Wayne Siegel
Complete Works for Bass Clarinet and Electronics
Program:
Solkreds
sound installation before the concert begins (2018-2022)
Dive
for bass clarinet and electronics (2013/2021)
Solkreds (interlude)
Jackdaw
for bass clarinet and electronics (1995)
Solkreds (interlude)
Salamander
for bass clarinet and electronics (2019)
Fritz Gerhard Berthelsen, bass clarinet
Ejnar Kanding, live electronics
During the concert, we are pleased to invite the audience for a beer and a little snack.
Come and meet the composer.
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Program notes:
Dive was originally created as the second movement of Three Studies for Cello and Computer composed in 2013 for the Danish cellist Henrik Brendstrup. A digital signal processing technique called convolution is used to morph the sound of the instrument with recordings of splashing water, ocean waves and bubbles. Each sound the soloist produces is instantly transformed into a kind of stretched water-instrument. The movement is a slow, ambient drone with embellished melodies played by the soloist. Dive has been adapted from the original cello version to several other instruments, including the bass clarinet.
Sokreds (Sun Circle) is a permanent, site-specific sound installation created for the monument Dodekalitten, Denmark’s largest art work in progress. The monument will consist of a stone circle 40 meters in diameter with 12 sculptures carved in solid granite by Thomas Kadziola, each 7-9 meters tall and weighing 30-50 metric tons. The monument is located on the island of Lolland on a remote site overlooking the sea. In 2017 Wayne Siegel was commissioned to create a permanent sound installation for the monument. The music is produced live by a computer program, creating a gradually changing soundscape around the sculptures. The sound is played through speakers located under twelve granite sitting stones, one in front of each position in the circle. The music is alternately audible and silent. The duration is unpredictable and varied. Solkreds begins playing every day at sunrise and stops at sunset. The computer system uses data for the position of the sun, the phase of the moon and tide levels to control musical processes
Jackdaw for bass clarinet and computer was commissioned by Harry Sparnaay with financial support from the Danish Art Council. A jackdaw is a small, European crow, and the character og the piece as well as many of the sounds are inspired by this audacious yet clever bird. Since I had a tame, pet jackdaw, I was able to record the bird under perfect conditions. Many of the sounds played by the computer consist of these recordings processed by the computer, such as jackdaw cries filtered by the formant of a bass clarinet or long bird calls stretched to 10 times their original length using the phase vocoder. Bass clarinet sounds sampled and processed by the computer abd computer controlled live processing that change the sound of the instrument during performance are also used. As the composition progressed my hunch was confirmed: the jackdaw and the bass clarinet are related!
Salamander is a sequel to Jackdaw, a piece that I wrote 24 years earlier. I have a cabin in the northern part of Jutland with a natural pond where salamanders live. In the springtime these small amphibian reptiles can occasionally be observed lazily sunning themselves in the water near the surface of the pond and then suddenly diving quickly down through the pondweed. I made no attempt to record the sounds of salamanders but the piece does start with a slow, dreamy section that is interrupted by a quick and lively section and finally returns to a palindrome version of the first slow section. Salamander was commissioned by the Czech saxophonist Kateřina Pavlíková with financial support from KODA Culture.
