DATALORE
TENOR MADNESS
GIANT STEPS
Olencki' s three pieces for saxophone take divergent approaches toward algorithmic listening. In Datalore, Stadler' s virtuosic sopranino shredding is pitted against its virtual double, a physically-modeled saxophone outfitted with dual pitch detection algorithms, stereophonically fed back into each source. Tenor Madness makes the instrument's memory audible, using a real-time concatenative synthesis engine to close-match Stadler's improvised material to over 300+ albums spanning the entire recorded history of the tenor saxophone. It attempts to make audible the saying that "to freely improvise is to play (with) everything one has ever heard." Giant Steps is simply a time-stretched rendition of Coltrane's Giant Steps, his extended explorations in harmonic flight translated onto the inharmonic spectra of the baritone sax.
PUDDLES AND CRUMBS
Puddles and Crumbs, written by Young for Olencki, wires up Olencki' s trombone in a loving embrace of the byproducts and detritus of instrumental performance. The piece is older than the others on the album, but in the music's slide hits, trigger smacks, gasping inhales, thuds, and pops, themes that get developed in the later works are present in raw form: electroacoustic hybridity, instruments as cyborgian tools, the expressivity of physical virtuosity, and the creative fertility of collaborative integrity.
MYCORRHIZA II [WITH PATRICK]
In Young's Mycorrhiza II [with Patrick], Stadler's recorded doubles ebb and flow around the live performer's sound to build a subtly shifting palimpsest. It is the second in Young's series of works for solo performers and electronics that take inspiration from vast and anarchic subterranean fungal networks. like the mycorrhizal networks that act like "bridges between the individual trees" (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass), the music is fragile and fierce, vulnerable and vital.