Crystal Radio (2013)
Instrumentation: Percussion
Electronics: Yes
Duration: 12'
Commissioned for Steven Schick by the Fromm Foundation for Music at Harvard.
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NOTES: Crystal Radio (2013) traverses the spaces between pitch and noise that are inherent to percussion. The popular DIY receiver kit of that name uses a natural crystal as a rectifying diode to detect radio waves and make them audible through an earpiece. When I built one as a child I heard mostly cosmic static, but the sound captured by the coil of wire and the purity of its name sparked my imagination to the vast distances traveled by radio and by the mystery of signals swirling around us, waiting to be tapped.
The instruments in Crystal Radio each follow independent arcs between expressing their distilled pitch and their noisy natures through unusual playing techniques and discrete amplification. Physical rhythms of instruments clapping together, scraping sandpaper, and rebounding sticks are made mechanical, connected to rapid-fire bursts. As in any work that includes "non-pitched" percussion, the performer has a huge role in shaping the tonal world; in Crystal Radio, live electronics extract pitches from the set-up and express them clearly through narrow bands of white noise. Meanwhile, the percussionist's hands (and occasionally feet) are generally playing different music at different speeds on different instruments, communicating with each other (and us) across a microcosm of this continuum.
Crystal Radio was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation and written for Steven Schick.