ARNOLD DREYBLATT w/ members of the Austin New Music Co-op
THURSDAY MARCH 16th
South by South West Festival, Table of the Elements Showcase, Austin Texas

On March 16th, 2006, a lineup of artists on the TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS label performed an evening length program of experimental music. As part of the presentation, composer/performer Arnold Dreyblatt performed alongside Austin New Music Co-op members Steve Bernal (cello), Brent Fariss (prepared contrabass), Nick Hennies (drumset), and Travis Weller (violin). For this event, Dreyblatt created a new piece during a workshop period preceding the concert.

The Austin New Music Co-op has comissioned a new piece from Arnold Dreyblatt in 2007 entitled "Kinship Collapse which was premiered in Austin on October 20.

With support from the Irish Arts Council in 2004, I was commissioned by the Crash Ensemble, Dublin to compose a new work. During a series of intense working visits over a one and half year period, members the ensemble was introduced to the Dreyblatt tuning system. The Crash Ensemble is the only group outside of my own previous ensembles which has learned to perform in my intonation. The resulting work, "Resonant Relations" was composed for flutes (wooden and metal), trombone, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, harpsichord, and percussion (timpanies, snare and bass drum, metal pieces).

The work was first performed at the Sugar Club in Dublin on 27 October 2005 in a program co-curated with Crash artistic director Donnacha Dennehy which included performances of compositions by my two composition teachers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier.

"Resonant Relations" was recorded subsequently in a studio in Dublin and will be issued along with a second composition on Bang On A Can's cantaloupe records in 2007.

   Poster Sugar Club 2005

Dreyblatt composed two pieces for Megafaun and toured the USA for concerts in Salem, New York, Boston, Chicago and New York

In 2002 Dreyblatt recieved a commission from the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in collaboration with the Saarland Radio to compose an Octet for two string quartets (with the fourth violin is replaced by a double bass). In 2003, he rewrote and extended this composition for one string quartet which was played by the Pellegrini Quartet on two occasions.

Music for 32 Strings, 2002
Octet
Performances: 12.2002 at the "Alten Feuerwache"
in Cooperation with the Saarland Statetheater Saarbrucken, Kammermusik-Reihe, und dem Saarl. Rundfunk SR2 - Kulturradio
Saarbrucker Strings-Trio und Pellegrini-Quartett Freiburg
"Resonancen", Curator and Organization: Carsten Seiffhart and Bernd Schulz

Music for 16 Strings, 2003
Quartet
Performances: State Museum Schwerin
Forum New Music, KONZERT IV
September 28, 2003
Curator: Eberhard Blum

Akademie der Künste (Academy of Art), Berlin
As part of the Exhibition: Conceptualisms
September 4, 2003
Curator: Christoph Metztger

Radio Saarland, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2002
Pellegrini Quartet, Saarbrücker String Trio
Octet 18:03

Escalator had its beginnings in a duet performance piece with percussionist Pierre Berthet in Belgium in 1988, and it has been performed in various transformations by The Orchestra of Excited Strings over the years.

In 1986-87 I began working on a "digital dynamic processing system" for a commission at "Ars Electronica" in Linz in 1987 and further developed this in a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam in 1989. This system was triggered with recorded machine tracks and interacts with acoustic instruments. Its basis are recordings of the rhythms produced by a number of malfunctioning escalators on the Blvd. Ansbach in Brussels which I made in 1987.

In this version of Escalator, composed in 1995, I notated repetitive rhythmic patterns found in these recordings and scored them for cimbalom, prepared electric guitar and cello, later adding layers of percussion, saxophone and prepared "excited strings" bass in collaboration with the musicians. Escalator performed by The Orchestra of Excited Strings as well as the Bang On A Can Allstars. A CD of "Escalator", recorded by the Bang On A Can Allstars, was released in 2000 on their CD,"Renegade Heaven", Cantaloupe Records.

"Arnold Dreyblatt's Escalator is based on recordings of malfunctioning escalators. The band would hammer away on one note while the drums pounded with Beefheartian rhythms. Tense harmonies abruptly gave way to gentler sections while still maintaining typical Dreyblatt rhythms. "Escalator" sounded less like a malfunctioning escalators than an insanely mad town orchestra. BOAC should commission more works by New York City microtonalists like Branca and Dreyblatt." - Juxtoposition Ezine

"Arnold Dreyblatt's Escalator took drumbeats based on the rhythms of malfunctioning Belgian escalators and topped them with chords in untempered tunings, sounding both ramshackle and jaunty." - New York Times

Dreyblatt was invited by the Prime Foundation in Groningen for a three-day workshop with a small string orchestra which resulted in a composition which was included in a program entitled Other Tuning.

The first section utilizes the entire ensemble sustaining in just intonation, progressing slowly through the first eleven odd overtones, in each step contrasted with the added inclusion of the fundamental. In the second section a quartet performs in a bowing technique which mirrors the timbre of the struck excited string basses.