Ping/Traces

Roger Reynolds - Ping/Traces

Ping (1968)

Roger Reynolds - piano

Karen Reynolds - flute

Paul Chihara - harmonium, bowed-cymbal and tam-tam

Alan Johnson - electronics

The conception of PING, evolved during a two-year germination period, includes three elements: the Beckett text on 160 slides designed by Karen Reynolds; a film; and combined instrumental, taped, and electronic sound. In live performance the three strands of events occur simultaneously but are not synchronized. As a recorded performance, PING is a self-sustained composition of instrumental improvization over taped and electronic music. The conditions circumscribing the improvised sound in the total intermedial context were used as a basis for creating an independent sound piece. The four performers, accustomed to improvising together under the intermedial conditions, had no trouble concentrating a higher event density within the music alone for this recording.

PING is the first break in the composer's commitment to fully defined, ornamental textures. The piece is without score, although the individual parts are detailed. The overall flow is divided into three sections, approximately 5, 10, and 7 minutes long, defined and confined by four types of limits within which the performers improvise. These limits consist of assigned pitch materials, dynamic shapes, rhythmic relations, and instrumental performance techniques.

Traces (1969)

Yuji Takahashi - piano

Karen Reynolds - flute

Lin Barron - cello

Alan Johnson - electronics

TRACES was written for the composer-pianist Yuji Takahashi. Scored for solo piano, with flute, cello, ring modulator, signal generator, and 6 independent channels of taped sound, this work is concerned not only with events but with their residues (traces).

The pianist makes a series of 9 statements in the form of 3 interrelated groups of 3 short movements. The flute and cello draw on events (traces, clues) in these statements, extending them simply, without development or elaboration. There is a quality of rather timeless dwelling on some of these interpiece extensions (vestigal sound-traces).

(Dictionary: trace. A mark or line left by anything that has passed; footprint, track, trail; a sign or evidence of some past thing; a vestige.)

(from the liner notes)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Ping {21:55}

Side 2

1. Traces {23:19}

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