my memory, because of 30 years of distance. "Angel Rock" was commissioned by the Giga-Hertz Award and composed at the SWR studio in Freiburg.
—João Pedro Oliveira, Composer

SYDNEY DOEMEL: “in the teeth of” (2020)

"in the teeth of" was composed for Transient Canvas during their residency with the Frost School of Music’s SCI chapter. The performers operate live electronics, triggering fixed audio samples and live audio processing. Much of this piece was composed during my time in Maine’s Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, where I drew inspiration from the stillness and expansiveness of the quiet island.
—Sydney Doemel, Composer

KIRSTEN VOLNESS: “Year Without a Summer” (2017)

On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, sending a plume of ash into the atmosphere that created a climate disaster the following year: temperatures fluctuated wildly, snow fell as far south as Virginia through August, and frost killed crops planting after planting in New England and Europe, leading to the most recent widespread food shortage experienced in the Western hemisphere. As climate change and conflict continue to cause hunger, will we tap our toes in the little cantina at the end of the world? Commissioned by Transient Canvas with generous support from the Boston Foundation.
—Kirsten Volness, Composer

DAN VANHASSEL: “Epidermis” (2017)
In "Epidermis," the bass clarinet and marimba merge into a single machine-like entity playing funky rhythmic patterns made up of percussive sounds, with the electronics forming a noisy protective layer around the live players. At the beginning of the piece, the acoustic and electronic sounds are quite closely aligned, but as the piece progresses they begin to move apart. Melodic patterns begin to appear in the bass clarinet and marimba, while the electronics become noisier and more abrasive. This piece was commissioned by Transient Canvas and premiered in November 2017 with funding provided by the Johnstone Fund for New Music.
—Dan VanHassel, Composer

Transient Canvas (bass clarinetist Amy Advocat and marimbist Matt Sharrock) is a Boston-based contemporary duo on a mission to revolutionize the modern concert experience. Since 2011, their innovative performances have been praised as “superb” by the Boston Globe and “disarming” by Cleveland Classical, with the San Francisco Chronicle lauding “the versatile imagination they both display and inspire in others.” Learn more at transientcanvas.com.

Amy Advocat, bass clarinet, has been praised for her “dazzling” (the Boston Globe) performances with “extreme control and beauty” (the Clarinet Journal). An avid performer of new music, she has performed with Guerilla Opera, Alarm Will Sound, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Sound Icon, Firebird Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Collage New Music, Dinosaur Annex, and the New Fromm Players. Learn more about Advocat.

Matt Sharrock (they/them), M.M. ’11, marimba, has been hailed as one of “Boston’s best percussionists” by I Care if You Listen. A versatile marimbist, percussionist, and conductor who tirelessly champions the music of living composers, Sharrock is the resident percussionist for the Chameleon Arts Ensemble and a founder of the Boston Percussion Group and Hinge. Learn more about Sharrock. 

Senior Manager of Performance Technology – Wes Fowler
Performance Technology Technicians – Goran Daskalov, Sara Pagiaro
Production Managers – Kendall Floyd, Nicoleta Savvidou, Yian Shen
Concert Operations Coordinator – Matthew Carey

This Transient Canvas performance was supported, in part, by the Boston Cultural Council and the Reopen Creative Boston grant, administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. Transient Canvas’s 2022–2023 season is also supported by the Amphion Foundation, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. The commissions of Kirsten Volness and Dan VanHassel were made possible by a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music.