New Focus Recordings Presents:
David Smooke, Loadbang, Karl Larson, and Michael Parker Harley
Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
Sunday, January 22nd @ 7pm
About the Show
New Focus Recordings proudly presents Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, the new album from composer David Smooke featuring Loadbang, Karl Larson, Lunar Ensemble, Michael Parker Harley, Peabody Wind Ensemble, Harlan Parker, and David Smooke.
This release features his works across the instrumental spectrum, from the title track, which is a toy piano concerto with wind ensemble to the eerie piano solo, Transgenic Fields, to the multi-track composition of layered bassoons, 21 Miles to Coolville. Smooke is the toy piano soloist with the Peabody Wind Ensemble in Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a piece with a fascinating inspiration. The medical examiner’s office for the state of Maryland in Baltimore houses several doll-like structures that are used for forensic investigations. Smooke evokes the intersection between the childlike and the macabre by integrating the toy piano into twisted microtonal harmonies in the wind ensemble, and some wonderful cameo appearances of a microtonally tuned banjo. The instrumental colors in the work are striking and reminiscent of Messiaen, and the soundworld Smooke has created is simultaneously riveting and unsettling.
About the Artist
David Smooke
Composer David Smooke (b. 1969) currently resides in
Baltimore, Maryland, where he teaches music theory, rock music history, and composition, and is the faculty advisor to the contemporary music ensemble Now Hear This at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. The Washington Post claims that “Smooke has some of the most uninhibited brain cells around” and describes his music as “superb […] a kaleidoscopic sonic universe where anything could happen […] one of
those rare pieces you fall in love with from the get-go.” The Baltimore Sun adds that his music is “a highly creative, absorbing experience.” His honors include those from the Maryland State Arts Council, BMI (William Schuman Prize for Most Outstanding Score, BMI Student Composer Awards), the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the National Association of
Composers USA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and SCI/ASCAP (Regional Winner). He has composed commissions for groups and individuals including the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), CUBE,
Rhymes With Opera, Volti Choir, the Peabody Wind Ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, loadbang, Pictures on
Silence, pianists Amy Briggs and Geoffrey Burleson, bassoonist Michael Parker Harley (of Alarm Will Sound), bassist Jeffrey Weisner (of the National Symphony Orchestra), and toy pianist Phyllis Chen (of ICE), and has worked with such ensembles and performers as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Pacifica String Quartet, eighth blackbird, the California E.A.R Unit, Verge Ensemble, Dark in the Song, the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players (now called Contempo), Dal Niente, Syzygy (the Rice University faculty new music ensemble), and the University of Iowa Center for New Music.
Previously he was on the faculties of Ohio University, the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt
University, the Merit School of Music, the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, the Birch Creek
Music Performance Center, and the Sun Valley Summer Symphony Workshops.
David performs improvisations and original works on various instruments including toy piano, supported by Schoenhut toy pianos. He has created free improvisations on toy piano alongside such luminaries as Michael Formanek, Susan Alcorn, Tim Feeney, Courtney Orlando, Erik Spangler, John Dierker, Dave Ballou, Bonnie Lander, Adam Hopkins, and Dana Jessen. He has collaborated with visual artists including the puppet-maker (and Chair of Fiber Arts at MICA) Valeska Populoh, filmmaker Meg Rorison, and interdisciplinary artists Mayumi Ishino and Katherine Kavanaugh. Previously, David has served as co-composer/curator for the Lunar Ensemble (with Emily Koh) and League of the Unsound Sound (with Ken Ueno), and has written over 150 columns for NewMusicBox, the online magazine of New Music U.S.A.
He received an M.M. degree from the Peabody Conservatory, a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he received the Century Fellowship, the highest fellowship offered by the Humanities Division. His composition teachers have included Shulamit Ran,
David Rakowski, John Eaton, Robert Hall Lewis, Ronald Caltabiano and Richard Wernick.
