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Reynolds, Roger
Description
The work Submerged Memories is composed by former Calit2 composer in residence Roger Reynolds based on text from German writer W.G. Sebald. It is the first performance in the new series organized by the Calit2 Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS). Submerged Memories is based on a text that Roger Reynolds extracted from the work of the maverick German writer, W.G. Sebald. His slightly surreal texts (especially his novels, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo) wander unsettlingly between the quotidian and the vaguely supernatural. The Reynolds work involves a narrator who tells a series of five stories. He is generally laconical; however, from time to time, he is pulled towards extreme vocal behaviors, behaviors that strongly color the feel of the text he is reciting without disrupting it completely. These extreme states are entered gradually and just as gradually subside, leaving the narrator again speaking with an informal directness. A quartet of musicians (violin, bass clarinet, electric guitar, and percussion) continuously shadow the narration, acting as a ghostly chorus. Each musician has a set of "target" words or phrases that s/he mimics instrumentally. So what the narrator says, but also how he says it, gives rise to a shadowy, elastic murmur, a peculiar non-verbal echoing of the stories being told. The performance is directed by an idiosyncratic clock that "ticks" once every 28 seconds. The instrumental performers, in their strings of text imitations, are also pulled towards "strange attractors" that gradually alter the nature of their contributions. The text by Sebald mentions works by two masterful painters, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt (work pictured above), and images of the referenced works are seen at first as a montage of fragmentary details, and then, at appropriate moments in the narrative, at their full scale. Submerged Memories involves, amplification, lighting, image projection, sound-file playback and spatialization, with modest staging. UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact) The work composed by Roger Reynolds will be performed by Professor Philip Larson, the narrator, and four graduate students from the Music Department: Leah Asher (violin), Curt Miller (bass clarinet), Pablo Cano Gomez (guitar), and Dustin Donahue (percussion). Submerged Memories was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation for the Paul Dresher Ensemble Electroacoustic Band, and they, along with narrator John Dykers, gave the premiere performance in San Francisco in 2006.
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