Building the Earth

Featuring Bruce Prince-Joseph as Pierre Teilhard with the newEar chamber ensemble.

“Dwight Frizzell…pitches a reading of Jesuit theological philosophy into a simmering stew of prepared sounds and live instruments, and suggests Birtwistle trying to score ET.” –The London Sunday Times

 

Artists performing in Building the Earth—

 

Thomas Aber (contra alto clarinet, bass clarinet, guida)

alpha wave encephalogram, polar magnetospheric substorms , birdsong: nightingale (Messiaen

transcription), deep‐towed magnetic anomaly profile of the earth’s crustal field, Macedonian

folk tune (Tom’s choice), and sunspot frequency (1700‐1960 CE)

 

Trilla Ray (cello)

characteristic EEG curves corresponding to different states of consciousness, x‐ray of bird egg,

magnetic substorms, the Maunder “Butterfly” diagram of sunspot occurrence in time and extent

in solar latitude, and radio scintillation of Cassiopeia

 

Marc Deckard (short wave radio)

short wave reception from within expanded score radius (all 7 zones)

 

Dwight Frizzell and Tony Allard (audio mixage)

prepared tapes including location recordings of the Palm Sunday Mass at St. Mary’s, grasses

and shale at the Wall of Crynoids in eastern Jackson County (courtesy Mobile Mix Unit),

transcription disc recordings of the Republican primary of 1948 (courtesy MAAR Sound

Archives), Truman’s NATO speech, regional CB conversations, full‐bandwidth whistlers,

interplanetary satellite broadcasts, etc.

 

Jan Faidley (saxophones)

tail‐wagging dance of bees, birdsong: the yellow warbler, the black‐throated blue warbler,

Japanese folk song, spiraling seashell, solar cycle variations in the axial dipole component from

1900 to 1973, and isophotes of a region of the Milky Way

 

Hannah Skupen (viola)

log‐periodic fluorescent emission from the cabbage looper pheromone (female sex scent) ,

oscilloscope recordings of the wing flapping black‐body radiation from a flying corn earworm

moth, excerpt from Louis Armstrong’s solo on “Weatherbird”(1923), polar and magnetospheric

substorms (December 13, 1957), solar wind parameters during geomagnetic storm (April 17,

1965) and line profiles in the galactic equator

 

Leah Hokanson (piano)

piano finger studies, birdsong: golden oriole (arr. Messiaen) and the

Danish chaffinch, solar wind velocity, and radio scintillation from Cassiopeia

 

Mark Lowry (percussion)

birdsong: corn bunting, robin, and nightingale, mandalic pattern on seashell, whistlers and

lower hybrid resonance noise of the magnetosphere, traditional African folk duet (Pat and

Mark’s choice), long term particle intensity variations measured from Explorer 7, and cluster of

galaxies (4,364 of the brightest galaxies)

 

Patrick Conway (percussion, bassoon)

birdsong: roller canary and border canary , continental tree pipit and Improved Tree Pipit,

traditional African folk duet, magnetic field observations during solar eclipse, galactic outburst,

star frequency in a cluster of galaxies in Hercules

 

Hafiza Capehart (flute)

birdsong including the Nashville Warbler , Canadian Warbler, Chestnut Sided Warbler,

Capetown Chaffinch , an evening raga, solar plasma and the planetary magnetic index , phase

shifting in the electromagnetic flux (1976), and phase‐switching interferometric reading of radio

star transmissions from Cassiopeia

 

Dr. Bruce Prince‐Joseph (narration, carillon, organ)

text from Teilhard’s THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, traditional carillon piece (Bruce’s choice), drift of sunspots expanding space index and look‐back time

 

Organizations supporting Building the Earth—

newEar contemporary chamber ensemble

New Music Institute of Kansas City, Inc.

Missouri Arts Council, a state agency

Kansas City Art Institute


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