Liza Lim: Sex Magic — Density 2036: Part VII Claire Chase featuring Senem Pirler

• Liza Lim (b. 1966): Sex Magic:
• 1 Lim: Sex Magic: Pythoness 04:42
• Sex Magic: Oracles i:
• 2 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles i: Salutations to the cowrie shells 04:06
• Sex Magic: Oracles ii:
• 3 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles ii: Womb-bell 03:11
• Sex Magic: Oracles iii:
• 4 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles iii: Vermillion – on Rage 02:19
• Sex Magic: Oracles iv:
• 5 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles iv: Throat Song 04:53
• Sex Magic: Oracles v:
• 6 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles v: Moss – on the Sacred Erotic 08:23
• Sex Magic: Oracles vi:
• 7 Lim: Sex Magic: Oracles vi: Telepathy 01:16
• Sex Magic:
• 8 Lim: Sex Magic: Skin-Changing 08:03
• 9 Lim: Sex Magic: The Slow Moon Climbs 08:48
• Total Runtime 45:41

Info for Liza Lim: Sex Magic — Density 2036: Part VII

Virtuoso flutist Claire Chase continues her laudable documentation of her multi-year commissioning project, Density 2036, with a digital release of Australian-Chinese composer Liza Lim's Sex Magic for contrabass flute, alto ocarina, Aztec "death whistle," electronics, and kinetic percussion. Through the piece, Lim explores elemental sources of feminine power and the realm of childbirth in a rich tapestry of sound and advanced instrumental technique.

Liza Lim’s Sex Magic revolves around a constellation of symbolic associations, sonic rituals, and stylistic referents to craft a musical statement on the essence of women’s power. The work is a direct outgrowth of one arena in Claire Chase’s practice; Lim was particularly captivated by Chase’s interpretive voice as manifested through her contrabass flute, lovingly named “Bertha.” Extrapolating upon the vocabulary of sounds Chase has cultivated through Bertha, Lim draws on musical traditions around the world that feature large flutes, often in ritual contexts, exploiting the instrument for its deep resonant tones, multi-dimensional pitch articulation, and capacity for a unique range of percussive sounds. In live performance, small hand percussion is arranged on altars, as if part of an offering. Those altars are affixed with transducers to amplify the instruments arranged open on top of them, processed to vibrate at pitches that relate to the flute material. Lim and Chase’s conception is beautifully integrated and holistic, an expression of the rich, elemental values that the piece explores.

The opening movement, “Pythoness,” begins with clarion calls of awakening, in dialogue with feedback from the skin of a floor drum upon which the massive flute rests. On an audio recording, the listener hears a poignant duet, moving directly past constricted presentations of discrete pitch and rhythm into an immediate expression of organic gesture. It sets a powerful tone for the work to come, carving out its own musical language as a vehicle for inhabiting an evocative space.

Six “Oracles” follow and comprise the main body of the work, each exploring different actors in the ritual, as laid out on the altars in front of the audience. Cowrie shells, used as currency in some cultures and rich with symbolism, are featured in “Oracle i”, a patient dance in which sudden rhythmic outbursts in the flute are tempered by sensual waves of articulation on the shells. In “Oracle ii: Womb-bell” the flute and altars vibrate in symbiosis, the latter activated by resonant frequencies on the contrabass flute. The pigment vermillion is the focus of the third oracle, frequently used in decorative arts and associated with blood and life force in Chinese culture. Lim’s evocation of the highly toxic pigment is fierce and energized, with charged and focused passagework on the flute that is punctuated by percussive hits, and culminating in a chilling scream.

For “Oracle iv: Throat Song,” Chase shifts to the alto ocarina, playing and singing into the instrument closely associated with Chinese and Mesoamerican traditions in poignant intimacy.

The longest of the oracles, number five, “Moss – on the Sacred Erotic”, is scored for contrabass flute alone, and gives Chase the opportunity to revel in the otherworldly sound cavern inside Bertha. What is particularly remarkable is how nimble Chase manages to be on the large instrument, executing fleet passagework alongside haunting multiphonics and breathy trills. Lim closes the oracles with a minute long silent meditation, a reset to the ground from which all of the sounds of the work grow.

“Skin Changing” unleashes the rhythmic possibilities of the entire hyper-flute setup, with Chase triggering events from key clicks and mouth sounds on Bertha. Polyrhythmic figures, ricochet reactions, and overlapping patterns create an elaborate drumming ritual. A somber low register melody closes the energetic movement, eliding into a bass flute solo to open to final movement, “The Slow Moon Climbs,” the longest of the work. Chase’s flute and the altars engage in a responsive energy exchange, organisms intertwined in mutually reinforcing feedback. It is an apt image for the close of Lim’s work, a piece that is about the connection, vibration, and oneness that flows from the ancient wisdom inherent in the experience of womanhood. – Dan Lippel

Claire Chase, flute, alto flute, bass flute, double bass
Susie Ibarra, percussion
Senem Pirler, live electronics

Claire Chase
a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, is a soloist, collaborative artist, and activist for new music. Over the past decade she has given the world premieres of over 100 new works for flute, many of them tailor-made for her. In 2014 she began Density 2036, a project to commission, premiere and record an entirely new program of pieces for flute every year until 2036, the 100th anniversary of the eponymous and seminal piece by Varese. Also in the 2014-15 season, Chase is music directing and playing as soloist in a series of performances of Salvatore Sciarrino's Il cerchio tagliato dei suoni for 4 flute soloists and 100 flute “migranti”.

Chase has performed throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, including debuts last season in Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris, London, São Paolo and Guangzhou. She has released three solo albums, Aliento (2010), Terrestre (2012) and Density (2013). In 2014, she was selected as an inaugural Fellow of Project&, with which she will several new works exploring the relationship between language, music and social interaction over the next several years.

Chase was First Prize Winner in the 2008 Concert Artists Guild International Competition. She co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001 and serves as the organization’s Artistic Director and CEO in addition to playing over fifty concerts a year as an ensemble member. ICE has premiered more than 600 works since its inception and pioneered a new artist-driven organizational model that earned the company a Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center in 2010. Chase was also honored with Crain’s Business “40 under 40” Award in 2013.

In 2013, Chase founded The Pnea Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute and its repertoire in the 21st century through commissions, community engagement, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaborations and advocacy. She lives in Brooklyn.

Susie Ibarra
is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Her interdisciplinary practice spans formats, including performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multi-channel audio installations, recording, and documentary. Many of Ibarra’s projects are based in cultural and environmental preservation: she has worked to support Indigenous and traditional music cultures, such musika katatubo from the North and South Philippine islands; her sound research advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters; and she collaborates with The Joudour Sahara Music Program in Morocco on initiatives that preserve sound-based heritage with sustainable music practices and support the participation of women and girls in traditional music communities.

She is a recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Award in Music/ Sound (2022), a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship (2020); United States Artists Fellowship in Music (2019); the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (2018); and a TED Senior Fellowship (2014).

Susie Ibarra is a Yamaha, Vic Firth, and Zildjian Drum Artist.

Her album, Talking Gong ( New Focus Recordings 2021), features soloists and ensemble members Claire Chase ( bass, alto , flute and piccolo) and Alex Peh ( piano) , with its title piece commissioned by SUNY New Paltz when Ibarra was Davenport Composer in Residence 2018. The album is inspired by traditional Filipino southern gong music, Maguindanaon kulintang music and by birdsongs of the region. Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change (2020) is a collaboration with glaciologist, geographer, and climate scientist Dr. Michele Koppes, which maps water rhythms from source to sink. Ibarra’s composition is derived from field recordings of five global watersheds, including the Greenland ice sheet and glacier-fed rivers of the Himalayas. Water Rhythms is an acoustic story of human entanglements with a changing climate and landscape. The premiere of Water Rhythms was presented by Fine Acts Foundation and TED at Jack Poole Plaza, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Innisfree Gardens, Millbrook, NY (2020). It has also been shown at The Countdown Summit, Edinburgh, Scotland (2021); as part of Nothing Makes Itself at the ARKO Art Center, Seoul, Korea (2021); and as a multi-channel sound installation at Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY (2021) and the San Francisco Exploratorium (2022).

Ibarra’s piece Fragility Etudes , was a commissioned film by Asia Society Triennial 2021 We Do Not Dream Alone. These compositions are rhythmic studies for solos and ensemble which reflects humanity’s interdependence. Ibarra explores conduction, polyrhythms and concepts from the physics of glass. Fragility Etudes was filmed in residency and premiered at MASSMoCA in live performance 2021. The film is directed by collaborating multimedia artist Yuka C. Honda. September 2022 Ibarra conducted multi-ensemble Fragility Etudes in Zamane Festival Morocco. She was commissioned for a new work for percussion in which she created RITWAL solo percussion Susie Ibarra, for the UNDRUM Festival produced by Architek Percussion and Suoni Per Il Popolo 2021 for video which premiered in June 2021. As a producer, Ibarra collaborates with Splice to create sound packs based in environmental sounds, traditional musical cultures, and her own extended percussion language. Sounds of the Drâa Valley Morocco is a sound pack featuring six traditional ensembles and soloists from South Saharan Morocco (2022). Ibarra has also collaborated with composer and bassist Richard Reed Parry on two sound packs and a new album of compositions focused on breath cycles and heart beats, Heart and Breath: Rhythm and Tone Fields (OFFAIR Records, 2022).

Senem Pirler
is a sound and intermedia artist, and educator based in Troy/Brooklyn, NY. Pirler’s interdisciplinary work crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, performance, video art, movement, and installation.

Born in Turkey, she studied classical piano at Hacettepe State Conservatory and sound engineering & design at Istanbul Technical University (MIAM). She developed her artistry working as a composer and recording engineer before moving to the U.S. in 2010 to study Music Technology on a Fulbright Fellowship. Pirler earned her M.M. in Music Technology the Stephen F. Temmer Tonmeister Honors Track from NYU Steinhardt, and her Ph.D. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her dissertation’s title was Disruption, Dis/orientation, and Intra-action: Recipes for Creating a Queer Utopia in Audiovisual Space.

Pirler has exhibited and performed her work at international venues such as Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center/EMPAC (NY), Roulette Intermedium (NY), The Kitchen (NYC), Southbank Centre (London), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), LA Phil (CA), Baryshnikov Arts Center (NY), Montalvo Arts Center (CA), Mount Tremper Arts (NY), and Collar Works (NY).

Pirler has been awarded a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in the category of Music/Sound in 2022 and the Malcolm Morse Award to honor the work of Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening in 2018. Her work has been recognized by grants and residencies, including, most recently, Institute for Electronic Arts residency, PACT Zollverein residency, and Signal Culture residency. Dr. Pirler joined the Bennington College faculty in Fall 2018.

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