Works

Electroacoustic

The Lonely Road for clarinet and MAX/MSP live processing (2012) Cheryl Melfi, clarinet MP3 I shall be telling this with a sigh: Take me home, the place two roads diverged. Take me home, somewhere ages and ages hence. Take me home, the one less traveled by. Take me home, the place that has made all the difference. -Paraphrased by the composer from John Denver and Robert Frost Gagarin for clarinet and fixed media (2011) Cheryl Melfi, clarinet MP3 Yuri Gagarin uniquely represents a nexus of space exploration and music.  While most people know that Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth in 1961, most people do not know that Gagarin was also the first person to broadcast a live, musical performance from space.  While in orbit, Gagarin sang and broadcast the Shostakovich song "The Homeland Hears" (Rodina Slushit) to Earth and was also joined in his singing by members of the Russian ground crew.  In my piece, Gagarin, I very roughly paraphrase part of the Shostakovich melody.   The "clicks" in the electronic part are actual samples I recorded of switches and dials from an old Moog synthesizer. The rest of the electronic part uses sine waves, square waves, and filtered noise in homage to the electronic music technology of the time period in which Gagarin made his flight.  Written for and premiered at the inaugural performance of Dark Matter, February 4, 2011 at the Gottlieb Planetarium in Kansas City, Missouri. Click HERE for video of the live planetarium performance with Dark Matter. Click HERE for the standard video performance version. Orbit for flute, clarinet, and live/pre-recorded electronics (2010) Rebecca Ashe, flute  Cheryl Melfi, clarinet MP3 American astronaut Joseph Allen wrote the following of his orbital experience above planet Earth: We orbit and float in our space gondola and watch the oceans and islands and green hills of the continent pass by at five miles per second.  We move silently and effortlessly past the ground.  I want to say “over the ground” as I write this, but remember that in space your sense of up or down is completely gone and my description must reflect this fact.  In addition, the breathtaking speed of the ship is an odd and confusing contrast to the feel of perpetually floating within the spaceship.  You do not sit before the window to view the passing scene, but rather you float there and look out on the scene, certainly not down upon it.  Are you speeding past oceans and continents, or are you just hovering and watching them move beside you? All the electronic sounds in Orbit were created using samples from Rebecca Ashe and Cheryl Melfi. Click HERE for video of the live planetarium performance with Dark Matter.

Fixed Media

Car Accident for fixed media (2003) MP3 This is a short electronic piece using sound clips from interviews with two women about their personal involvement in car accidents.  Samples from these interviews were electronically manipulated to describe the emotional impact of their car accidents.  This is a stereo mix, the original version was in quadrophonic sound.  Car Accident was created using ProTools at the University of Michigan’s Electronic Music Studio.