12 Views on Life
There's absolutely nothing cookie cutter about any of this and this is inviting, refreshing, addictive, and are you find yourself surrounded by the music at certain points and you forget where you are. - Recording Artists Guild
I had two major projects in 2020 and 2021 - SPAM! for solo piano and Project 굿GŪT for ensemble. Those were difficult years for us all. As the unprecedented number of deaths were counted every day, I meditated on the meaning of life and death. As isolation became a norm, I questioned my identity as a performer who needed the stage, audience, and spotlight.
Stuck at home for those lockdown months, I heard and noticed all kinds of sounds that I had not paid attention to – cars passing by outside, floorboard squeaking, refrigerator running, and other noises from living mundane life. SPAM! is a project that embraces the ordinary noises in the extraordinary circumstance (pandemic) and transforms them into an integral part of music and performance.
Project 굿GŪT was an ensemble project inspired by the Korean traditional ritual ceremony 굿GŪT. In 2021, The Contemporary Art Music Project (CAMP) remotely collaborated with four Korean composers - Youshin Gim, Soobin Lee, Seokmin Mun, and Sangbin Rhie - to have a fresh look at the old ritual. Led by a shaman, GŪT is a ritual act that mediates between the deceased and the living. Accompanied by music and dance, GŪT is a theatrical work that can be performed by professional performing artists on a stage. Each composer had a unique view on GŪT, referenced different parts of the ceremony, and wrote ensemble works for CAMP performers, soprano Jamie Jordan, percussionists Zach Hale, Kevin von Kampen, and Robert McCormick, saxophonist Katherine Weintraub, and myself.
I decided to alternate between works from each project, blending views on life and death. With this album we embrace the noisy and unsettling! - Eunmi Ko
Composers
Performers
Jamie Jordan, voice
Zach Hale, percussion
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Robert McCormick, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
Credits
Recording: John Z. Stephan
Mastering: Erdem Helvacioglu
Additional Editing and Mastering: Rich Wattie
Design: Philip Blackburn
Funded by The College of The Arts at the University of South Florida
Commissioned by Eunmi Ko (solo piano) and Contemporary Art Music Project (ensemble)
Program Notes
i am going mad (libs) for solo piano
text by Anthony R. Green and Eunmi Ko
music by Anthony R. Green and performer (and more…)
I wrote this piece in 2020, at a time when the world had officially gone mad! I figured: why not embrace this madness with some Mad Libs? I have fond memories of filling out these wonderful games when I was younger, and when commissioned by Dr. Eunmi Ko to create a covid-quarantine piece for this period of 2020, I immediately thought about turning the idea of Mad Libs into a piece for her in some way! The process began with me creating the Mad Lib text, then asking Eunmi to fill in the text and translate the text into Korean! Then I laid out the structure of this piece, considering elements that could be chosen by the pianist in a manner reminiscent of filling out a Mad Lib! While engraving the music, I thought – why not pay homage to the Netherlands, the country where I am composing this piece? So I translated the Mad Lib text (with Eunmi’s answers!) to Dutch. This piece is dedicated with love and madness to Eunmi. – Anthony R. Green
text
I live in a cave in my liver.
My teal turtle gives me hope.
When will I return to Bhutan and smell the magnolias and taste the seaweed soup?
Now it is impossible for me to use my Segway or else I’ll get an 18 dollar fine.
The police are fickle; they shouldn’t have cleaned that innocent person.
The president can’t go; the president can’t do much of anything because his mind is secretive.
When will my scientist zoom again?
When will the world’s womb wash the way it used to?
Should we return to the way things were?
죽은 노래를 그리는 아이 Child on the Death of Songs for voice and two percussions
text and music by 이상빈 Sangbin Rhie
During the COVID-19 crisis, live music making vanished from the concert hall. For those years, I missed the concert experience – listening to music with strangers and breathing the same air in the concert hall without any obstacles such as viruses and masks… Child on the Death of Songs is a lament for the death of music and public musical events during the pandemic. In this piece, I went back to my earlier composition style, using more transparent texture and quintessential material to focus on the savage energy from the massive and powerful percussion and human voice. I borrowed some musical ideas from Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan traditional ritual music to match the text which is a fusion of several poems by the Korean avant-garde poet/writer 이상 Yi Sang(1910-37). – Sangbin Rhie
text
death, doom, passing, big sleep, demise, perishment, finis, pop off, quietus, loss, exitus, mors, mortality, utterance, grave, light out
d-e-a-t-h, d-o-o-m, g-r-a-v-e, l-o-s-s, e-x-i-t-u-s,
kingdom come, defunctness, happy release…
death will be delivered to me like, delivered like naked postcard.
Neon sign got emaciated like saxophone.
Look! These neon signs looks like just standing and nothing special externally.
However, neon gas is always flowing inside the tube.
However, life and breath are always flowing inside the tube.
d-e-a-t-h death!
Neon sign…
razor…
My mind looks for a razor… razor… razor’s blade won’t come outside now.
I roar desperate for blade and death. I force the folded razor into myself.
Suppress my pain. P-A-I-N
Blade opens and grazes me, I bleed. But I have nothing to cut my flesh open. There is no way for, no way for my evil spirit to escape. My body gets heavier because of my…my…imprisoned suicide.
I can write only limited words…
Cave Paintings of Discourse for piano, performer Eunmi Ko, kitchen appliances and utensils, and SPAM
Benjamin D. Whiting
Cave Paintings of Discourse was commissioned by Eunmi Ko for her live-streamed SPAM! salon concert event during the period of isolation we all experienced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this piece, the domicile is the instrument; the piano is only incidentally there. – Benjamin D. Whiting
고풀이Ko-pu-ri for voice, tenor saxophone, and piano
이수빈 Soobin Lee
고풀이[Ko-pu-ri] is a part of 굿GŪT ceremony, a Korean traditional ritual performed by a shaman. “Ko-pu-ri” is a performance that releases the deceased from pain and sorrow, and eventually sends it off to the spiritual world. Like a shaman in the ceremony, the soprano here uses straight tones avoiding the typical Western style with vibrato and bel-canto technique. While my piece Ko-pu-ri was inspired by ritual, it is also intended for a concert program.
I dedicated Ko-pu-ri to Kim Mi-Soo, a South Korean actress and model, who passed away in 2021. A few years before her death, we collaborated on a play, “The Ugly Girl.” I admired her artistry and passion for theatre. Rest in Peace. – Soobin Lee
text
풀로가자pul-ro ka-ja (let’s free you)
산신님아san-sin ni-ma (dear god)
고풀어 만고풀고ko-pu-ro man-ko-pul-ko (let’s free you from thousands of pain) *고[ko] in this verse was translated to pain
하늘이 울고Ha-neul-yi ul-ko (the sky is crying)
땅이 울고ddang-yi ul-ko (the earth is crying)
saturation temp! for piano and recorder keyboard (one player)
Emily Koh
saturation temp, short for saturation temperature, is the technical term for ‘boiling point’. In this piece, water is at the brink of boiling constantly, but instead of reaching its saturation temperature, that benchmark is moved again and again, and water is always at the brink of boiling, but never really boils. This is a commentary of current social standards, in which something ridiculous that should have caused major uproars and protests are swept under the rug in yet another news cycle of more crazy and unbelievable things. The benchmark for sanity has shifted and moved, and what used to be the breaking point in a previous timeline, is now just the absurd normal. – Emily Koh
Untitled VI for baritone saxophone, percussion, and piano
Dorothy Hindman
Shadow of My Former Self is a collection of works exploring questions of identity, story and personal history under the self-secluding name Untitled.
In Untitled VI, I used digital recordings of both baritone saxophone and piano multiphonics from my work Untitled VII, and vibraphone multiphonics recently discovered by Michael Edward Edgerton and Olaf Tzschoppe. I analyzed all of these and created a progression where an overtone of the saxophone multiphonic became the fundamental of the vibraphone’s next multiphonic and vice versa. Piano harmonic multiphonics provided additional overtones augmenting the complex sonorities. The analysis, deconstruction, and regeneration of these sounds to create new ones is like the renewal of my past music in my present music. It is an attempt to create something different from the ashes of the troubled past that defines me, and that I carry with me in the present, that others do not see.
Untitled VI for baritone saxophone, vibraphone, gong and piano was commissioned for the CAMP performing artists Kevin von Kampen, Eunmi Ko, and Katherine Weintraub. Untitled VI was completed in August 2022. – Dorothy Hindman
Ursus maritimus for solo piano
Han Hitchen
Ursus maritimus is a work for solo piano commissioned by pianist Eunmi Ko, as a part of her project SPAM! This work is inspired by my struggle with “artist’s block” during summer 2020, as a result of stress surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. As I would try to compose, I would find myself more easily distracted. This made it extremely difficult to stay on task, and ultimately finish or continue working on any of my projects. This struggle is musically portrayed by the separation of varying compositional material into their own brief sections, each being short and/or unfinished. These sections are interjected with the performer fidgeting in various ways. – Han Hitchen
용선Yong-Seon for voice, tenor saxophone, and percussion
김유신 Youshin Gim
The word 용선 “Yong-Seon” is known as a part of the Korean ritual ceremony 굿GŪT. 용선 Yong-Seon is a boat that transports the deceased from the living world to the spiritual world. This piece has three parts following the ceremony - 1) the boat (Yong-Seon) starts its journey to the spiritual world – I wanted to create a solemn atmosphere in the opening of the piece. All instruments, including voice express grieving through sharing the similar musical gestures 2) the deceased and the living accept the loss/death and celebrate life – with quicker and more lively rhythmic gestures, the piece makes a sudden transition from the somber to festive. 3) sending off the deceased – a waterphone is used to signal that the deceased reached the spiritual place. Youshin Gim
Text
나무아미타 Namu Amita (I faithfully depend on Amitabha to guide me... )
길이나닦세 Gil-Ina ddak se (pave the pathway)
금일망재여 Geum-Il Mang-Jae yeo (dear deceased)
씻김받고 Sit-Kkim Bat go (let’s get cleansed)
극락가세 Geuk-rak Ga se (and go to the paradise)
positiveIncrease for piano solo, with pianist speaking
Howie Kenty
This piece was composed in 2020, during the strange and frightening depths of the pandemic’s first year. It is named for one of the fields in the COVID Tracking Project’s freely downloadable dataset: positiveIncrease, the daily increase in new positive cases reported nationwide. This piece takes that data from its first available date, January 22, 2020, through August 22, 2020, tracking seven months of trends in the spread of the virus. The number of new daily cases begins as an initial trickle in January, rapidly accelerating to a peak around the beginning of April. It dips slightly by the middle of June following widespread lockdowns and other safety precautions, ascends even more rapidly to July’s peak following large-scale nationwide reopening, and drops slightly through August following the re-institution of some preventative measures. These daily numbers and the overall contour of this graph are mapped to many parameters within the piece, determining overall form, tempo, pitch, dynamics, and to some extent register, with a number of musical liberties taken. In general, each quarter note’s worth of time corresponds to one day, with not infrequent rhythmic stretching and compression in service of musical gestures, and to express the subjective experience of living through this bizarre time.
Though the COVID Tracking Project stopped collecting data in 2021, information on it and the public data set used can be found here: https://covidtracking.com/data.
and my body’s cells keep ticking for voice, alto saxophone, and piano
Robert McClure
i. where atoms hover, quivering
ii. and my body’s cells keep ticking
iii. disappear to sky
and my body’s cells keep ticking was commissioned by Eunmi Ko and the Contemporary Art Music Project (Tampa, FL). It is a set of three songs with text by Alix Anne Shaw that prompts a reassessment of the self. Who am I? And what is “I”? Am I my body’s “tangled microbiome”? Am I the images I select to represent myself? Am I my faulty memories? These ideas are juxtaposed with images of organisms for who “I” is not a useful construct: trees, mosses, fungi, etc. Shaw writes, “Because we are not, after all, such isolates of mind, not lonesome kings enthroned above the body’s unattended factories.”
Text for these songs was excerpted from Shaw’s poems “Rebewilderment”, “The Core is Molten, Though the Crust Has Cooled”, and “Where Truth Lies”. – Robert McClure
basil eyes for piano and recorder keyboard
Tyler Kline
Composed for one performer to play on recorder keyboard and piano, basil eyes is a short piece inspired by a small, sweet animal with pale green eyes. The primary musical idea is a blending between the two instruments where the recorder keyboard sound blossoms out of the decaying piano resonance. – Tyler Kline
at the end of for tenor saxophone, percussion, and piano
문석민 Seokmin Mun
The year 2020 was eventful globally and personally. I had difficult times on a personal level. Among all troubles, what frustrated me the most was lack of creative juices and motivation. The artist's block kept me from composing, I did not seem to have either mental capacity or time to work on a new piece. In 2021, Project GŪT offered me momentum to compose a new work. at the end of rescued me from the long tunnel of frustration. I hope the momentum will never cease, so I can keep making music… –Seokmin Mun