Based on the “noise” analysis of a recorder, the discourse in Le Spectre focuses on multilayered sonic-temporal structures resulting from various degrees of complexities by means of micro and macro rational relations. These complexities are derived from the correlated noise data that are located at resonance peaks of the analyzed sound data, which signify various periodicities. By emphasizing the such like values of periodicity, the discourse aims to raise two questions: a) Can these periodicities be viewed as bandwidths that have quasi-pitch qualities manifested of the way in which a harmony functions as opposed to pure “noise” qualities; and if so, b) Can the resolution degree of these periodicities be argued as the sonic dilation between the integral temporality and the projected harmony? Le Spectre is dedicated to the specters that were haunting the city barricades of Turkey during the resistance of 2013 summer.

Photo: Manu Theobald

Adam Roberts’ music has been recently performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Association for the Promotion of New Music, violist Garth Knox, Guerilla Opera, and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden). Awards for Roberts’ music include the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition, the Earplay Donald Aird Award, the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Fellowship from the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Bldodgett Prize (Harvard) as well as other academic scholarships and awards. Commissions have come from the Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, pianist Nolan Pearson, the Tanglewood Music Center, Guerilla Opera, and others. Roberts’ music has been called “a powerful success,” “arresting,” and “amazingly lush,” (theBoston Musical Intelligencer), “an attractive mix of the familiar and exotic,” and “otherworldly” (Boston Classical Review), and “invigorating” with a “persistent melodic urge” (American Academy of Arts and Letters citation). Roberts obtained a Bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music in 2003 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010. Roberts also studied at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 2007-2008 on a Harvard University Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. Roberts’ primary teachers have included David Liptak, Augusta Read Thomas, Julian Anderson, and Chaya Czernowin, and he has also studied with Steven Stucky, Martin Bresnick, Bernard Rands, Joshua Fineberg, Magnus Lindberg, and Rand Steiger. In addition, Roberts has had lessons and masterclasses with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, John Adams, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Alvin Lucier, and Jonathan Harvey. Roberts has taught at Harvard University and Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music. Roberts’ first disc, “Leaf Metal,” was released on Tzadik Records in January, 2014. http://adamrobertscomposer.com/

I wrote Dark Matter  for the one-of-a-kind duo, Ums ‘n Jip. I met Ulrike and Javier while I was teaching in Istanbul, as they had connected with the Center for Advanced Studies in Music at Istanbul Technical University when they were in residence for the Turkey chapter of their international commissioning project. While I didn’t write for them at this time, I had a chance to observe Ulrike’s nuanced playing on her many different recorders and to hear Javier’s extraordinary range of vocal sounds and utterances. Later, when they did commission me, I was faced with the task of deciding what to write for this duo who can do anything. I finally decided that I needed a text (I had considered writing an extended contemporary vocalise) and began the hunt for a poet I could set. I was looking for something current that would spark my imagination, but was not sure beyond that where to look or what I would find. Sitting one day in the basement poetry section at McNally’s in Soho, I pulled Rae Armantrout’s Dark Matter off the shelf and was immediately floored by the work. I can’t claim to have understood it, but I was drawn into the quick and often contrasting images that flit between observations of the world around her, mass media, somber reflection, existential philosophy, and random interjection. I had my muse. I ended up setting ten poems from this work. Though Rae was not in attendance at the premiere (nor was I, as it was in Switzerland and I  could not attend), the three of us (Rae, Ums n’ Jip and myself) were in attendance for a poetry reading of Rae’s at the Zinc Bar downtown, during which Rae and Ums n’ Jip alternated reading an performing five poems from the set. I wish to thank Rae for allowing me to set her words, and for Ums ‘n Jip for commissioning the work and performing it so beautifully.

Asta Tushmaq

Pollaple Roes

Unlike the collective flow of the work named ‘’Asta Tushmaq’’ that was composed for the same ensemble a few years ago, Pollaples Roes (malty flows) has a new approach in terms of the variety of coincidental interchanging compositional formal structure and an open work of distinguishing both performers in reversing tempo, time and unity. The flexible unified formal structure is sometimes defined by the composer among a large selection of musical materials, sometimes selected by the performers of UMS n’ JİP,  Javier Hagen and Ulrike Mayer Spohn who are also composers using the given methods of building a form for the work in each performance. The aim of the composer is to create a formally changing, contrasting and surprising work that has a rich and organic character that is meant to be unlike  another in each performance, considering the extreme instrumental and vocal musical abilities of the performers.

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