Red

Had a blast putting together 2 movements of Marc Mellits’ Red with MikeDrop for a recent online performance. The world is full of anger, frustration, and hope these days, and I’ve been struggling to find my place as an ally and advocate. That said, making these videos helped connect people in what I hope was a meaningful way, and I’m hopeful to continue to use music as a way of healing, building community, and and sharing love. Enjoy!

Voyager: Lift Off!

Still on Cloud 9 (pun intended) after KUPG’s performance of Ben Justis’ Voyager at the Spencer Museum of Art last night. 

A 2 hour-long piece for percussion octet and fixed media, Voyager depicts the titular satellites’ journey through and out of our solar system.  

Sprawling, engrossing and captivating, Ben’s piece alternates between “Encounters,” depictions of the planets Voyager passes on its journey through the solar system, and Approaches.  Ben writes about the Approaches:

“To illustrate the vast distances and travel times between the planetary encounters, these [Approach] movements employ slow-moving, ambient backdrops and the performers disperse within the venue. Over time, the degree of musical structure decreases as the precise pitches, rhythms, amount of improvisation, synchronization, and even specificity of the instructions themselves are less and less controlled. This mirrors the drop in transmission strength received from the Voyagers which are so far away (over 13 billion miles) that the signal wattage received here on Earth is less than 20 billionths the power of a watch battery.”

We’ve been working the entire semester on this piece, with Bethany Amundson taking the reins in the Encounters.  We were so fortunate to be able to stage this work in the Spencer Museum of Art, the headquarters of KU’s inspiring and amazing Integrated Arts Research Initiative.  Adina Duke, Joey Orr, and Celka Straughn were so supportive Ben’s work and our invasion of their space.  

This experience was doubly enhanced by the presence of Knowledges, a tremendous new exhibit at the Spencer which argues that “creating art can also be a form of research that contributes to many fields of inquiry.” Amidst works by Assaf Evron, Danielle Roney, Fatimah Tuggar, and Andrew Yang, Voyager was recontextualized as a journey through Deep Time and Deep Space. (By the way, I fortunate enough to take part in the Spencer’s Colloquium and the A2RU conference, both of which made ample use of the gallery space.  Check it out if you get a chance, it’s amazing).

Thanks to 2x1 Media, we hope to share some documentation of this project with you soon!

Summer Recording Vibes

Back for the last few days of Avaloch after a few recording projects.

First, we hit Rocking Horse Studio to track Susan Kander’s Eavesdropping, a setting of Michelle Boisseau poems for soprano, violin, and percussion.  Victoria, Jacob and I premiered this piece in Kansas City at the beginning of the year, and it was nice to spend some time getting closer to the piece.

Almglocken and saw blade

Then it was down to Oktaven Audio with energy-bomb Thomas Kotcheff to  lay down his “then and then and then this” for cello & percussion.  Thomas’ piece is explosive, full of life, and incredibly virtuosic. For most the piece, I play a wooden salad bowl, subjecting it to the most chops-infused playing I can muster.  We also devised a setup of wooden planks, tiny woodblocks, glass bottles, and junk metal objects. Oh, and a Squirrel Buster.

Inspecting the chaos

Thomas came to Avaloch last year to work on the piece with us, and it’s been really fun to see how it developed. This was a true collaboration, and both Hannah and I made many suggestions on our parts to ensure that they are idiomatic, soundful, and fun. 

In both cases, we spent a few days at Avaloch in intense rehearsal. I can’t wait to share the results with the world soon.

Thomas shows off his marimba chops

Cleveland

Back at Avaloch after a great few days in Cleveland for Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Re:Sound Festival. Congrats to Noa and Sophie for all their work organizing the events.

NMC presented George Lam’s The Emigrants and Christopher Stark’s The Language of Landscapes, two amazing pieces about important issues facing our society. We also premiered Andrew Lucia’s stunning new video for The Language of Landscapes. It was also great to share a bill with andPlay, our NYC-based nemesis duo (just kidding).

pc Emanuel Wallace

Friends!

Next up, the music of Hannah Lash in St. Louis, for which I’ll be busting out my trusty cheat sheets:

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A post shared by Michael Compitello (@comp.y.tello) on Jun 15, 2019 at 7:54pm PDT

Unsnared Drum Update

As you might remember, I'm embarking on a commissioning and recording project with the goal of changing how people think about the snare drum.  After the premiere of her wonderfully creative Heart.Throb last month in Lawrence, I sat down with Nina Young to talk about how she approached writing for the snare drum.  I'm looking forward to recording her piece soon, but in the meantime, you can watch some of our conversation, which quickly devolved into an extended improvisation on her Marvin.