Featuring original music composed by: James E. Cunningham (didgeridoos and wailphones)
Glen Gillis (alto saxophone)

The Jay Critchley Incorporated exhibition opened at the Schmidt Gallery at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, on February 4, 2016. 

The opening night’s ceremonies began with “Pilgrim Monumental” a live performance of an original composition for didgeridoo and alto saxophone, which was digitally processed through Altiverb 7 convolution reverberation software in order to reproduce the resonance from the actual Pilgrim Monument in Jay’s home town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Its inspiration was based on the historical significance of the Pilgrim’s arrival in North America,  juxtaposed with Jay’s “Tamponumet” art, which depicts the monument constructed from non-biodegradable plastic tampon applicators that had been collected on Cape Cod beaches.

…it was followed by “Breached Wail” an original piece for wailphone (pictured below)…

…alto saxophone and pre-recorded didgeridoos, inspired by beached whales on Masschusetts and Florida shorelines.

For the exhibition opening “Breached Wail” was performed in front of the sculptural “Whale Van” …

…and a video projection of a dead adolescent sperm whale that washed up on Spanish River Beach, Boca Raton, in January 2015. 

The climax of the opening ceremony was Jay Critchley’s rooftop performance “O Breaker of Bones” with its O rekaerB fo Senob  audience responsorial and Reroot-esque immolative conclusion.

©2016

“King’s Chamber Pot,” is an original composition by Glen Gillis (alto saxophone) and James E. Cunningham (sewerphone in A).
It is an over/underture for the play “Incubator at 7 Carnes Lane,” written by Des Gallant as an adaptation of Jay Critchley’s fictional autobiography Uncle Jay.

The venue for the music and play consists of two stages inside the FAU Schmidt Gallery. Known respectively as “The Shitter” and “The Septic Theatre”, the pieces were conceived, designed, and built by students, staff, and faculty at Florida Atlantic University.

Both sets were modeled after actual performance spaces in Jay Critchley’s  Provincetown,  Massachusetts back yard.

For the majority of “King’s Chamber Pot” the musicians play from the interior recesses of their respective enclosures. Glen Gillis projects a moving melody inside the “Shitter,” and James E. Cunningham answers from the bowels of the Septic Theatre on his ABS plastic sewerphone. The piece utilizes the natural reverberation from the Schmidt Gallery as its “third” instrumentalist.

At the conclusion…James exits from the underground…

…and reveals Glen, who emerges from the King’s Chamber.

The finale features a flourish of an Irish Jig in celebration of a job well done.

“King’s Chamber Pot/Incubator at 7 Carnes Lane” performed for the Jay Critchley Roundtable Discussion, Monday, February 8th. Text/adaptation Jay Critchley and Desmond Gallant; directed by Elizabeth Price; Anna Now, Erin Cunningham; Anna Then, Lydia Nigro.

© 2016

 A Provincetown Septic Theatre adaptation of the flute cadenza from George Crumb’s “Voice of the Whale.” Video footage and digital processing  by James E. Cunningham. Flute solo  by Melissa Snoza (Fifth House Ensemble) © 2015.

This post will chronicle my October 16-18 “Sonic Safari” to Provincetown, (aka P-Town), a quaint historic village on the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The main purpose of my sojourn to P-Town was to capture the sonic ambience of environmental-activist-collaborative-multi-media-artist Jay Critchley’s Septic Theatre (ST) backyard performance space in preparation for his upcoming exhibition at the Florida Atlantic University Art Galleries.

The first session involved the digital capturing of the acoustic signature or impulse response (IR) of its interior with specific digital software, as well as making some reference recordings of sewerphone, conch trumpet, jaw-harp, etc.  within the space.

In order to collect the realistic ambience of the  ST, the IR capture and recording sessions were all conducted in its interior dank darkness, with its patina-encrusted lid in place.

Sewerphone recording inside the Septic Theatre.

A second IR session was conducted on the afternoon of October 17th at the P-Town Pilgrim Memorial Monument (the tallest free-standing granite structure in the world).  In direct contrast to the enclosed ambience of the Septic Theatre, the Pilgrim Monument IR sessions yielded a smorgasbord of lengthy resonances, which were captured at a variety of locations within the interior structure.

In spite of the fact that the monument was festooned with tourists, I was able to make some impromptu Didge-box recordings inside the Pilgrim Monument.

The under- and above-ground ambiences of the P-Town ST and Pilgrim Monument spaces will be replicated inside the University Gallery in the recreated above- and below ground “Jay’s Outhouse” and Septic Theatre performance spaces respectively. IRs and recordings collected during the P-Town Sonic Safari, and other “safaris” on the FAU Boca campus will be re-incorporated into live performances,  sound bites, and audio-visual mash-ups in connection the Jay Critchley Inc. exhibition, opening February 4, 2016 at the FAU Gallery. Stay tuned for more sonic action!

I am headed up to Provincetown (P-Town), MA on a “sonic safari” for the weekend of October 16-18. P-Town, located on the Northern Tip of Cape Cod, is the residence of Jay Critchley, an artist-activist-collaborative-performance-multi-media-artist, who will be presenting a retrospective exhibition of his life’s work in cooperation with the University Galleries and Departments of Music, Theater, Dance, and Visual Arts at the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, beginning in February 2016. The primary focus of my trip is to capture the ambience of Jay’s backyard bee-hive “Septic Theater” performance space, which we plan to physically and acoustically replicate in the Schmidt Gallery during his exhibition.

This will be the first time I am traveling to an out-of-state remote location to record the acoustic signature of a specific space utilizing impulse response/convolution reverberation technology. The collected impulse response (IR) data will allow me to digitally replicate the acoustics the Septic Theater in an alternate performance environment, and at a future place and time. Relying on Jay’s local knowledge, I also hope to be able to capture some IR data from some other P-Town/Cape Cod acoustic sites.

Additionally, I plan to conduct a remote sewerphone recording session in the Septic Theater (a completely logical notion, I believe). 

https://youtu.be/yMtXV2yf-Ao

Soundtrack – “Aurora Australis Live” Glen Gillis, James E. Cunningham, © 2015 (recorded live at the SaxOpen Conference, July 13, 2015, in Strasbourg, France)

Video – Aurora Australis Timelapse – Tasmania, Australia – May Day 2013 – Ian Stewart, © 2013 (the original time-lapse photography was sped up in order to sync to our 8 minute-plus recording)

The recording takes place in an empty 2 million gallon underground concrete water cistern, that used to provide water for a military base that guarded the entrance to Puget Sound

The Ft. Warden cistern boasts a 45-second reverberation tail created by its 200 foot diameter and geometric pillar structure

Released later that year, the album UNDER THE EARTH TONES features over eighty minutes of music, mixed from the original four-channel recording without any added effects.

The recorded tracks were produced by alternating and overlapping the sounds of two, sometimes three, performers.

“Land of Snows” Under the Earth Tones, The Didgeri Dudes, © 1997.

…jump ahead 17 years…

“Aurora Australis” is released as a track on the album Sax Spectrum 2, in 2014 by composer and saxophonist Glen Gillis, with guest composers and performers.

The backing track for “Aurora Australis” is excerpted from “Orion Nebula” one of the six tracks released on Under the Earth Tones.

“Orion Nebula” Under the Earth Tones, The Didgeri Dudes, © 1997.

To create”Aurora Australis” the alto sax part was timed to the backing track, and emulated by an artificial “super reverb” created by recording engineer Wayne Giesbrecht.

“Aurora Australis” Saxspectrum 2, Glen Gillis, © 2014.

however… for nearly 20 years it has been my notion to try to emulate the natural acoustics of the cistern in live performance.

That notion has recently come to reality due to two major technological advances:

1. The recent implementation of audio interface “Thunderbolt” connectivity.
2. The recent surge in availability and affordability of convolution reverb plug-ins

Both advances have combined to solve latency problems in live digital signal processing.

Special acknowledgements to Mark Wingate, at Florida State University, and Jim Swain at Sweetwater Sound Inc. for their support, guidance, and sage advice!

stay tuned for more…

This post will highlight my whirlwind trip to Strasbourg, France to participate in the International SaxOpen Conference.

Strasbourg was a wonderful host city, and I greatly enjoyed my week’s stay, tramming, walking, and biking throughout the city. From the thousand-year-old cathedral…

…to the quaint tudor-style houses in Petite France…

…to the wonderful traditional Alsace food at Winstub S’kaechele…

…Strasbourg had much to offer the two thousand saxophone (and one didgeridoo player) who attended the six-day conference.

Glen Gillis and I presented two performances. The first was part of the SaxOpen Extended, a fringe festival that was held in a wide variety of venues. We performed Friday evening, July 10th on an intimate stage at Café Libro at the La Maison de l’Amérique Latine de Strasbourg.

The nearly hour-long performance was well attended by members of the general public, as well as well-wishers and curiosity-seekers from SaxOpen. It was our first opportunity to present our digitally-enhanced ambient material to a live and enthusiastic audience.

Our second performance was Monday, July 13 at the Cité de la Musique et de la Danse (Music Conservatory) in Strasbourg.

Despite the fact that there was no sound engineer present and we had a complicated technical setup, the performance (in my humble opinion) was artistic and well played. After an opening original composition by Glen and his long-time accompanist Bonnie Nichoson, we performed both “Canis Lupi (Grey Wolves)”

and “Aurora Australis (Live)”

Tuesday, Bastille Day was the pièce de résistance, with lots of biking and shopping downtown, all capped off with a fête nationale française fireworks show at the Cité de la Musique.

 Viva la France!

Then an early morning bus ride back to Frankfurt, Germany through the Rheinland…

jousting with some giant wind turbines (at least 100′ tall)

crossed the Rhein River

…and then on my way back to Boca!

I’m off to Strasbourg to play a couple of  concerts at the International SaxOpen Conference and SaxOpen Extended fringe festival with my fellow composer and performance partner Glen Gillis.

At the SaxOpen we will be debuting a couple of new pieces and resurrecting a couple of old classics. I am excited about performing “Aurora Australis (live)” where i get to electronically emulate the 45-second reverberation of Ft. Worden cistern in real time. At last, technology has caught up with my creative vision. If you are curious, here is a slightly edited version recorded during a practice session in Saskatoon last month.

Some of our “classic” compositions will include performances of: “Didgeriblu,” and “Canis Lupus,” which were released on Glen Gillis’ Sax Spectrum I & II albums, in 2009 and 2014 respectively.

I have packed a raft of microphones, electronics, and sewerphones for the trip. I wonder why TSA always has a field day inspecting my bags.

I have never been to Strasbourg before, but I understand that it is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in north eastern France. It is also the official seat of the European Parliament. I will be flying in to Frankfurt, Germany, and taking a three-hour bus ride to Strasbourg just across the border. My return to Germany will undoubtedly bring back fond memories of my tour of duty in Germany with the US Army from 1972-1974. I’ll keep you posted.

I have just returned to South Florida after three weeks at the University of Saskatchewan working with the David L. Kaplan Musical Instrument Collection. After a complete accounting of the Kaplan instruments and the integration the “ethnic” and “historical” departmentally-owned instruments in storage throughout the building, the collection has now more than doubled in size, growing to more than four-hundred instruments.

Because of the educational and academic intent of David Kaplan, the instruments in the Kaplan Room have now been divided into four groups that represent their “manner of sound production” or physical acoustics. Those four groups, devised by German musicologists Eric von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs in 1914, consist of aerophones (sound resulting from a disturbance or interruption of an air stream), chordophones (sound resulting from a vibrating stretched string), membranophones (sound resulting from vibrations of a stretched drum head), and idiophones (sound produced by the vibration of the “body” of the instrument itself). The scholastic approach of the entire collection is highlighted in this YouTube video:

The College of Education’s donation of a giant glass-enclosed display case in front of the Quance Theatre, and the Music Department’s offer to utilize their hallway display cabinet afforded the opportunity to exhibit many of the larger instruments in the collection previously unseen by the public.

I was also able to create a new display inside the Kaplan Room of instruments used in the Peking Opera .

I would like to personally thank Dr. Glen Gillis, Interim Head of the Department of Music; Arts and Humanities Vice Dean David Parkinson; and Troy Linsley, Arts and Science Director of Administration and Operations for making my trip to the University of Saskatchewan possible. My research was co-funded by an ICCC (Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity) Linking Fellowship, with matching funds from the College of Arts and Science, and the College of Education. I would like to give special thanks to Peter Stoicheff and Michelle Prytula, Deans of the Colleges of Arts and Science and Education respectively, for their combined support. I would like to especially acknowledge Greg Burke for all of his past and current commitment and devotion to David Kaplan’s vision. I would also like to thank all those at the university who enabled my research and made my time in Saskatoon so productive. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to the members of the Kaplan family for their continued commitment to the musical legacy of David L. Kaplan.