Coupling (2022 - 23)

Piano, percussion, and interactive-electronics (Kyma), two cardioid microphones, and multi-channel diffusion of sound; duration: 30 minutes. First performance: 2 May 2023, The Cube, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA..

Coupling was first developed at the Spatial Music Workshop, hosted by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech’s Cube, in Blacksburg, VA. It was written for pianist Shannon Wettstein Sadler and percussionist Terry Vermillion as a complementary work for Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kontakte, a seminal work of spatial music for piano, percussion, and 4-channel tape. Kontakte is about different types of contact: contact between sound families (in reference to timbre), contact between space shapes (in reference to spatialization), and contact between moments (in reference to form). Coupling is about the physical contact between the sound in the space and Kyma’s electronic sound output. The movement of individual sounds and their synthesis (and therefore our perception of their timbre) is coupled to the behavior of sound in the performance space using ecosystemic programming.