Ralph Lewis: Composer

I’m proud to announce that Drive to the Edge was selected for the 2017 SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) in at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota happening this April.

This weekend Tori Lupinek, Annie Lyle Mason, Connor Thummel, Dakota Wayne, and I got to play a show at the opening night of Slate Arts + Performance‘s PROTEST exhibition that included two Chicago premieres of my pieces (I Was On the Side of the Highway and Ruckus from the Quiet Zone).

Performing at Slate was everything we dream about as musicians: a warm, encouraging environment from Slate’s curators and a big, vibrant audience of people of all ages. (Apparently there was a girl in a dinosaur costume looking in the window at Annie during her solo performance of I Was On the Side of the Highway! Perfect first New Music experience!)

It also was an intriguing space with engaging, diverse works by artists including Soheila Azadi + Liz Cambron, Olga Guse, Gary Lehman, Chris Wanklyn (who I got to meet and was great!), Charity White, Chris Willie, and Jade Williams.

Annie and I found some great spots to do the different spatialized sections of Highway. The first part of it is always meant to be removed, distant and marginalized, which was in perfect contrast to Connor bringing the unfiltered thunder in Persichetti’s Parable no. 18.

Ruckus from the Quiet Zone centers around Chris Vaisvil’s canon, a homemade string instrument that we made available for the audience to try out afterwards. Tori, Dakota, and I joined Connor and Annie in contemplating the glacial ballet of the Green Bank Telescope and living in the National Radio Quiet Zone. See a bit of it in the video excerpt above!

So many thanks to Jenny and Ben for making it so easy to have a wonderful time at Slate!

I’m so happy to share the first episode of “Penelope’s Endless Book of Magic.” Join Penelope and her friend as they try to understand the hurdles of growing up and try to see if magic can make it any more fun and easy. Come for the laughs, revel in the weird!

Big ups to the talented performers in this project: David Cyzak, Zachary Bowers, Liz Lewis, and Alfred Shaw!

After such a lovely experience at WGXC’s Wave Farm, I went down to Manhattan to record the replica Bertoia Sonambient sculptures (made by Harry Bertoia’s son Val) at the Museum of Arts and Design as part of its Atmosphere for Enjoyment: Studio Sessions. Each month the exhibit is up different artists get a chance to record with the sculptures.

It’s neat that MAD continues its tradition of participatory exhibits: while the exhibit was shut down in some ways (all other audio turned off) so I could record without interference, MAD also offers times for the public to come try out the sculptures throughout the week.

Playing Bertoia’s sculptures was a strange experience: handling them felt foolproof but still full of sonic mystery. It was less how I activated the sculptures, and more that I (or someone did). That requisite (human?) touch and the resulting wandering, shimmering or vagrant reverberations were fascinating. More to follow once I have thought on this more.

Thanks for a great summer, WGXC and MAD!

(photo credits: Leila Zogby)

Today is the start of something for me and the people involved in this radio serial opera, and I am so happy to be sharing it with you. We’ve talked about, worried about it, laughed about it, and dreamed about a confluence of an engaging if silly narrative structure and emotional electroacoustic music. Something that aspires to live on radio, be transmitted and readily enjoyed. Something with some bitey teeth and silly smirks. This is the first episode and there are more on the way.

Tune in today from 4 – 6 pm EST on WGXC 90.7-FM or stream on www.wavefarm.org for Saturday Afternoon Show host Tom Roe and I discuss and play Penelope’s Endless Book of Magic, what’s in store for it, and play and discuss other music and transmission works I have been doing.

Two especially enormous thank you’s are required:

To Galen and Tom at Wave Farm for being excited by the idea behind this work and encouraging its creation with an artist residency. I have had such a wonderful time here and feel so encouraged!

To the MAGNIFICENT Alfred Shaw (The real Alfred the Great) who has taken the lead role to new heights of fun and awesomeness and has been such a generous, animated collaborator.

(Update: Episode 1 and future episodes can be heard here!)

How does your visible world intersect with and affect the invisible signals your radio (or smart device) receive?

Tune in tonight (12:05 am EST) on WGXC 90.7-FM and at www.wgxc.org and explore it with Drive to the Edge. As part of your exploration, please record the transmission from Wave Farm and share it with us so we can air these variations of receivers and places on Saturday.

(Email them to ralphlewis.music@gmail.com)

Hey everyone! I’m heading to WGXC this weekend to start my residency there. Our first event is a Radio Monster Party, where we’ll talk to local kids about electroacoustic music and radio through the lens of dreaming up and designing monster sounds. Tune in and join in the fun! 🙂

After a wonderful first year at University of Illinois with so many great times, new friends, and the opportunities to explore new ideas, I’m about to start a really fun summer.

In June, I’ll be attending the Fresh Inc Festival at University of Wisconsin-Parkside where some great musicians I’m just beginning to get to know will premiere social pressures on the moon for flute, oboe, bass clarinet, soprano sax, and trombone.

In July, I’ll be heading to New York to do an artist residency at Wave Farm, WGXC 90.7-FM and will be broadcasting the premiere of Penelope’s Endless Book of Magic, a radio serial opera I am working on.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out this series I did for Wave Farm early this year! It’s called Drive to the Edge.

Under a grey sky, Celestial in the Dusk, my lumbering carillon piece, premiered on University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s McFarland Carillon as part of a concert Dong Ryul Lee organized today.Thanks Dong Ryul!

While I had imagined the last gasp of a sunlight as the setting of it (because we are not allowed to play carillon before 5 pm) this worked too.

Other composers on the concert were M.O. Abbott, Byungjin Kim, Ming-ching Chiu, Kyle Shaw, and Stephen Taylor. I really liked what I heard–some very clever solutions for dealing with this quirky, beautiful instrument. I hope we can do another one of these concerts in the Fall.