"Home Portraits" by Che Buford скачать в хорошем качестве

"Home Portraits" by Che Buford

2023-24 iQ Test Scholar Che Buford's "Home Portraits" Commissioned by icarus Quartet for the 2023-24 iQ Tests Premiered on March 3, 2024 at the Music in the Valley series in Reisterstown, MD Audio recording, editing, and mixing: Ed Tetreault Videographer: Adam Green Location: Peabody Conservatory's Griswold Hall – Baltimore, MD Video editing: Jeff Stern About the piece: “In conceiving Home Portraits, I embarked on a reflective exploration of my year-long experience living in Crown Heights post-graduation and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown. This introspective journey led me to contemplate the memories of my upbringing, the routines I cultivated, and the transformations my neighborhood underwent over the past decade. As a native New Yorker, the inevitable reckoning with gentrification brings forth feelings of loss, displacement, and the impact of violence and destruction. Notably, many of the individuals I now interact with, including my friends, are transplants, bringing with them a certain naivety about the complex realities associated with gentrification. For Home Portraits, I deliberately avoided the approach of creating an ‘angry’ gentrification piece with the intent to persuade a specific viewpoint. Instead, my focus was on crafting a narrative that intimately references key locations within the radius of my upbringing. I sought to illuminate the essence of memories and the emotions tethered to these places. The piece references my building, 'Tivoli Towers,' symbolizing gradual change and loss. The vibrant Brooklyn Botanical Garden, situated just a block away, invokes various childhood memories and the glowing magical nature of the garden. Strolls along Franklin Avenue and Montgomery Street trigger recollections of the lingering scents of cinnamon and spices from a now-vanished spice factory. And finally, the Franklin Avenue Shuttle line, passing an overpass around the corner from my childhood home, where my brother and I would excitedly wave at the passing conductor. Integral to my creative process is the imaginative exploration of sound and its purpose within a composition. The instrumentation of icarus seamlessly complemented the conceptual underpinnings of Home Portraits. I harnessed the capabilities of this instrument to create resonances that decay, serving as a metaphor for the nuanced nature of memory—reliable, unreliable, and fleeting. The diverse percussion sounds, including the ethereal toy piano and evocative bowed cymbals, were intentionally selected to articulate various dimensions of atmosphere. This piece was made possible by the icarus Quartet as part of their iQ Tests fellowship, a collaboration that enriched the creative journey of Home Portraits.” —Che Buford About the composer: Che Buford (he, they) is an NYC-based artist whose work explores creating new narratives within the world of music while engaging in themes of memory and place. Che performs as a violinist in various musical settings, specializing in improvisational performance, contemporary compositions, electroacoustic work, and interdisciplinary collaborations. They have performed and presented work in spaces such as Roulette, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Joe’s Pub, Antenna Cloud Farm, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, ISSUE project room, and National Sawdust. He has collaborated with artists including Palaver Strings, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Deborah Jack, Steph Davis, Pamela Z, and others. As a composer, their work explores the possibilities of timbre and acoustical phenomena and connects them to elements of place, memory, poetry, and the quotidian. Che has received commissions from artists and organizations including Longleash, The Rhythm Method, New York Philharmonic, and Castle of our Skins. Che holds a degree from Boston Conservatory at Berklee as a presidential scholar in violin performance. They are currently a DMA candidate at Columbia University in Music Composition. When Che isn’t interacting with music, he enjoys taking long walks, cooking vegan food, and thrifting. http://chebuford.com About iQ Tests: icarus Quartet's iQ Tests program gives two winners the opportunity to collaborate on a new piece with the Quartet through an entire season, have their resulting works featured in live performances, and ultimately recorded with professional audio and video. iQ takes each of their Scholars through the detailed collaboration process that is behind all of their new works, provide them with the chance to learn how to work with an ensemble, and develop a professional relationship beginning with the presentation and documentation of a new work for pianos and percussion. For more information, including the free application, visit: https://icarusquartet.org/iq-tests