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Program Notes
für Klarenz was composed for the 2016 Bar70w Festival in Cologne, Germany, celebrating the work of algorithmic music pioneer Clarence Barlow. The piece uses various techniques inspired by Barlow to transform the sounds of his name into musical materials and parameters. Gradually moving from articulating the most prominent lines to realizing more subtle spectral details, the piano blends increasingly with the electronics—which themselves fall more and more subject to the microtonal inflections inherent in the human voice. The end result is a wild, exaggerated stretching and manipulation of the sonic materials embedded in a name, magnifying the beauty and chaos hidden within speech to create a sound world that seems entirely new and yet eerily familiar.
-Brandon J. Rolle