The California E.A.R. Unit performs composer David Dvorin's “As Alice” with violin, piano and musical manipulations of real and imagined sounds along with interactive video designed by Ted Davis.

The last movement, “On Waking Up”, makes no distinction between dreaming and waking-life, and integrates both the “real” and “imagined” versions of the same sounds (piano, violin, dogs barking, screen doors, tea kettles, insects). The echoing violin is doubled by an electronic instrument made from tuned whistling tea kettles played by the percussionist, while the piano works through mangled retrograde quotations from Robert Schuman's "Träumerei (Dreaming)" from Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), and mutated motifs from Alice in Wonderland by Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain (as performed by Bill Evans). Sprinkled here and there are time manipulated marching band references to Charles Ives’ “Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut” from Three Places In New England, another childhood-themed favorite of mine.

See all 7 movements: As Alice

daviddvorin.com/
teddavis.org/