Program Notes
On the Threshold of a Drizzly Reality for cello and electronics is dedicated to cellist Nora Karakousoglou. The piece attempts to describe a mixed world of both my ideals and the stone-cold realities of my life. Everyone and everything enters my life for a certain reason, and at a certain time. This piece, too, came into my life with a purpose. It is a soul-searching piece for me. It describes the powerful emotion of my beautiful mind and imagination, and also reveals the various hard aspects of the reality that intrude on my life all the time. Perspective - drowning in illusion or dancing on the threshold of the reality.
The cellist is on the stage alone, which is the reality of how I individually exist in this world. The electronics, based on pre-recorded sounds of the cello, are the illusion. Processed cello reveals a mysterious world, which sings simultaneously with the live cello. They are tangled with each other. The audience is unable to distinguish what is real and what is the “illusion”. In the middle rhythmic section, the repeating notes travel through stage and surrounding speakers. The effect represents how fantasy and reality seem so interfused sometimes. On stage mic’d cello with reverberation is used to present a spatial-temporal variation of reality.
Technical Requirements
The electronic sounds provide the soloist a great deal of depth of the acoustic filed and a various timbral changing between the live cello and the electronics. All sound files are triggered at the points indicated by the numbers in square boxes by the Max/MSP patch.
Equipment
Computer [Mac or PC] with 600 MB free disk space
Max/MSP or Max Runtime (installed on the computer)
Max/MSP patch (provided by composer)
Microphone (cardiod)/Microphone stand/Reverb unit
Set-up
Computer outputs into mixing console
Stereo output from computer, which should be diffused to an 8-speaker setup when possible.
Microphone for cello send into stereo reverb unit, stereo aux return.
Mic’d cello should mixed and blend with electronics as much as possible.
Cellist will need a footpedal to trigger the sound files. Some performers may need an extra computer operator to assist, who reads the same score as soloist and cues sound files by press the space bar.
