Senderos
video-scores for variable instrumentation2021
commissioned by the ASU Symphony Orchestra and ASU wind bands
I have recently been exploring electronic thinking in my acoustic music by using studio techniques as metaphors to generate harmony, texture, melody, form and musical processes. This has prompted me to explore new notational strategies that reflect these modes of musical thinking. I am interested in pushing the limits of notation to question implicit biases in the western notational system, often in close collaboration with performers.
These interests led to a fruitful collaboration with the ASU Symphony Orchestra and ASU Wind Bands in early 2021. I was commissioned to write a collection of short pieces to be performed remotely titled Senderos (Spanish for “paths”) that featured scrolling video-scores and aleatoric graphic notation. Each video-score explores a different balance of freedom and constraint through graphic notation.
These pieces were inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Garden of Forking Paths, which explores the notion that multiple possible outcomes can coexist by branching off into an infinite number of realities. My composition explores this idea through meta-interactivity: the graphic notation allows for many different possible interpretations by musicians, and then these interpretations are freely remixed by audiences on an interactive website crafted by Matt Gilbert.
Please click here to listen and interact.
The pieces can be also be performed live with all performers reading from the video-scores.
If you want to contribute your own interpretation of one of these graphic score, please click here.
The video below is a recording of Vashawn Arora interpreting all four voices of Sendero 3: