InsideOut explores a new direction in my tape works. It is a piece where all the sounds were derived from four instruments of the orchestra: alto flute (C4), violin (pizz G-sharp4), E-flat clarinet (D-sharp4), and double bass (pizz B-flat2; bowed A2). The objective in this piece with the five sounds was to explore the many avenues of sonic manipulation that the technology at my disposal would permit but at the same time a trace of the sounds original signature would still be perceptible. The processing was a way of reinventing the original sounds instead of deconstructing them. What I was able to refine from the laborious task of processing from so few sounds was textured sustaining material to contrapuntal percussive types sounds. A large variety of material was produced. The next stage was to develop musical ideas from traditional forms of composition like counterpoint, rhythm and harmony into a piece that was intended purely for tape. InsideOut is the combination of the highly abstract process of the creation of sound objects and their metamorphosis into dispersed fields of polyphonic tonal languages.

InsideOut describes a journey, though it is no ordinary passage. This is a trip made under duress, the kind undertaken by the terminally ill, the desperate, or all those for whom the everyday has become part of the impossible. Its psycho-horror opening, reminiscent of Jaws or the Oedipal stringwork of Bernard Hermann, tells us instantly that all is not well in the universe. Someone is racing, though their destination is unclear, and their path never a matter of proceeding directly towards their need. The horror of this travel is that the road is being discovered as it is traversed, new obstacles, new temptations arise to lure the traveler astray. Sharp percussion breaks collide with sliding figures, old broken down melodies are hacked away at and made to dance again, unwillingly, music hall jamborees attempted and discarded. This is music designed to accompany mental gymnastics, or leaps of faith. The music begins again, this time in a smaller register, trying to shrink the world, not to pass directly from the walls of personality, but to probe a small part of it. The problem? How to pass into dance. The easy swing of life where every lifting of a water glass or stroll to the corner store is a perfect, fluid becoming. Like Homer’s Odyssey, InsideOut is a digression through small worlds, islands of experience, each demarking a facet of the whole. Its closing chords attempt resolution but occasion instead a delirious de-crescendo, an anti-climax. The traveler wakes to find they’re still on the same spot. Unmoved. Everything is the same, and in its sameness, utterly transformed.

— MH

[xii-99]

InsideOut was realized at the composer’s studio in 1998-99 with support from the Ontario Arts Council. It was premiered on April 29, 1999 at the 6th Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea (Bogotá, Colombia).

Composition

• 1998 – 1999, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Premiere

• April 29, 1999, VI Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea: Concert, Bogotá (Colombia)

Liquid Fragments 1 is the first piece of a new series of mixed works that explores the weave of traditional instruments (live part) and their exfoliation (tape part). The live parts, double bass and alto flute, were composed and recorded first, then fragments of these recordings were processed in real-time producing a wide range of material for the tape section. The sounds are ‘poured’ in to fragments through different DSP processes coincident to their mixing with the other (recorded traditional instruments) tracks of sound. These mixed processes crystallize their fluid, fundamental origins in a transformation whereby ‘original,’ ‘mold’ and ‘copy’ conflate, and become one.

Liquid Fragments 1. Begun with a pulse, a heartbeat, and then a trilling flute, this is music as heard from inside the body, before the mouth has opened to name the world. Blocks of sound rise and fall as the body shifts to accommodate the mysteries of the outside. The sound of people speaking, rendered here via flute and bass, occasion a quickening of the heart, a response not so much understood as felt. Lived. Furious conversations and a lumbering gait leads to the repose of sleep. The rattle of a child’s shaker calls. A debris of percussion ensues, the household world turned into a drum ensemble of taps turned and shelves opened. The world, a sack of water and organs, shakes and stirs at every turn, admitting strange sounds, new worlds not yet seen. In preparation for entering it.

— MH

[xii-99]

Liquid Fragments 1 was realized at the composer’s studio in 1996. It was commissioned by the Continuum Contemporary Music Ensemble with support from the Ontario Arts Council. Liquid Fragments 1 premiered on June 5, 1996 by J Tracy Mortimore and Jennifer Waring in a Continuum Contemporary Music concert at the Music Gallery in Toronto.

Composition

• 1996, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Premiere

• June 5, 1996, J Tracy Mortimore, double bass; Jennifer Waring, alto flute • Concert, The Music Gallery, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

About this sound recording

The present recording was realized in April 1996 and mixed in in 1999.

Recording

• April 1996

Mixing

• 1999

Performers

• Jennifer Waring, alto flute
• J Tracy Mortimore, double bass

Elastic Rebound is the second composition in a series of three pieces that explore the geological activity of the earth. The title is a geological term coined by geologists after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which describes opposing tectonic forces moving in opposite direction along each side of a faultline. The rock bends and in its weakest areas fractures followed by a spring back or rebounding effect — called ‘elastic rebound.’ This work uses these geological processes as a metaphorical ground to occasion sound. Sound events were gathered, many of non-musical origin, to lend voice to natural processes, each conspiring to produce an image of a landscape in flux. Isolating and elaborating individual sounds permits me to alter dynamics and mass, and the effect of the mixing of these objects creates a soundscape of cataclysmic disorder.

Elastic Rebound is filled with the tension of geographical recoil. Tectonic plates rub and repel, gasses hiss through the cracks, a teeming underworld gathers and is dispersed in a single furious upheaval. Hidden forces gather beneath the threshold of visibility, conspiring to create new worlds. Here everything is in transformation, each sound (and there are hundreds) giving way quickly to the next. Tempests of exhalation, sniffing, ringing, cracking, all gesture towards a crescendo of fracture. These gestures of opening and closing are the beginning, the prelude, to a new settlement, an uneasy truce of history and geography.

— MH

[xii-99]

Elastic Rebound was realized at the composer’s studio in 1995 with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). It was premiered on September 22, 1995 as part of ISEA95_Montréal, the International Symposium for Electronic Art. Elastic Rebound was awarded the 1st Jury Prize and the Public Prize at the 4th Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1995) and was previously released on Prix internatinal Noroit-Léonce Petitot 1995 (NOR 4).

Composition

• 1995, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Premiere

• September 22, 1995, ISEA95_Montréal: Concert, Cinquième salle — Place des Arts, Montréal (Québec)

Awards

• 1st prize, 4th Noroit-Leonce Petitot International Prize 1995, Arras (Pas-de-Calais, France)
• Public prize, 4th Noroit-Leonce Petitot International Prize 1995, Arras (Pas-de-Calais, France)

Continental Rift is a metaphorical composition depicting the way in which the continents of the earth change their structure through the process of evolution. It contrasts past and present, the latter represented by an acousmatic assault, the former by a virtuosic solo cello.

The cello section is an introduction of signature moments from the past with musical ideas borrowed from Bach, Beethoven and Kodaly. These historical references were manipulated, producing new themes within the context of their period. These musical motifs are connected through the use of the cello and tape. As the composition evolves it builds, crescendos and erupts. The listener hears the traditional cello evolving into a 20th century acousmatic experience. Continental Rift is about histories attempt to inhabit the present, a remembrance, a mourning for tradition and the individual talent.

Continental Rift begins with a furious collection of parts which finds it release in a single cello, sadly intoning the loss of some originary whole. Violins enter the chase, quivering, trembling to the touch, arriving in waves, before retreating. In the most nakedly melodic gesture in his œuvre, a Bach refrain is folded into the concrete montage, and then a series of riffs from Mozart and his heirs, a synoptic glimpse of the western musical tradition strained through electronic review. While the classics are normatively presented in an arborescent structure, the achievements of one great composer leading to the next, here each moment gives on to multiple trajectories, rhizomes of the imagination. The path not taken is granted equal time with its canonical forbears. And finally, slyly, these moments are made to appear as the prelude to Smith’s own practice, as birds flock past, and a great rumble of caterwauling blocks fall, leading to a last door. Which closes. But for how long?

— MH

[xii-99]

Continental Rift was realized at the composer’s studio in 1995. It was commissioned by the Canadian Electronic Ensemble (CEE) with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). It was premiered on June 17, 1995 at the Music Gallery. Continental Rift received 2nd prize at the 17th Luigi Russolo International Competition (Varese, Italy, 1995) and was previously released on Russolo 1995 [efer P95].

Composition

• 1995, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Premiere

• June 17, 1995, Concert, The Music Gallery, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Awards

• 2nd prize, Mixed music, Concorso internazionale Luigi Russolo di musica elettroacustica 1995, Varèse (Italy)

About this sound recording

The present recording was realized in February 1999.

Recording

• February 1999

Performers

• Paul Widner, cello

The Unmoved Centre is a sonic realization of the poetics of spiritual mobility, a journey into the center of the imaginative image. This invitation into the imagination is a gentle push into the unknown which throws us off balance and sets in motion a dynamic reverie towards ambiguity and metaphor. Rather than represent exterior realities and actions, this piece analogizes them to trace the process of its own making. The title refers to that informed pool of possibilities which seeks shaping, and whose structure lies finally beyond the bounds of the individual. The dramatic focus of The Unmoved Centre is the transformation from outer to inner existence. It is a play of forces that map the body’s spiritual struggles as it searches for its tunings within the manageable and imaginable. It is found in a sphere of connected, conflicting and harmonious sounds.

The Unmoved Centre opens with rumour and suggestion, the possibility of form. A tender string figure introduces order, and then these elements, so long distant and apart, begin to speak to one another in earnest, rhythmically cohering, forming bodies. A trilling, snycopated voice cries out for company which arrives in the form of a creaking succession of closed doors. Foreign life forces meet, like cells inside the immune system. Intruders are detected, repulsion’s attempted and thwarted, and then some pact of reconciliation is carved out. Thousand of small movements duck, nod and feint their way towards new signs of greeting — in the absence of a common language a new one must be made. At last a new unearthly rhythm arrives, a marriage of stretched strings and shaken antidotes. The dance begins again.

— MH

[xii-99]

The Unmoved Centre was realized at the composer’s studio in 1997. It was commissioned by Réseaux des arts médiatiques with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) and was realized at the composer’s studio. It was premiered on February 19, 1997 during Réseaux’s Rien à voir (1) concert series presented by Réseaux at Théâtre La Chapelle in Montréal.

Composition

• 1997, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Premiere

• February 19, 1997, Rien à voir (1): concert solo + carte blanche: Pression sonore, La Chapelle — scènes contemporaines, Montréal (Québec)

With Convergence I wanted to create a piece that was inherit to an instrument whose history to most people is commonly associated with fun, dance, drinking and local cultural events, combined with my own experiences as a composer. Convergence is in three movements and the tape section is mainly made from recordings of instruments from non-Western cultures and some electroacoustic sounds.

Convergence. The accordion sounds like a runaway ambulance, reminding us that somewhere, someone is having the worst day of their life. An accelerating drum roll heats up this carnivalesque venture into the night side. It races us towards a gallery of fun house mirrors where the almost melody bends and breaks before finding itself again, not in the truth of the reflections, but in their framings. Polkas cut out of barbed wire turn to a hobbled sort of folk music, drunken and off centre, each instrument moving towards an independence in song, moving in their own direction, before a savage and irresistible invocation to dance cuts through the mix. Joining and dissolving dissonance. Conflict. It asks: will you dance?

— MH

[xii-99]

Convergence was realized at the composer’s studio in 1998. It was commissioned by accordionist Joseph Petric with support from the Ontario Arts Council. Thanks to recorded musicians Peter Stoll (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Kevin Breit (guitar, mandolin and banjo).

Composition

• 1998, Personal studio, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

About this sound recording

The present recording was realized in March 1999.

Recording

• March 1999

Performers

• Joseph Petric, concert accordion