Interview: Murat Çolak's SWAN

In February of 2017, Ensemble Dal Niente premiered SWAN, a sprawling piece for seven musicians and electronics. Here, flutist Emma Hospelhorn and composer Murat Çolak take us behind the scenes.

SWAN appears on our upcoming album, object/animal, out March 25, 2022, on Sideband Records.

Which came first, the piece or the title? What are the central themes/ structural elements of this work?

SWAN existed as a concept long before I wrote the piece. About a year ago, I was working on some dance music - a downtempo track with an extremely emotional chord progression and warm, sweeping synth stabs. I was imagining it as the soundtrack to a fashion photo shoot. I named it SWAN, imagining an elegant, charismatic creature floating on the water, alone. The swan is iconic, it has personality and vibe. It has power. Being fancy, being as beautiful as a swan in a rough world is power to me.

In (the new) SWAN, I wanted to focus on the music I am passionate about, on the culture I am passionate about. And the imagery too - every single part of this piece comes directly from my experiences, from my artistic, spiritual, and social identity. SWAN is an emotional piece. It was challenging to write, because I think of this piece (for the most part) as a farewell to my previous, mostly-borrowed, practices. I am claiming my own space. I thought it would sort of pull me away from the community I’ve belonged to for the past seven-eight years because, you know, this is fancy music: it is pop, it is beautiful, it is like a swan. In this sense, I think SWAN embodies the power I see in the iconography that inspired it.

To answer your question more directly, SWAN is not a thematic work. It is beautiful and fancy; it is pop, it is new, it is music.

The score comes embedded with several really cool images, including a calligraphic tiger. We performed the piece alongside a video created by Dan Tramte. Can you talk a bit about your inspiration for the visual imagery of this piece, and how the visuals fit in with the sound world you've created?

The images are a kind of collection of the things and the world that inspired SWAN. The collection included a calligraphic lion (I am a big fan of felines - like swans, they are charming, charismatic creatures) by the Turkish calligraph Ahmed Hilmi, another calligraphic lion titled ‘The Lion of God (Allah)’ symbolizing Caliph Ali (Ali is aka ‘The Lion of God’ in Islamic literature), a calligraphic swan titled ‘The Swan’ by Yahya Muhammad which is a Basmala/Bismillah [‘in the name of God (Allah), the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’ - the opening phrase for each chapter of the Qur’an, and the most commonly used motif in islamic calligraphy], beautiful swan pictures taken by my mom, some fascinating pictures of highly geometric details of Islamic architectural pieces taken by Eduard Wilmer, alongside some others. Prints of works by Hilmi and Muhammad come with the score as inserts since they were strong inspirations for SWAN.

From the above, you can probably tell that I am fascinated by Islamic visual arts and how animal figures function in them. Islamic art is not representational. A swan is beautiful, a lion is beautiful, but they are only meaningful because they ‘are’, because they exist as realized visions of the Creator. Attempting to replicate a creature with technical realism, artistic or otherwise, is considered to be “shirk” (idolatry, polytheism). So instead, one might present the creature through pictographic calligraphy which, most of the time, reads 'Bismillah', 'Muhammad' or ‘Allah.’ The animal figures themselves are aesthetic-spiritual concepts. Though I am not practicing religious iconoclasm, I too am uninterested in the narrativity of my images. They are there for vibe, they are there for spirit. I am simply and singularly interested in their beauty.

I worked on the concept videos with Dan Tramte (a composer/multimedia artist and a good friend of mine). I’d been following his work for awhile, especially on his social media accounts (which he successfully curates as artistic media), and from a stint in January when we worked together in our close friend/collaborator Marek Poliks’ interdisciplinary show The MAW. Dan had made live video for that show, and I (all of us) loved his work. And since day one, I had been thinking of expanding the medium of SWAN. So I talked to Dan, showed him the images I had collected, and he came up with these amazing videos. So, yes, the short videos mark the sections of SWAN, ground the piece’s conceptual and spiritual content, and (most importantly) contribute to the world / the vibe of SWAN. We are debating adding more video in future shows.

The electronics in this piece are like nothing I've ever experienced. They included field recordings, sonic sculpture, and a bona fide trance track. How did you create the electronics? I'm asking this both in terms of structure and as a sort of semi-tech-literate person who really wants to know, like, HOW you made it.

SWAN is about going out: going out to the street, to the club, to a ritual, to a party or a funeral. It’s about real places with real people, but less about the realities of these places and more about their vibe. It’s about getting out of home, the studio, the institution, going to places where people connect and do things, sing, dance, laugh, cry, perform, celebrate, and connect. The music of SWAN, the electronics, come from ‘outside.’

SWAN’s aesthetic is a blend of Turkish/Islamic and pop-cultural elements. The opening section, Korridor, is a drone/ambient movement with a big trance synth part. It is ritual music. It’s big, dense, heavy, and it moves slowly, like lava. It blankets you and burns you slowly. Karaoke Mahshar is some sort of a Turkish Trance-Pop hybrid. It is a very melancholic, dark piece of music. The instrumental choir sing an emotional pop/“fantasy music” (a Turkish genre) melody in unison over a flamboyant electronic track. It’s the soundtrack to a club for the wasted, for emotional after-hours karaoke. The final section, Rod Modell, is a dub-techno flavored ambient movement. It is the sound of a huge, postapocalyptic mosque - a mosque sunken in chalky waters. Rod evolves to a big, stretched monophonic melody, coming from a very old vinyl, a song from the old times. It finally
cadences to a highly processed “tilâvet” (the Swan) which was recorded during an actual funeral ceremony in the summer of 2016.

I worked on the electronics and the score simultaneously. So, neither came first, it was a single process. I produced, mixed and mastered the electronic part (and the recording of the performance, too) completely digitally in my digital audio workstation. Materials varied from hardware and virtual synths to sample libraries, from little studio recordings to field recordings that I found/made. I also made patches for an analog monophonic synthesizer which the pianist (Mabel) played. This piece was a big learning experience for me, not only in terms of electronic music production, but specifically the techniques and technologies of writing for live instruments and electronics.

Followup question: how do you see the relationship between the sounds produced by live (mic'ed) instrumentalists and the electronic sounds? At one point during rehearsal you said that we (the band) were "an acoustic ring modulation." Can you talk more about that?

The electronics give SWAN its world. They bring virtual space, they bring vibe. But this world is lifeless without the performers’ presence. Without them, it’s just a maquette. You guys are the life in the SWAN-world; you are the force that makes it a real place, that turns the maquette to real music.

SWAN might also take the new music performer out of their comfort zone. The performers play rhythms, chords, melodies, and their efforts are subject to the constraints and exposure of a strict time grid. Though the parts themselves are not too complicated to execute or understand, a single flaw can feel extremely visible. Further, I am asking the performer to really understand these materials through the aesthetics of the SWAN-world. SWAN’s history clashes with the history of the western concert performer. So I think there is a little adjustment, or at least a little productive tension.

Ring modulation is basically the multiplication of two electronic signals with simple waveforms. The result is a metallic, bell-like sound with inharmonic over- and sub-tones. Towards the end of Karaoke Mahshar, I introduce ring modulation in the synth pad, so it gets more and more metallic/inharmonic/detuned. The ring modulated pad also opens Rod Modell and sustains for a while. What I did in the instrumental part was to slowly introduce held out-of-tune tones while introducing microtonal-inflections in the ensemble melody. The beatings, difference/combination tones imitate and extend the ring modulation in the electronic part.

Did any new compositional directions arise for you through your work on this piece?
What's next?

The very next project is an approximately 10-minute long piece with amplified instruments, electronics, and synthesizers, similar forces with SWAN. I’m writing it for this year’s MATA Festival. It’s titled ‘Orchid’. I am working with the aesthetics of SWAN, but probably pushing toward an even more ‘Turkish’ place. After that I’ll be preparing for an installation performance in Denmark.

As I said, composing/producing SWAN has been an invaluable learning experience. Things are getting clearer and clearer. One thing I tried with SWAN was to create an artwork that is a show, an event, a thing by itself rather than simply a piece of music to semi-randomly appear on a new music concert. SWAN should bring its own world - it should kind of curate itself.

Curation and production value are really important for me, and I want to make them a priority in all of my collaborative work. My earliest musical crushes were people who balanced strong aesthetics with equally high-quality production values - people like Janet and Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Sezen Aksu, Ahmet Kaya, Quincy Jones, Tarkan etc. These people are the reasons I decided to become a musician. My recent heroes, too, belong to the lineage of artists who practice this balance. Some names I can name are Rihanna, Young Thug, and Kanye (I have to insert Rod Modell, too, my favorite composer/ producer - I’ve even named the final section of SWAN after him). These are very high standards, and ones that might feel impossible because of their high financial and logistical floor. Resources are much more limited when it comes to music that is more experimental. But we shouldn’t forget - our institutional affiliations give us opportunities that many aspiring artists don’t have (and that many of our most established artists today did not have at their outset). Given the privileges our musical community enjoys, I think that creating good production values is a kind of a responsibility, or at least I consider it every bit a priority as a strong aesthetic sense. That is to say, for future projects, I will devote as much of my energy to production and curation as I do to composition.

Again, SWAN was about ‘going out’. The door is now open for me and I feel like I can go (out) further. I want to keep composing/producing large scale works with a similar, an even more radicalized aesthetic approach. I’m planning to expand the media, and to collaborate with artists from other disciplines more often. I’ve been discussing/brainstorming several future projects with my collaborators for sometime now. Right now, we’re trying to find contexts (such as residencies) to work on both the art itself and of course the financial/ logistical side of things. Though these projects are still at the conceptual stage, I think I’ll be able to make some exciting announcements in a few months.

Swan was performed on February 19, 2017, at Constellation Chicago. A recording of the live performance can be found on soundcloud.

Getting Plucky: No Strings Attached - Q&A with Ben Melsky and Jesse Langen

Getting Plucky: New Music for Harp and Guitar

Q: When and how did the two of you dream up the idea of collaborating to commission new music for harp and guitar?

Ben:  Jesse and I have consistently remarked, after every ensemble piece that we’ve been included on,  (I think the first time was when we did a Radiohead arrangement in DN’s early days at Northwestern) at how well we play together.  It’s just really solid - which is rare - especially considering our instruments and how difficult it can be to pluck notes at precisely the same time.  In an ensemble, harp and guitar are often their own “sections” so to speak, which is kind of uniting in a way. We  face similar challenges incorporating our sound with the ensemble while trying to lining things up rhythmically. Anyway, we did some repertoire searches and decided we needed to add some pieces to that list.   It’s interesting how alike the two instruments are in sound, technique, and role within an ensemble and yet there is remarkably little written for two as a duet.

Jesse:  It seems like such a natural combination; it makes sense for the same reasons that a string quartet or a wind quintet make sense.  It seems strange that there isn’t already a large repertoire; and in that light we saw it as a rare undeveloped opportunity, which we’re eagerly exploiting.

Q: Can you tell us how you identified the composers that you ended up working with? What are the highlights of each piece that we'll hear on the January 23 performance at Elastic Arts?

Ben: We pretty much agreed upon Fred, Drew, Tomás and Kasia immediately and I’m beyond thrilled that they all agreed to write for us.  I think we were interested in approaching composers who had experience with harp/guitar (and with us as performers) who would explore the tiniest timbral details because of the breadth of sound colors available between the two instruments.

I don’t want to give away the game completely but I’ll say the four pieces are totally different approaches to the duet, and have some unique challenges as chamber music. You’ll hear some mysteriously beautiful microtonal tuning, a good heap of character/gesture/pantomime, and a kind of plucky kaleidoscope of sound. Stay “tuned”...

Jesse: When I heard Tomás’ solo piece (After L’addio/Felt) for Ben, my first thought was that I have to get this guy to write me a solo piece!  Followed immediately by the realization that even better might be a duo for Ben and me.  His plucked string writing is virtuosic in an intimate way that comes from a hands-on mentality, and sure enough in rehearsals Tomás is able to take my guitar from me and show me corrections and ideas.  Fredrick Gifford is very familiar with both the guitar and the harp, and the very idea of this duo evokes in my mind a Gifford-temperament soundworld. Kasia is an accomplished harpist herself, but the real reason we thought of her is her creativity with drama in performance, which we thought would (and, in fact, most certainly does!) mesh well with our pursuit of ensemble virtuosity.  I think Drew was an impulse...we just had a feeling that asking him was a good idea.  This impulse paid off richly in the incandescent ass-kicker we got from him.

Q: What are the challenges and rewards of uniting these two instruments as an ensemble?

Ben: 
Challenge: Playing all the notes exactly together.
Reward: When we do, it sounds awesome.

Jesse: I would add on the rewards side that it’s therapeutic to rehearse together.  If you play violin, or flute, or any normal instrument, you get to play with people who play in your family of instruments all the time.  For Ben and for me, if we’re on a gig, it usually means there aren’t any other guitarists or harpists in the room.  So rehearsing together is not only a joy, but a kind of relief.  Ben plays when I think he’ll play, at the volume I expect, with the phrasing I expect.  I think string players, wind players, singers and so forth have this experience all the time, but it’s novel for us.

Q: It's Dal Niente's 10th Anniversary Season. In honor of this special occasion, what have been some of your favorite experiences as part of the ensemble?

Ben: Certainly the Deerhoof Variations come to mind, both performances of In Vain, Schnee… I feel like this season I’ve watched the group really embrace its identity as a music collective, with the blog and the DN Presents series, everyone has contributed in original ways to generate excitement around what we do.  It’s not a specific memory, but I also would have to add how much I love hearing everyone’s ideas at meetings concerts etc.  It’s kind of like a little musical “think tank” - thinking up repertoire, concert ideas, composers to approach, then figuring out how to turn them into reality.

Jesse: At the first Party, neither Matt Oliphant nor I were on any of the pieces, and I remember us exchanging a moment as we realized how great it was to sit back and listen to our favorite people entertain us (and eat and drink all the while) for hours on end.  When I think of Dal Niente moments that I revisit and savor in my head, it’s always my friends playing, and my sitting back thinking how lucky I am to be in the room and listening.
 

Dal Niente Presents: Ben Melsky and Jesse Langen
Saturday, January 23, 2016
8:30pm
Elastic Arts
3429 W. Diversey, #208
Chicago, IL 60647
Tickets $20/$15 (cash only at door)
BUY ADVANCED TICKETS HERE!

Photo credit by Aleksandr Karjaka

Q&A With Mabel Kwan

Q&A With Mabel Kwan

Q: Tell us about your new album, one poetic switch. When did you decide you wanted to record an album and how did you choose the repertoire?

In the last few years I've gotten a lot of new pieces for various keyboard instruments, and I was interested in making an album where you could hear these pieces and instruments side by side. For my first solo album, one poetic switch, I chose pieces that were for piano and clavichord. I’m deeply grateful to Ray, Eliza, Ramteen, Santiago, Fred and Mauricio for their compositions, and for being such wonderful collaborators. The pieces on this album are highly contrasting, even though they were all composed within a few years of each other. I hope you'll give it a listen and I would love to know what you think of it.

Q: We'll be hearing the World Premiere of Fredrick Gifford's Graft Blossom on January 3 where you will perform on toy piano, clavichord, and prepared piano all within the same piece. How did you approach learning a piece that asks you to move from instrument to instrument?

I'm really looking forward to playing this piece on the concert! So actually, the prepared piano part is pre-recorded; it's eight separate layers of piano harmonics in the bass strings and the same pitches played ordinario in the middle range of the piano. You should've seen the intricate web of rubber mutes Fred and I devised to prepare all the harmonics! The clavichord part has two sections, one with lots of running notes, the other percussive and unpitched. The toy piano part works similarly to the running part that you'll hear in the clavichord. Like many of Fred's pieces, you can choose the order in which you put these sections together. It takes some getting used to switching between the different instruments; the width of the keys are different on each instrument so leaps take some practice, and also on the toy piano you have to remember that middle c isn't the one in the middle!

Q: What are some of the objects you will utilize in the performance of one poetic switch by Santiago Diez-Fischer? Was it a challenge to obtain any of the objects you've been asked to use?

I'm really glad to know Santiago's music through a previous work for Dal Niente, and I'm thrilled that he wrote this solo piece for piano. The objects are basically plastic tupperware containers, a plastic wine glass, and a bass bow. It took some time to find the right plastic material; also it needed to make a certain pitch around G/G# which you'll hear is a central note in the piece. There are actually quite a few pieces with objects on this concert. Alex Lunsqui's Glaes or "glass" uses marbles, sandpaper, wine bottles, glass jars. Mauricio Pauly's Patrulla reliquia has intricate playing techniques for metal slide, plectra and effects pedals. Of course I always enjoy playing pieces like Rebecca Saunder's shadow which is on the keys with the hands (and in this case, arms and elbows too).

Q: How long have you been a member of Ensemble Dal Niente? Can you tell us about one of your most memorable moments as part of the ensemble?

My first concert with Dal Niente was in December 2007 at the Green Mill. I don't remember what we played, but I remember the rehearsals, and the personnel, and how clear it was that everyone in the group was in it for artistic reasons, and that we would always seek to challenge ourselves artistically. So much has happened since then! There's the time we played in complete darkness for Haas's in vain, you couldn't see any of your colleagues, the music, your instrument, or the audience, and it was terrifying and profound. Then there are times like after they announced the Kranichstein award and Jesse photobombed our photo, or when Michael came out of the dressing room in pink pants for our New York concert with Deerhoof. I love that the group is always evolving, asking questions about how to do what we do even better, and I look forward to the things we will accomplish together in the coming years.

Dal Niente Presents: Mabel Kwan, piano
Sunday, January 3, 2016
8:30pm
Constellation Chicago
3111 N. Western Avenue
$15/$10
Buy tickets here!

Photo credit: Marc Perlish

Hasco Duo Set to Kick Off Dal Niente Presents Series

(Photo: Aleksandr Karjaka)

Soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett and guitarist Jesse Langen joined forces in 2013 to form Hasco Duo, and have been commissioning, performing, and recording at a breakneck speed ever since. As part of Dal Niente’s 10th Anniversary Season, Hasco Duo will perform twice this Fall- first representing Dal Niente at the New Music Chicago 10th Anniversary Birthday Bash on September 11, and in a full length Dal Niente Presents program on September 14 at The Hideout.

We asked Amanda a few questions about the ensemble’s history and a preview of what to expect on September 14:

Q: How long has Hasco Duo been together? What was the inspiration that led you to form the ensemble?

A: Our first duo show was a Dal Niente Presents show at the Empty Bottle May 2013, which was part of a series called (Un)Familiar music run by Doyle Armbrust. It was originally supposed to be a solo show for Jesse, but after working together on Aaron Einbond's Without Words, we decided to collaborate. We commissioned 7 new pieces for the show; it was quite an undertaking! After that, we played shows together sporadically in Chicago and Omaha, but it wasn't until we put together our first improvised show at the Experimental Sound Studio in the Fall of 2014 that we came up with the name - a respelling of the word chaos - and started recording our first album.

Q: How many new works has Hasco Duo commissioned or premiered? What's your approach to programming a concert that features both older and brand new works?

A: Our approach to programming is very intuitive and impulsive. Half of our output is improvised, and we're always devising new schemes and material on our own or with collaborators. We've also commissioned music from Marcos Balter, Eliza Brown, Ray Evanoff, Fred Gifford, Morgan Krauss, Max Grafe, Jonn Sokol, Ravi Kittappa, and Chris Fisher-Lochhead. We haven't played much older music, although Jesse made some pretty stellar arrangements of DuFay songs for the Mathias Spahlinger festival "there is no repetition" back in March.

Q: What have been some of your most memorable past performances?

A: Our first show as Hasco Duo at the Experimental Sound Studio last Fall was very formative. It was our first improvised show, and we honestly didn't know if it would work. We sort of shot in the dark during the whole process, which was exciting. For that show, we mixed in some of our commissions alongside improvisation and tried to create a narrative for the material. During one piece, I was just laughing the entire time and Jesse was trying to do something very serious. The combination was a little absurd, and the audience was laughing along with me. I remember loving that moment and feeling like we had accomplished something since people were reacting to the performance. I loved that people felt comfortable enough to laugh along with us.

Q: Tell us about your upcoming program on 9/14 at the Hideout. What are some things that audiences can look forward to?

A: We've commissioned new pieces from Ray Evanoff, Morgan Krauss, Max Grafe, and Jonn Sokol for the show, and will be interspersing our own work in the mix. Ray's music is very active and demanding, layering complicated vocal and guitar techniques to create completely novel textures and sounds. Morgan's music, like Ray's, can be very physically demanding, but she creates worlds of repetition with subtle perturbation and fluctuation. Jonn Sokol's piece uses rules from the Magic the Gathering card game and text from one of my favorite books, The Prairie and the Sea by William Quayle. I'm not sure a piece has ever been written more suitably to Hasco's interests! And finally, Max collaborated with a poet friend to create a piece which takes the perspective of the first Mars colonizers.

I absolutely love this program! All of the composers involved are long-time friends and collaborators, and it really shows in the pieces they created. Morgan and Ray were both part of our first project at the Empty Bottle, so it's very meaningful to work with them again as the ensemble continues to develop. Max and Jonn's music is so beautiful, and I want to hear more of it performed in Chicago.

Don’t miss Hasco Duo at The Hideout on September 14 at 8:00 PM.