Suite No. 1

a piece by
Adie San Diego and Henry Ives

performed by
Christina Carlos, Autumn Rodrigue, and Spencer Lenain

Movements

I. Overture (station praise)
II. Moderato (praise station)
III. Andante (departing praise station)
IV. Allegro (petite mania)
V. Lento (civil war battle aftermath type beat)
VI. Finale (that indescribable feeling)

About the Project

Suite No. 1 was created in collaboration with choreographer Adie San Diego and performed by Christina Carlos, Autumn Rodrigue, and Spencer Lenain at CalArts on April 18th, 2024.

The aesthetic cornerstone of the piece is the Tagalog word "kalabuan," meaning obscurity or haziness. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to extrapolate what extra-musical meanings a mid-20s art school student might draw from such a word. Musically, this concept led me to swirling textures of interlocking percussion ostinati, taking inspiration from Steve Reich, John Adams, and, in the finale, Nicole Kidman. I also made heavy use of digital manipulation such as reversing and time stretching to further obscure the musical gestures. The audience is never quite oriented, but never completely lost.

Many elements of the process were new to me: we had about three weeks to put together 15 minutes of sound and movement. This forced us to work in parallel, with Adie choreographing to temp tracks, and me writing to the rehearsal videos she provided. It also forced me to merge the composition, recording, and production processes. This mostly constituted frenetic sessions of composing/improvising/tracking marimba, vibraphone, piano, and tambourine parts into my portable production setup (read: a Zoom H2n plugged into my laptop), then editing the takes together, rearranging the composition, creating manipulated audio effects, and adding electronic instruments.