Zach Herchen

"Get to know (minor key, it was a bad oven) all there is to know..."

From the YouTube page:

Writer and star of the Broadway musical In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda performs "The Hamilton Mixtape" at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009. Accompanied by Alex Lacamoire.

Thanks to everyone who came out to "Hammerfall! A Concert of New Danish Music and Stockhausen's Kontakte". I had a really great time playing HammerFALL with percussionist Mathias Reumert and pianist Stephen Drury. It was wonderful to finally meet the composer, Niels Rønsholdt, after playing his music several times in the last two years. Scandinavia House nicely described his music as works for "live musicians, electronics, video, and elements of theatre [that] are mixed in a highly original and sometimes explosive cocktail". The concert also included his pieces Die Wanderin (with violinist Ethan Wood) and Gloomy Room (solo percussionist, who gets red wine all over their white shirt during the piece). The second half of the concert was Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontakte, performed by Mathias and Stephen.

I had a fun interview with Niels and Mathias a few days after the concert at a local restaurant. I'll be sure to post the result when its ready!

For those of you who get this, there's really nothing to explain. For everyone else, its referencing an old viral internet video called Numa Numa.

Here's a fun music video for Sour's "Hibi no Neiro". From the YouTube page:

This music video was shot for Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP'. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.

Director: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura

During the summer I had the pleasure of premiering Mattias Sköld's piece Far North (for alto and bari sax, audio, and video) in Venice, Italy and a second performance in Stockholm, Sweden. Both performances were part of art projects by the Swedish art group Raketa. Over the past month I have exchange emails with Mattias as the second installment of a series of interviews with composers and artists that I am working with. Below is our discussion!

Mattias Sköld (b. 1976) is a composer and sound artist living in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied with Sven-David Sandström and Per Mårtensson at Gotland's School of Composition and with Pär Lindgren and Bill Brunson at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Mattias' music ranges from orchestral works to solo pieces. He has a strong interest in electroacoustics and is an avid performer of live electronic music.

Excerpt from Ascent

by Mattias Sköld

Zach - As a composer, do you consider yourself to have a national identity or do you think more globally/locally?
Mattias - I guess think of myself as being part of a common European and American music tradition. If there is anything Swedish about my work I think it shows in my choir music.

Zach - Do you see your music as a historical progression from previous works? What composers/musicians have inspired you?
Mattias - Yes. I used to say that it is up to the 21st Century composers to pick up the pieces after the explosion of ideas of the 1900s. And eventually, combining and developing these ideas will not be considered postmodern, but simply progressions of a new multi-layered tradition.

Many composers inspire me, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Björk, John Cage, Pierre Henry and Swedish composers Sven-Erik Bäck and Ingvar Lidholm.

Zach - What draws you to create electronic music?
Mattias - I think it is an essential part of a composer's sound palette today. It is as with any other instrument family - if you like the sound of it and you know how to write for it - you will write for it.

Zach - Do you consider your compositions as classical music? What genres do you relate to?
Mattias - The term classical is problematic since it implies that we're dealing with the classics. I suppose I'd call what I do contemporary music or sometimes sound art. These days I listen to a lot of jazz and baroque music. Structurally I guess I relate to isometric, serial, minimalistic and free improvised music.

Zach - For me, contemporary music and sound art relate to serious or intellectual music. Your music fits these descriptions, but uses traits that remind me of rock, electronica, and industrial music (more on the pop side of things). As a conservatory-trained composer, is it a significant step to use these sounds? Or do you find their use comes naturally? Was this something your teachers or peers expressed opinions about?
Mattias - In Europe, the term sound art has become more and more used not only to describe sculptures and installations that produce sound, but also music made within the art community whose musical references are often everything but classical music. I'd say that the works of sound artists like Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai have influenced today's composers of electronic music here just as much as the electroacoustic pioneers so yes, the use of these sounds comes very naturally to me and as a teacher at the conservatory I want the students to be familiar with what's going on in the art community as well as in the classical world. (I haven't heard any complaints from teachers or students so far.)

Zach - What attracts you to jazz and baroque music?
Mattias - In baroque I enjoy the tension between rigid structures and a personal expression that is what composers always have strived to achieve. In jazz, I appreciate how the art of communication in music reveals itself to the musicians and the audience. And both genres have (or had) elements of improvisation.

Zach - What aspects of music do you like to explore?
Mattias - I am much concerned with form and counterpoint these days, exploring new ways for two or more voices to relate to one another. I also have a weak spot for basic shapes both in form and sound where I tend to work with the simplest of waveforms such as sine waves.

Zach - You have mentioned structure, form, counterpoint, and waveforms. It seems that structure is a big part of your current work, yet the result sounds very organic. Is it important for listeners to be aware of these components, or are they mostly used as tools to assist composing?
Mattias - When a structure is there, it is meant to be heard or experienced. Sometimes I use structures to shape the music, and other times the structure is the music. But without any structure there is no composition, only sound.

Excerpt from Liff

by Mattias Sköld

Zach - Noise and distortion play a significant role in your Taroom album. How do you approach their use?
Mattias - Making noise music is like etching on a painted canvas. The musical image is full - the spectrum is saturated - and still, after a while you're only listening to the small fluctuations, the etched details, on an otherwise chaotic sound canvas.

Zach - I like the concept of details within saturation. I think that being drawn into these small fluctuations is a special experience for an audience, but as a performer I am also careful not to push their focus too much. Is demanding attention an issue when the modern audience is used to TV shows broken up by 30-second commercials?
Mattias - Maybe we have the 30-second commercials to thank for the growing interest in slower and longer forms of music. But most noise concerts that I have been to were advertised as such so the audience knew what to expect. But this is an interesting issue - it is easy to underestimate the audience.

Zach - There are also significant moments of beauty in your music. Do you consider this an important quality in your music?
Mattias - Yes, beauty in music is very important to me, as is ugliness without which beauty cannot exist. Lack of contrast bothers me in music.

Zach - Do you approach live performances differently from composing?
Mattias - Yes. There are so many factors that play into a live performance that have to do with that particular moment in time. I have heard that when Stockhausen's masterpiece Kontakte originally premiered it was criticized for being too long. The hall had been crowded, so for the second performance they lowered the temperature in the hall and suddenly no one complained about the duration of the piece.

Zach - Can you talk more directly about how you perform and compose? Do you take more risks performing? Do you consciously explore the same aspects of music during both? Do you compose using the same tools/software/instruments that you perform with?
Mattias - I think I take more risks when composing. But to compensate, there is a certain kind of clarity that comes with performing where you are able to make musical decisions that could only be made in that kind of clearing you're in when playing.

To a certain degree I use the same ideas for performing and composing, but there are structures that need to be thoroughly calculated, especially process music where musical parameters change gradually over time.

Zach - You take more risks composing? I would have expected more when performing, but maybe that's because I'm not a composer.
Mattias - I agree that there is much more risk involved in performing, which is why it is easier for a composer to make radical statements (and take musical risks) when someone else is voicing them, if you see what I mean.

Zach - Do you have an ideal space for your music to be performed in? In other words, are you writing music for the concert hall, the museum, or the bar?
Mattias - Usually not, though I think it's fun when contemporary music appears in unexpected places. The exception being my sacred music that really needs to be performed in a church.

Zach - Can you share a story or example of creating music in unexpected places?
Mattias - A good example is the tram concerts where two of my colleagues and I play live electronic music based on tram sounds in the coffee carriage of the Stockholm tram line, and most of the audience are tourists. Usually people appreciate that they get to experience something different. That said, our performance on a Swedish game show on TV was perhaps not as appreciated, but really fun to do.

Thanks to Mattias for his time! To hear his music and learn more, visit www.mattiasskold.com.

Excerpt from Far North

by Mattias Sköld, live performance by Zach Herchen

More info at http://distraxion.sternio.com/.

This (awesome) video has been making the rounds on the internet. From the YouTube page:

Miro Markus, an elementary school student from Berlin, narrated the text for the performance: Youth as a hope for the older generation.

The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrom of the childs voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano.

Peter Ablinger: I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.

You can find more info at SynthGear and Hack a Day.

The Ambassadors of Harmony (2009 International Barbershop Chorus Champions).
Pure awesome.