collections for Erik (2016)
a recording project for solo violin
Commissioned by Erik Carlson
Recorded in 2016 by Erik Carlson
San Diego, CA
The debate over the importance and need for commercially released CDs of nearly all of one's own work is a topic often raised with a particular group of colleagues of mine, namely of sound artists. Naturally, since most of these musicians are working in the electronic music arena, they rely on recordings, rather than live performance, to make and distribute their work, and therefore making recordings is a perpetual project. For myself, the live performance is the only method of realization (i.e. writing for acoustic instrumental performers), and the preferred method of listening. The live recording of performance (mostly for documentation purposes) indeed becomes a mode of circulation, with all its flaws, but points directly back to the performance as the initial, and most valuable realization. It is not generally my goal to produce a professional level, commercially released recording for each of my pieces.
Considering this discussion, I set out to create a piece whose realization would not be possible without the act of recording. Recording it would be the only way the piece could be realized. Henceforth, a series of works called collections was created. collections for Erik (Erik Carlson, violin) is the first of this series, each piece written for a solo instrument capable of microtonal glissandi, and subtitled 'a recording project piece.' Each work is made up of a series of relatively short glissandi moving at different speeds, and over different distances and directions. The performer is given several lists of multiple types of glissandi, asked to record them, and then overlap the recorded glissandi in various ways with observance of the directions (parameters) set forth in the score.
