Brian Baumbusch - Murmuration (2020)

Two brand new remote recording works by Alameda-based composer Brian Baumbusch will be highlighted on an upcoming album release by Other Minds, scheduled for release in October 2020. Commissioned by the University of California Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble, Isotropes was written in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and consists of a sequence of varied musical fragments chosen and recorded by each participating musician from their respective homes during quarantine. Together, these fragmented recordings combine to create an ambitious 25-minute work for large ensemble. Also featured on the album is Tides, a piece commissioned by the Creative Work Fund in collaboration with video artist Ian Winters and recorded remotely in lockdown following the cancellation of its March live premiere. Full details about the album release will be announced at a later date.

Originally scheduled to be premiered at the end of March 2020, Tides is a chamber work for quintet of harp, piano, vibraphone, violin, and clarinet that reflects on the 21st century crisis of rising global sea levels, and the Bay Area regions that are projected to be affected by this over the coming century. Ian Winters captured video footage while walking a pilgrimage around the Bay and will use this footage together with 3D body-scans of the musicians performing their parts in the virtual production of the piece. Due to the complexity of the multiple simultaneous tempo changes, coined by Baumbusch as “polytempo,” click tracks were incorporated into the work to ensure performance accuracy. When the pandemic hit and concerts were cancelled, Baumbusch decided to shift the concept of the piece to a remote recording production. The October recording release will mark the first time that this work will be heard since its creation.

Based on an interest in the remote recording techniques that Baumbusch used in Tides, UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble Director Nat Berman commissioned Baumbusch to create an entirely new remote-recording piece for his wind ensemble that would explore Baumbusch’s technique of composing with polytempo. After a library of musical fragments of varying pitch ranges, tempos and rhythmic notations was created and made available online, each musician independently selected, recorded and submitted fragments of their own choosing en route to compiling all of the fragments in the piece. Each musician recorded the fragments in their own homes using whatever equipment they had readily available, such as phones or laptops, and a downloadable click track provided by the composer. The work received its premiere online in June 2020 with another online performance by Cal State Unversity Fullterton Wind Ensemble scheduled for this Fall.

Composer Brian Baumbusch comments: “Isotropes has evolved into a unique composition for the time that we currently live in rather than as a means of getting around the limitations of technology to deliver an approximation of live performance. Not only are composers questioning how we can create art in a meaningful way while concert halls remain shut but also how these works can endure and remain a part of our evolving musical tapestry. Composers throughout history have created great works of art during times of great struggle and I believe that we must all approach our efforts in the same way during these uncertain times, adopting new performance practices rather than adapting or compromising existing ones.”

Praised by the Washington Post as “exuberantly complex, maddeningly beautiful, and as intoxicating as a drug,” composer and multi-instrumentalist Brian Baumbush has written works and collaborated with musicians such as the JACK Quartet, Pauline Olivieros, Paul Dresher and Larry Polansky, among others. In June 2019, Other Minds premiered Baumbusch’s The Pressure at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an evening length large ensemble work commissioned by the Gerbode Foundation that draws inspiration from the myriad of works synonymous with the horror genre and is told through live narration synchronized to a mechanical piano and silhouetted images projected on a slide-projector. The premiere was led by Baumbusch’s frequent collaborator, conductor Nat Berman of UCSC’s Wind Ensemble.