MODART

Modart

MODART is a professional development project that provides opportunities for emerging composers to develop works for vocal ensemble, and which then receive public performance by The Song Company.

Biography: Brent Williams

Brent Williams is a composer and sound artist from Wollongong. After studying piano throughout his school years, Brent embarked on a career as a rock musician and songwriter. He was also an audio engineer for 15 years, working both in recording studios and for prominent touring bands on the road.

In 2002, Brent began a music degree at the University of Wollongong. At this time, his interests in composition shifted towards experimenting with the combination of acoustic instruments and electronic elements. Brent’s work questions the perceived distinctions between music, sound and noise, continuing along paths forged by composers such as Grainger, Varese, Xenakis and Cage. His compositions often employ microtonal and ad hoc tunings as well as recordings of found and synthesised sound. Brent also works with audiovisual and sound art installations, and is a regular performer in free-improvised music circles.

In 2004, Brent was the composer and sound designer for Simon Luckhurst’s play, The Unsheltered and for Critical Mass Theatre’s production, Surface Tension. At the Sonic Connections festival he performed his new piece for the Xenophone (a 53-note scale metalophone) and premiered Sikanex, a piece composed for a 16-channel surround-sound array. 2004 also saw the first performance of Zero Tolerance, Infinite Sadness, a piece for string quartet.

Brent is currently writing a series of pieces, called Organic Mechanism, for small ensemble with recorded parts in surround sound. As well as working on several third-party recording projects, both as a musician and engineer/producer, he is also working on a double CD with his own band Vvovo, to be released in 2006. Brent has also been invited to undertake an honours year at university.

Program Notes: Where Does Music Stop

Nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music.
Nothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of music.
Nothing is accomplished by playing a piece of music.
Our ears are now in excellent condition.

John Cage, 1952. Written in response to a request for a manifesto on music.

Humans desire control of everything. It is a struggle that defines our lives. Writing and playing music might be seen as a symbol of this struggle for control. As Cage said, music is the “organisation of sound”. Humans also desire to be controlled... YOU MUST REMEMBER, WE ARE NOT MACHINES.

I have always found it ironic that Percy Grainger thought it necessary to use machines to play his "free music". Though humans are not machines, a composer of music writes a set of instructions to musicians, not unlike programming a computer. The irony is that the human voice is perhaps the instrument most capable of freedom of pitch and timbre.
This piece juxtaposes passages of conventionally notated music with music, sounds or noise arrived at through various indeterminate processes. Pitches slide from notes in familiar 12 note equal tempered scales, to relative pitches that fall between the cracks in the notes.