http://www.johnsupko.com John Supko Wed, 15 May 2013 13:51:04 +0000 http://www.johnsupko.com en http://www.johnsupko.com/A-FREE-INVENTION-FOR-GEORGE-PITCHER http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/A-FREE-INVENTION-FOR-GEORGE-PITCHER Wed, 15 May 2013 13:51:04 +0000 John Supko 5622549 A Free Invention for George Pitcher by John Supko Commissioned by Jeffrey Edelstein in honor of the 88th birthday of Princeton professor emeritus of philosophy George Pitcher, A Free Invention is a piece of generative software that interweaves recordings of composer & musicologist Edward T. Cone teaching a counterpoint class at Princeton in 1973 with sampled acoustic instruments, electronic tones & the sound of the wind to create a constantly shifting sonic meditation on memory, serendipity & the passage of time. Above you can listen to ten minutes of the software in action. Download the software here! (167.4 MB; Mac users only) A Free Invention for George Pitcher by John Supko Commissioned by Jeffrey Edelstein in honor of the 88th birthday of Princeton professor emeritus of philosophy... http://www.johnsupko.com/THESE-ANTIQUE-DISASTERS http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/THESE-ANTIQUE-DISASTERS Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:36:22 +0000 John Supko 5500165 These Antique Disasters by John Supko This is a simple little piece I wrote for the computer to play with itself. The ideal format of the work is software: you turn it on & the computer freely plays the piano & accompanies itself with comb filters according to a set of basic parameters that govern melody, harmony & rhythm. When you get sick of listening, you turn it off. The next time you turn it on it will sound like the same piece, and yet it won't be exactly the same. Perhaps I've been spending too much time with computers lately, but I find that there is a mysterious logic that emerges when I listen long enough to what the computer is playing. These Antique Disasters by John Supko This is a simple little piece I wrote for the computer to play with itself. The ideal format of the work is software: you... http://www.johnsupko.com/FLESH-REMIXED http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/FLESH-REMIXED Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:58:21 +0000 John Supko 5451473 My friend, Duke colleague & collaborator, Bill Seaman, has made a remix of my recent piece FLESH. You can listen to it below. My friend, Duke colleague & collaborator, Bill Seaman, has made a remix of my recent piece FLESH. You can listen to it below. http://www.johnsupko.com/FLESH http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/FLESH Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:40:10 +0000 John Supko 5297612 FLESH, written for Jack Dettling, is a work for vocalizing pianist and electronics conceived as a series of images: a long, pensive walk in a faraway city; a simple song relentlessly and violently interrupted; a train barreling toward an unknown destination; a computer that studied poetry with Christopher Knowles; an uneasy coexistence of the sacred and the profane (a Bach chorale and 1980's shock radio); and, finally, the frenetic energy of an amusement park tamed by the vagaries of a wandering mind. FLESH seeks to depict both the serendipitous beauty and arbitrary danger, or even violence, of the technological age by using both generative processes and extreme noise to create sonic environments that the pianist must navigate. The generative processes consist of decisions made by the computer to produce not only combinations of sounds but also musical notation and poetic texts that the pianist incorporates into his performance in real time. The texts incorporated into the music of FLESH are not necessarily intended to be comprehensible throughout the work, but rather as one more sonic element in a constantly evolving musical texture. Noise is used throughout the piece as an ever-returning sign of something seemingly ominous that at length proves to be more mysterious and less straightforward, a kind of terrifying ecstasy. Listen to Bill Seaman's remix, ABSTRACTED FLESH, here. FLESH, written for Jack Dettling, is a work for vocalizing pianist and electronics conceived as a series of images: a long, pensive walk in a faraway city; a... http://www.johnsupko.com/STRAITS http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/STRAITS Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:20:13 +0000 John Supko 4900623 Straits by John Supko Straits, the poem by Kenneth Koch from which my piece draws both its title and inspiration, is an exposition of possibilities. It is a quest for and ultimately a record of acquisition of, as Koch puts it, “ecstasy, unity, freedom, completeness, Dionysiac things.” One of the poem’s voices, Andy, is “looking for a strait,/ A way from this pool into the sea.” In the music I tried to capture some of this restlessness, the desire to trade the mundane for something bracing and new. The music is therefore stylistically promiscuous and unconcerned with development in the conventional sense. If it develops anything, it is this yearning to escape the pool of predictable musical situations. Straits is like a resourceful trout thrashing around in the fisherman’s bucket. This fish is not going to end up swimming in sauce amandine. The current version of Straits, commissioned by and dedicated to the Meehan/Perkins Duo with gratitude for the generous support of Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, is not the first. The original work included a wildly complicated electronic component that proved impossible to realize satisfactorily anywhere but in a recording studio. Upon reflection it wasn’t a surprising result: while writing Straits I had always intended to sit down at the feast of the last century of music and gorge myself on it all, but the electroacoustic version gave me violent indigestion. So I trashed it. At sixteen minutes and a few crumbs, the present recipe is still dangerously high fat/high cholesterol and unabashedly carnivorous, but let’s say the sauce is better reduced, the spices better balanced, and I took the sommelier’s advice. Straits by John Supko Straits, the poem by Kenneth Koch from which my piece draws both its title and inspiration, is an exposition of possibilities. It is a quest... http://www.johnsupko.com/NIGHT-CONSTRUCTION http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/NIGHT-CONSTRUCTION Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:20:47 +0000 John Supko 4849096 Night Construction by John Supko Night Construction was written for Todd Meehan’s Baylor Percussion Group at Baylor University in Texas. It features, among other things, a recording I made in a taxi traveling along the New Jersey Turnpike from Newark Airport, toy trumpets, plastic bags & other ad hoc percussion, a crackling fire & Gertrude Stein’s voice. The title makes reference to two composers’ works: Paul Lansky’s Night Traffic and John Cage’s Constructions in Metal. The piece is essentially a dreamscape that ends with a question from Gertrude Stein: "What is a normal American?" Night Construction by John Supko Night Construction was written for Todd Meehan’s Baylor Percussion Group at Baylor University in Texas. It features, among... http://www.johnsupko.com/EVERYBODY-SAYS-EVERYTHING http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/EVERYBODY-SAYS-EVERYTHING Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:13:12 +0000 John Supko 4824149 Everybody Says Everything by John Supko I wrote this electroacoustic piece for the Dutch electric guitar quartet CATCH. It's a humorous take on a serious problem: people should think more & talk less. The electronic part features an unruly tapestry of chattering voices taken from historic radio broadcasts, answering machine messages, stand-up comics & other sources. I have a small singing role at the end, helped out by two Princeton friends, Jordan Kizner & Lily Arbisser. Everybody Says Everything by John Supko I wrote this electroacoustic piece for the Dutch electric guitar quartet CATCH. It's a humorous take on a serious problem:... http://www.johnsupko.com/A-SONG-FOR-SINKING http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/A-SONG-FOR-SINKING Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:07:55 +0000 John Supko 4824143 A Song for Sinking (live set) by John Supko ffmup (“free-form mash-up,” pronounced “phmup”) is a Princeton Music Department tradition. A free concert series presenting “noise, improvisation, electronics, acoustic mishmash, & all manner of great between-the-cracks music” since 2003, it was exposure to this kind of music as a grad student that, in part, rerouted me from the path of the polite composer. I had a personal goal to do something on a ffmup concert before I graduated & somehow I did & this is it. I’m playing a Magnus Chord Organ in this set, accompanied by a tape track. (Sidenote: ffmup was often held in the Terrace Eating Club, where sometimes students played pool or pingpong in rooms adjoining the concert space. To neutralize that potential sonic intrusion, I incorporate similar sounds into the tape part of the piece.) A Song for Sinking (live set) by John Supko ffmup (“free-form mash-up,” pronounced “phmup”) is a Princeton Music Department tradition. A free concert... http://www.johnsupko.com/DREAM-CUISINE http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/DREAM-CUISINE Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:53:10 +0000 John Supko 4824134 Dream Cuisine by John Supko Dream Cuisine, a setting of the text of the same name by Robert Fitterman, is something of sham cantata.  The text combines fragments from the Lewis & Clark journals with menu items from the Union Square Cafe.  At first, the music observes these categories by assigning the explorers’ text to the men & the menu texts to the women.  The two kinds of texts are further set apart by the kind of music each group sings:  the women have an intense, chordal (vertical) music while the men sing slower, melodic (horizontal) material.  Sooner or later, the text/sex boundaries start to dissolve, with each group singing parts of the other’s text, in various attempts to find a way for all six singers to sing together.  An extended section of musical cooperation among the singers and instrumentalists does finally occur, but only after a frenetic romp through a dreamworld terrain comprising impersonations, quotations & bastardizations—that is, music from everywhere—interwoven with music from nowhere. Dream Cuisine by John Supko Dream Cuisine, a setting of the text of the same name by Robert Fitterman, is something of sham cantata.  The text combines fragments... http://www.johnsupko.com/WITHOUT-STOPPING http://www.johnsupko.com/following/johnsupko.com/WITHOUT-STOPPING Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:05:31 +0000 John Supko 4768890 Without Stopping by John Supko Without Stopping is scored for 3 Discmans on shuffle mode with any number of musicians following very simple instructions. (There is no score.) This is the first piece I wrote while studying at Princeton. It is emblematic of the change that that experience would have on my work. The title is taken from the writer & composer Paul Bowles’s autobiography. Without Stopping is in some sense a memorial to him, since he was one of my early mentors. In this performance, composers Paul Botelho (voice), Greg Spears (organ) & Steve Mackey (electric guitar) bring the piece magically to life. Without Stopping by John Supko Without Stopping is scored for 3 Discmans on shuffle mode with any number of musicians following very simple instructions. (There...