Musical Composition by Rensselaer Professor To Debut at Troy Music Hall Nov. 12
"Shadow Quartet," a musical composition by Neil Rolnick, professor of music at Rensselaer, will be among the pieces featured in a concert by Ethel, a New York-based string quartet, on Friday, Nov. 12 at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
"Shadow Quartet" was written while Rolnick was on sabbatical. The piece was supported in part by a Faculty Revitalization Grant from the Provost's Office.
The "Shadow Quartet" was written for Ethel, and was developed during Ethel's residency at MASS MoCA last summer. The piece is in three movements-"Western Swing," "Breathing Machine," and "Release." It was written shortly after the death of Neil Rolnick's father, to whom the piece is dedicated.
"The piece is actually about my father, who passed away as I was beginning to work on it. As he finally let go of life... I was struck by the strange juxtaposition of sounds and rhythms as the heart monitor kept chirping away while his breaths slowed and stopped. And when he was gone, it was as though he was released from the body which had just stopped working. The second and third movements of the piece try to recreate those sounds and feelings," said Rolnick.
The piece uses a laptop computer to create "shadows" of the four players. Rolnick explains that the shadows are each altered versions of the players' sounds, sometimes altered with delays or filters, sometimes recorded and looped, sometimes diverging into new lines.
The piece was originally written to include live transformations and effects controlled by the players in real time, using foot pedals to control various parameters in a computer program supplied with the score. However, playing such a piece on tour could present a problem as the demands of a touring schedule don't always permit the time nor the four-channel sound system necessary to set up a complex interactive system, according to Rolnick. To solve the problem, when on tour the "shadows" will come from pre-recorded processing of the live quartet as opposed to real-time processing.
"There's really no difference, from the audience's perspective," explained Rolnick. "The goal, both for me and for Ethel, is to present music we believe in to as wide an audience as possible."
A CD featuring "Shadow Quartet," along with five other pieces Rolnick wrote while on sabbatical, will be released in early 2005.
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