Greg Wilder

Tag: piano

  • Doctor Body

    Doctor Body

    Doctor Body is a place for musical experimentation, boundary exploration, and live performance expression.

    It’s an ongoing musical collaboration between myself and Alison Wilder. Key to the process is this: everything we produce is handled/managed by each of us multiple times.

    The result is always something neither one of us would (or could) create. Eventually we find our way to an agreeable place and allow each other space to contribute what we wish. And the more we do it, the more comfortable we become in what is often an uncertain journey.

    … or said in a very different way …

    “Doctor Body will not help you to relive the warm glow of youthful love, or to remember how you danced on your wedding night, or be the soundtrack to your breakup.”

    Your millage may vary.

  • After Rochberg: A Centenary Celebration Concert

    After Rochberg: A Centenary Celebration Concert

    Since 2013, my close friend and colleague Jeremy Gill and I have been searching for an opportunity to put together a concert in honor of our mentor George Rochberg. At long last, we found it.

    Jeremy and I were fortunate to have worked closely with George during the last 10 years of his life. Rochberg’s legacy as a composer and teacher is widely felt, and in a very real sense, our compositional work is part of that legacy.

    Our concert title “After Rochberg” is a play on his 1966 piano solo work Nach Bach and is designed to showcase the incredible range of George’s musical output and his legacy — in the form of works from two of his last students.

    Half of the concert is a survey of George’s piano music from 1941 to 1984. By way of example, here’s a selection of short movements from one of Rochberg’s seminal twelve-tone works from the 1950s.

    Twelve Bagatelles (1952), Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 9, Greg Wilder, piano

    Between musical selections, we hear George’s own voice (captured in interviews) describing his personal journey and attitudes toward various aesthetic and historic approaches to music composition.

    “Retina of Memory”, George Rochberg

    The second half of the recital is split between Jeremy’s and my own compositions, all of which were written within the last 15 years. (Plume and The 13th Page were were among the included works.)

    After Rochberg (December 2018)

    Throughout November and December of 2018, we prepared and tested the recital concept with small audiences, eventually presenting the public premiere as a part of George’s centenary celebration (1918-2005) in Philadelphia on December 10th.

  • The 13th Page

    The 13th Page

    It’s not unusual to create new music for Pierrot ensemble.

    In fact, composers in recent decades have generated so much new music for this combination of instruments, numerous groups have formed and risen to fame performing it. But what is slightly unusual is for a composer to collaborate with computer software when writing for this ensemble.

    December 2018 | Pierrot Ensemble (Fl, Cl, Vln, Vc, Pno) | Greg Wilder, piano

    Given that my recent work with Isomer has been realized fully within the digital realm, I thought it might be appropriate to apply these same spectral techniques to the generation of a score for a traditional ensemble of instruments. The result is The 13th Page…

  • Plume

    Plume

    Plume (for piano and computer) is one of a series of artistic collaborations with custom software called Isomer.

    Work on Plume began with the selection of six chainsaw sound recordings. Often source sounds are chosen for their personal relationship or meaning to the composer, but these recordings were picked solely for their rich harmonic content (vibrant rhythmic activity!) and strong harmonic fundamentals (good for harmony!).

    Why six different chainsaw recordings? So that they share sonic (and therefore musical) characteristics when processed by the Isomer software. The hope is that they feel closely related (but not too similar) so that when combined, they form a single, unified musical expression.

    November 2018 | Piano and Fixed Media

    Process

    One of the most challenging aspects of making music with spectral deconstruction methods is the development of coherent musical form. In a previous work called After October, I solved this problem by choosing source material with a relatively long duration and manually slowing the pacing of musical events. The use of a single source facilitated musical cohesion.

    With Plume, I wanted to develop musical form using sonically-related sources with a short duration that required the use of repeated material. To do this, I used relatively few output layers in the initial presentation of ideas and saved unused layers for the later repetition of material.

    I achieved additional variation through orchestration and spatialization. Because the chainsaws start and stop at distinct points in the source recordings, the entrances of musical layers appear close together. Orchestrating with sounds that feature sharp transients and fast decay times provided ample opportunity to vary the resonance and reverberation techniques applied to repeated gestures.

    Production

    For reasons described above, Plume was orchestrated with sounds that are struck, plucked, and strummed. The big question during production was — how to effectively alter resonance without always giving away the process?

    The answer required the development of synth and reverb patches and some fairly extreme EQ. Specifically, I relied on high-quality emulations of the Roland Jupiter-8 and an Oberheim SEM to shadow some of the foreground material. To create especially “darker” spaces I scooped out higher frequencies from the sources before sending the result through a few choice Lexicon spaces.

    Given the high-energy nature of these attack transients, mastering compression required several ritual dances and a highly versatile tool — the Rupert Neve Master Buss Processor. Among other things, this incredible unit provided the necessary sculpting of the mid/side frequencies.

    An early version of this work was created on March 27th, 2017 and was rendered for fixed media (without piano).

    March 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

     

  • Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency

    Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency

    I’ve just returned from a three-week residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida — and what an INCREDIBLE experience it was!

    From the wonderful studio facilities to the glorious chef-prepared meals, the ACA exceeded all expectations. But the outstanding aspect of the residency was the people! Getting to know the staff and the other 23 artists was what made the whole experience worthwhile.

    (more…)

  • Dead Man’s Palace

    Dead Man’s Palace

    Dead Man’s Palace is the result of a short piano improvisation I performed from some sketches.

    January 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

    To create the current recorded version, I exchanged the piano for harp (and organ) and added a few bits of ambient landscape to hold it all together.

    I plan to expand this sketch into a proper work for piano and electronics, but for now it remains a simple meditation that is (oddly enough) 100% human generated.