Mikel Kuehn - Works
About the Hyperresonance Series
Since 2000, I have been creating an ongoing collection of pieces for acoustic instrument(s) with electroacoustics. To date there are five completed works in the series:
- Crack (13:00, 2001) [Hyperresonance I] for flute, alto saxophone, and electroacoustics
- Chiaroscuro (10:00, 2007) [Hyperresonance II] for cello and electroacoustics
- Objet/Ombre (11:00, 2008) [Hyperresonance III] for 12 saxophones and electroacoustics
- Colored Shadows (14:00, 2012) [Hyperresonance IV] for viola and electroacoustics
- Rite of Passage (11:45, 2014) [Hyperresonance V] for bass clarinet and electroacoustics
(Two other works will be finished shortly, a work for piano and electroacoustics and a piece for voice and electroacoustics.)
In these works I have envisioned an instrument (or group of instruments) functioning in a mini concerto situation: the “accompaniment” is generated solely from the sound of the instrument and in many cases is an amplification, with live computer processing, of its nuanced resonances. My fascination herein lies with blurring the lines of perception (between object and shadow) and making the natural acoustic resonances of each instrument apparent to the listener. In works such as Chiaroscuro (Hyperresonance II), for cello, and Objet/Ombre (Hyperresonance III), for 12 saxophones, most of the electroacoustic textures were pre-made with software that I have written and been continually developing since 2000 called nGen. In the last two pieces, Colored Shadows (Hyperresonance IV) for viola,and Rite of Passage (Hyperresonance V) for bass clarinet, the “accompaniment” is created in “real time” by computer processing in Max/MSP.