June 6, 9p
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Flying Tiger Brewery
506 N 2nd St, Monroe, LA 71201
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Program
True Bugs by Westley Heflin (North Carolina)
Constant by Alan Theisen (Louisiana) and Jeremy Valley
Touch Currents by James May (Louisiana)
like a broken record by Dalton Regnier (Florida)
Notes
True Bugs is written for the outdoor listener who finds solace in silence. Inspired by the shrill melodies of cicadas during the summer, this piece features spoken words reflecting on the songs of bugs and the ensuing loss of sanity. The instrumentation enables performers to evoke textures and timbres that convey feelings of unease and distress, interspersed with moments of melodic clarity. Tension and release are integral to the piece's structure, with new ideas swiftly entering and exiting. Percussion heightens the tension, while the vibraphone provides respite from the intricacies of mixed meters.
Constant is a hybrid notated, improvised, spoken, sung, and fixed media composition by Alan Theisen and Jeremy Valley for MIATp's theatrical recital, Black Meridian. Both Constant and Black Meridian were conceived by Megan Ihnen. Constant serves as Black Meridian's "thesis song," outlining the plot of the show - namely, that the inevitable tragedy of a relationship marred by miscommunication and disastrous personal choices is like the distortion of space and time around the presence of black hole.
In 2019 I had the fortune to study with theatre artist Yvon Bonenfant. In one of his first presentations he suggested that the human voice is, inherently, a transmitting sensation of touch, a tactile medium for human contact. The voice is a place for connection and a venue for our identities, and we should explore our voices and perform them to their fullest extent. In the main, "Touch Current" refers to the measurement of electricity moving from an appliance through a body. For me, it's a centering of my improvisation as though an unfurling touch, pressing through vocal space and electronic augmentation into new sonic behavior.
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This piece combines one of the hobbies I am most passionate about, collecting vinyl records, and the bass clarinet, an instrument who has been a part of my musical identity since the seventh grade. This piece is inspired by various quality control issues with vinyl records (pops, surface noise, skips, scratches) and utilizes contemporary techniques to represent these defects in the form of slap tongue, air sounds, quarter tones, and spectral multiphonics/glissandi.