bachstro plutaños saarigeti
two harps and live electronics2023
Bachstro Plutaños Saarigeti was written for Michelle Gott and Emily Levin for the 2023 PRISMS Contemporary Music Festival at Arizona State University. The title of this piece is a portmanteau of the five composers whose music directly influenced it: JS Bach, Chris Castro, Sam Pluta, György Ligeti and Kaija Saariaho.
This piece is warmly dedicated to Chris Castro, who showed me some fascinating new discoveries in Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, which eventually led to this piece. Thanks Chris!
The electronics are entirely controlled and generated by the harps: the max patch detects the pitch, dynamics (amplitude) and brightness (spectral centroid) of the harps' incoming signals, and the electronics react independently in various ways to these parameters.
This work is part of an ongoing research-creation project that explores various approaches to technologically-mediated performance practice.
Audio and video were recorded by Kylar Gardner.