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Portfolio of Works: Exploring Multimovement Structure, Storytelling through Large Ensemble Orchestration, and Creating Music with Social Impact
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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This portfolio includes three original music compositions that explore long forms with multimovement construction, storytelling through large ensemble orchestration, and writing music that has social impact. Instrumentation for these pieces range from a minimum of two to seventy performers and include writing for a saxophone quartet, a large wind ensemble, and various combinations of open instrumental chamber works where one of which includes fixed electronics. The first piece, Twenty-Six Punctographic Preludes, explores long form through twenty-six short musical snapshots, one for each letter in the braille alphabet. Through exploring the writings of her grandfather and saxophonist, Arthur George Lacey, the author was interested in Lacey’s experience of losing his sight and the impacts this change had on his relationship to music. The sonic shaping, extended techniques, colouring, and timbral choices for each piece were inspired by the relationship of six dots within each braille cell. The braille letters are then categorized into ten groups that explore elements of the process of losing one’s sight such as disconnect, time, space, sensations, subconscious, limited world, and the body and introspective consciousness. The second work, the mountains rend themselves apart, is a large ensemble piece written for wind ensemble and explores storytelling through sound depicting the tragic rockslide event that occurred in the small town of Frank, Alberta in 1903. Specific compositional elements include utilizing and manipulating the number nine through intervallic shapes and rhythmic groupings as well as harmonic elements in chord clusters, polychords, and drones. Colouration, timbre, and instrumental and ensemble glissandi were also explored. The last work, Six Arctic Experiments, is a collection of six pieces designed for developing musicians that explore the social issue of climate change. Inspired by elements from an expedition to Canada’s High Arctic, the piece reflects on the delicacy and urgency of the climate crisis and curates a platform for youth to explore, engage, and participate in this issue through the experience of music-making. Compositional elements explore forms of improvisation, graphic scores, score creation, hands-on experimental creative components, open instrumentation, movement, spatialization, electronics, audience participation, sonification, sound art, and poetry. Supplemental audio recordings can be found at: https://ualberta.aviaryplatform.com/r/z892806c7r.
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- Date created
- 2023-04-30
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Canadian composer
- Music composition
- Large music forms
- Multimovement compositional structures
- Storytelling through music
- Wind ensemble music
- Music and Alberta history
- Saxophone quartet
- Open instrumentation
- Open composition
- Open duration composition
- Orchestration and storytelling
- Music with social impact
- Music empowerment
- Music for developing musicians
- Inclusive music for youth
- Community music
- Inclusive music ensemble experience
- Climate change and music
- Artistic expressions of climate change
- Music and blindness
- Frank Slide Alberta music
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- Type of Item
- Research Material