Category «Electroacoustic»

The Allegory (2017)

Based on Plato’s Cave Allegory, this work was conceived and choreographed by Andrea Purrenhage. This video is from the dress rehearsal of the Central Michigan University Dance Company in April 2017.

This work, inspired by the ecological succession found in Michigan sand dunes, was performed at the Regeneration Dance Festival in Detroit in April 2016. Choreographed by Heather Trommer-Beardslee with costumes by Ann Dasen. Inspiration and lectures were provided by biologist Wiline Pangel.

All Our Broken Instruments (2015) for percussion and electronics

Composed in the summer of 2015 for Andrew Spencer, All Our Broken Instruments is a musical adaptation of the Robert Fanning poem “May Our Young Find Music in All Our Broken Instruments.” The percussion soloist speaks the poem’s text while playing a mixed batch of instruments and triggering the electroacoustic sounds. Download the score: All …

Abstain Red Hells for soprano saxophone and fixed media

Abstain Red Hells takes its title from a movement of a forgotten piece of mine for flute and soprano saxophone. The basic idea of a stubborn ostinato and a tense-yet-lyrical melody was played out in the very small scale in this earlier piece and has since been liberated into a bigger and more open musical …

Downtown Mt. Pleasant – Revitalization

In August 2016, artists took to some of the empty storefronts in Mt. Pleasant, MI. My artist partner in crime, Heather Trommer-Beardslee, is always looking for ways to put music and dance into unexpected places. She asked me for a handful of pieces to choreograph and took a handful of dancers to go play in …

ArtBattle 2015

On July 30, 2015, Heather Trommer-Beardslee and I participated in our local Art Battle. Visual artists gathered to create new art in 2 hours and this year, we decided to throw a dance/music collaboration into the mix. We started at 6 PM and by 8 PM we had a 4 minute dance piece. While Heather …

Digital Banshee for fixed media (2013)

I recently found this file and forgot that I ever composed it! Done in a San Diego hotel room in…2013 maybe?…this work draws on a set of piano samples used for the 60×60 Piano Mix project. Inspired by Henry Cowell’s use of the piano in The Banshee, I thought it would be fun to explore …

Let’s Keep it That Way for percussion and laptop (2014)

I am an avid reader of comic books and one of my all-time favorite series is Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. One of the main characters in the series is The Drummer, a man who can control the flow of energy and information with drumsticks. By drumming on computers, televisions, or electrical panels …

Transitions (Four Movements)

This piece is part of a collaborative music/dance project which I did with dancer/choreographer Heather Trommer-Beardslee. Heather interviewed three vets who had recently transitioned from military careers to being students at CMU. These compelling stories became the motivation for our piece. Heather and I worked independently on choreography and music and only lined up the …

All the Morning Silences for soprano saxophone, piano, and electronics

I was waking up one morning and the title for this piece was stuck in my head. I wasn’t sure why, I didn’t necessarily know what it sounded like, but I knew it was a good title. When Andrew Allen asked me to write a piece for him, I threw this title at him and …