Sounds of the world make music
06/04/11 07:09 Filed in: Press
Charke brings Transient Energies to the symphony
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN
© 2011-04-06, Chronicle Herald, Halifax
Symphony Nova Scotia brings the outside world into the concert hall on Thursday.
In a concert, which also features concertmaster Robert Uchida playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, the orchestra premieres its latest commissioned work, Transient Energies, by Acadia University flutist-composer Derek Charke.
Charke integrated more than 400 recordings of traffic, wind turbines, water gurgling and coal being shovelled into a 40-minute, four-movement symphony with an environmental, energy-inspired soundscape.
But the piece does not have an ecological purpose, Charke said in a Saturday afternoon interview in Halifax.
"I’m using environmental sounds, sounds which have been derived from energy production in Nova Scotia, but I have no environmental agenda with this piece," he said.
Charke took his microphone and digital recorder to capture the sounds of the diesel generators in Acadia’s power plant, stood under giant wind turbines in Pubnico, hunched down in a ditch beside heavily travelled Highway 101. He pointed his microphone at running water on the Bay of Fundy’s tidal flats, squeezed a bottle of ketchup to get that gulping sound that oil also makes when poured, recorded trains clacking over the tracks and even shovelled small rocks and gravel in his backyard to suggest shifting coal.
With 450 files of what he calls "power sounds," Charke spent hours listening, cataloguing and manipulating their pitches.
"There are various levels of processing the sounds," he said. "The first is just the raw sound, which makes its way into the piece at points where you hear just that. The traffic is one of them. Water is another, the sound of the wind turbine another. Many other sounds make their way in maybe for only a couple of seconds, electric saws, for example."
Charke began to manipulate the sounds after listening long and closely to understand the characteristics of each sound, the rhythms that can be related to it, for example.
"At one moment, the train sound comes in and several layers of things happen and (conductor) Bernhard Gueller has to ignore the soundtrack to make sure it does not affect the tempo of the orchestral sounds," he said.
"The last movement is a large scale accelerando, which starts at a slower pace and gradually builds up to a climax. Bernhard has to go through something like 15 tempo changes in it."
The four movements are titled Highways (eight minutes), Dis-shovel’d (nine minutes), Rotations (11 minutes) and Crude (12 minutes).
Charke has written several other long works, the 30-minute Tundra Songs commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet, a 20-minute concerto for Kronos and the Toronto Symphony and, in 2009, Falling From Cloudless Skies, his first work for symphony orchestra with electronic soundscape that was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
"Transient Energies does have references to traditional symphonic structure," Charke said. "But I did not set out to imitate symphonic form. The material the orchestra is playing and each one of the movements is very different from the others. Each movement has its own form."
Audiences will find much in the piece that resonates with what they have heard before. But not exactly, given the electronic soundscape, he said.
"The actual shape of the piece, I think they are going to find that it is absolutely natural. I hope, I hope, you never know."
(spedersen@ns.sympatico.ca)
Stephen Pedersen is a freelance arts writer who lives in Halifax.
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN
© 2011-04-06, Chronicle Herald, Halifax
Symphony Nova Scotia brings the outside world into the concert hall on Thursday.
In a concert, which also features concertmaster Robert Uchida playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, the orchestra premieres its latest commissioned work, Transient Energies, by Acadia University flutist-composer Derek Charke.
Charke integrated more than 400 recordings of traffic, wind turbines, water gurgling and coal being shovelled into a 40-minute, four-movement symphony with an environmental, energy-inspired soundscape.
But the piece does not have an ecological purpose, Charke said in a Saturday afternoon interview in Halifax.
"I’m using environmental sounds, sounds which have been derived from energy production in Nova Scotia, but I have no environmental agenda with this piece," he said.
Charke took his microphone and digital recorder to capture the sounds of the diesel generators in Acadia’s power plant, stood under giant wind turbines in Pubnico, hunched down in a ditch beside heavily travelled Highway 101. He pointed his microphone at running water on the Bay of Fundy’s tidal flats, squeezed a bottle of ketchup to get that gulping sound that oil also makes when poured, recorded trains clacking over the tracks and even shovelled small rocks and gravel in his backyard to suggest shifting coal.
With 450 files of what he calls "power sounds," Charke spent hours listening, cataloguing and manipulating their pitches.
"There are various levels of processing the sounds," he said. "The first is just the raw sound, which makes its way into the piece at points where you hear just that. The traffic is one of them. Water is another, the sound of the wind turbine another. Many other sounds make their way in maybe for only a couple of seconds, electric saws, for example."
Charke began to manipulate the sounds after listening long and closely to understand the characteristics of each sound, the rhythms that can be related to it, for example.
"At one moment, the train sound comes in and several layers of things happen and (conductor) Bernhard Gueller has to ignore the soundtrack to make sure it does not affect the tempo of the orchestral sounds," he said.
"The last movement is a large scale accelerando, which starts at a slower pace and gradually builds up to a climax. Bernhard has to go through something like 15 tempo changes in it."
The four movements are titled Highways (eight minutes), Dis-shovel’d (nine minutes), Rotations (11 minutes) and Crude (12 minutes).
Charke has written several other long works, the 30-minute Tundra Songs commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet, a 20-minute concerto for Kronos and the Toronto Symphony and, in 2009, Falling From Cloudless Skies, his first work for symphony orchestra with electronic soundscape that was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
"Transient Energies does have references to traditional symphonic structure," Charke said. "But I did not set out to imitate symphonic form. The material the orchestra is playing and each one of the movements is very different from the others. Each movement has its own form."
Audiences will find much in the piece that resonates with what they have heard before. But not exactly, given the electronic soundscape, he said.
"The actual shape of the piece, I think they are going to find that it is absolutely natural. I hope, I hope, you never know."
(spedersen@ns.sympatico.ca)
Stephen Pedersen is a freelance arts writer who lives in Halifax.
