April 21st 2011: Quatuor Bozzini performing Slip Trains (Montreal, Canada)
May 14th 2011: ICE Ensemble performing Bird in the Well for large ensemble (Boston, USA)
July 13th 2011: Bird in the Well for large ensemble as part of Acanthes Festival (Metz, France)
August 20th/21st 2011: Slip Trains (for string quartet) and Bird in the Well (for large ensemble) performed by Ensemble SurPlus (Stuttgart, Germany)
October 2011: Fox Bride performed by Continuum Ensemble (Toronto, Canada)
Sabrina Schroeder (b. 1979 in BC, Canada) writes music for acoustic ensembles, homemade instruments, electronic sound, and extended performance or installation environments. Playing through tactile sounds and gestural language, her work finds much of its underlying impulses in the grain of daily events, exploring patterns and synergies in both external and intuitive layers of perception.
Her work has been presented throughout North America and Europe by groups that include the Orchestra de Ereprijs (Netherlands), OCNM Ensemble (Czech Republic), Arraymusic (Toronto), Frequenzen (Germany), Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), SEM Ensemble (New York), Flux Quartet (New York), Calithumpian Consort (Boston), Till by Turning (Chicago/New York), Quatuor Diotima (France), violinist Nadia Francavilla and other independent performers including a duo show with composer-performer Aaron Siegel at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens, NY.
She has been an active and founding member of several composer-performer collectives presenting scored and improvised music, the initiator of a project and performance venue (578 John Street) presenting work by emerging sound and visual artists, and recently became a performing member of the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet. From 2007-2009, Schroeder taught as an adjunct lecturer in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s media art department designing courses in sound art and cross-disciplinary threads in 20th C art.
Schroeder has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including five grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and others awarded by the British Columbia Arts Council, Wesleyan University, Harvard University, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Main teachers have included Michael Longton and Christopher Butterfield (University of Victoria), Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton (Wesleyan University), and Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, and Hans Tutschku (Harvard University).
She currently lives in Somerville, Massachussets, and balances time between freelancing, building things, and working on a PhD.
Fox Bride (2010)
I wrote this piece working in layers, as though mapping different parts of the same room. While each layer embodies a distinct character, a curious sense of communication emerges between them. The piece evolves around folding and unfolding these layers in various ways, exploring them in relationship and as shifting dimensions of one another.
This recording features the Calithumpian Consort in Paine Hall at Harvard University on November 6th 2010.
Fox Bride (performed by Calithumpian Consort) by sabrinaschroeder
Holding Patterns (2008)
The idea of ‘the wondrous’ struck me early on in the work and teachings of Rudolf Komorous and lingers as a thread in much of my own thinking. Holding Patterns is a pursuit of this sensation within more abstract landscapes of timbre and noise. It is also about amplifying the surface tension of such fields by suggesting perforation or transparency, seeking to create a kind of living fabric through which incongruous elements peek through.
Commissioned by New York based ensemble Till By Turning, this recording was made in concert at the Friends Seminary Meeting House in Manhattan on March 31st 2008.
Exits and Defences (2005)
Commissioned by Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini, this piece was inspired in part through an illustration by situationist Guy Debord that maps, in his words, the “atmospheric unities of a city.” Debord first cut a map of Paris into segments experienced as having distinct unities, then spread these pieces out to reflect the sense of mental distance between them. Leaving exaggerated space in place of vehicle traffic and other voids, he then drew patterns of directional arrows to illustrate the most active circulations of foot traffic both through and between distinct regions. With striking economy, the image portrays a web of social conditions that figure into the identity of most cities – exposing patterns of polarities that both influence such conditions and develop through them.
Encountering this image around a time spent exploring early writings of Jane Jacobs, I developed a fascination with how musical relationships and aesthetic forms can be thought of as governed by networks of gravities, comparable, at some level, to those active within city spaces. Rather than suggesting literal framework, this interest provided a backdrop through which the piece developed, influencing many of my choices around distributing material and space, and interlacing microstructures into more open forms.
The integration of metered and un-metered notation developed in appreciation of both how open time feels in juxtaposition to strictly ordered time (a relationship that may be enjoyed by any wandering pedestrian in observing the simplest interactions between traffic lights and the energies and movements of people within a space), and of how removal of pulse serves to intensify communication between players.
Performed by Quatuor Bozzini, this live recording was made at the Dresdner Bank Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (Frankfurt, Germany), August 31st, 2005.
Exits and Defences by sabrinaschroeder
2011 New work in progress bass flute, tuba, percussion, harp, guitar, violin, viola, cello, bass
2010 Slip Trains string quartet
2009 Fox Bride alto flute, bass clarinet, percussion, violin, cello
2009 Measures True electronics with live diffusion
2009 Exquisite Corpse* soprano sax, guitar, piano, percussion, violin, cello, double bass
2008 Mobile II solo violin with electronics
2007 Lift bicycles, brake drums, found metal, typewriters, light bulbs, assorted
glass, ball bearings, ondes martenot
2007 Holding Patterns violin, viola, cello, bassoon, piano
2007 On Migration voice, double bass
2006 All Snap Flags soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, viola, double bass, percussion
2006 Eve Blossom Has Wheels clarinet in Bb, trumpet in Bb, trombone, vibraphone, percussion
2005 Exits and Defences string quartet
2005 Love Machine voice, socket-set ratchet
2005 These Lines Are Not Hard To Make processed recorded sounds
2004 The Enemy is the Gramophone Mind bicycle, harmonium, amplified toy piano
2004 Otta’s Wheel saw, accordion, double bass, percussion
2003 Simple Machines flute, clarinet in Bb, bassoon, 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos
2003 Good Boot violin, bass clarinet, piano, double bass, percussion
2002 Walking Song 2 flutes, clarinet in Bb, tenor / alto saxophone, trumpet in Bb, horn in
F, 2 trombones, tuba, piano, drum kit, electric guitar, electric bass, 3
whistlers
2002 In 3 solo for voice with tubing, pot lid, glass jar
2002 Red Comfort Suit violin, clarinet in Bb, trumpet in Bb, tenor saxophone, double bass
2002 Song One duo for playpen boards
2002 Song Two duo for electric toy drum, xylophone, toy guitar, megaphone, tricycle
2001 Twenty-one Small Pieces / Riffs flute, clarinet in Bb, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, slide-whistle
2001 They Do Dance Well Together harmonium, glockenspiel
2000 Other Dance Clarinet in Bb, trumpet in Bb, piano, violin
2000 Song for Rain duo for voice, violin, squeaky chair, rubber duck
2000 How Many Times Do You Remember This? 2 clarinets in Bb, bassoon, 3 violins, viola, double bass
* Collaborative piece with composer Michael Schumacher