Tristan Perich to Release COMPOSITIONS Recordings Series; PARALLELS Out 3/24

Widely admired for his innovative projects, composer/maker/visual artist Tristan Perich is pleased to announce the launch of Compositions, a series of four creatively packaged recordings coming out this year on his imprint, Physical Editions. Each Compositions release spotlights a single work by Perich for acoustic instruments plus 1-bit electronics. The first is Parallels (50', 2013), performed by the Meehan/ Perkins Duo and released on Tuesday, March 24. Further releases in the series include Telescope (May), Dual Synthesis (August), and Active Field with Ensemble Signal (November); details appear below.

To mark the launch of Compositions, the Meehan/ Perkins Duo will perform Parallels at the Sky Gallery in Brooklyn on Wednesday, March 25 (8 pm). The event, presented by Gowanus Art + Production, will also incorporate Perich's visual art, with an installation of his motor-driven Machine Drawings in the white-box space.

The Sky Gallery is located at 460 Union St., Brooklyn, adjacent to the Green Building. Tickets are $20/$15 in advance, available at www.gowanusartandproduction.com.

ABOUT COMPOSITIONS:

Noted for music of "intense, hypnotic force and a surprising emotional depth" (Wall Street Journal), Perich is best known as the creator of the ingenious 1-Bit Symphony, a full-length piece on a microchip housed in a transparent CD case with a headphone jack. With his Compositions series, he extends his exploration of sound and object to include a crucial link in the creative process: the notated score.

Each installment of the Compositions series comes as a unique CD package that includes a poster-sized print of the entire musical score on a single sheet of paper. In the same way his 1-Bit Symphony included its source code and schematic, the scores in Compositions expose the music behind the recording.

Marking the culmination of the series this Fall, an exclusive Artist Edition (100 per release) will feature a custom-made player for each composition - fabricated as a raw circuitboard faced with an etched anodized aluminum cover - along with an archival print of the score.

Opening the series, Parallels explores the nature of pitched and unpitched percussive sounds combined with pure 1-bit tones from his custom-designed electronics. Commissioned by the Meehan/ Perkins Duo, the piece focuses on the intersection of tone and noise. Perich draws parallels (hence the title) between the duality of 1-bit sound - 1 or 0, on or off - and the open or closed timbres of triangles and hi-hat. From these ostensibly simple musical materials, the 50-minute piece conjures surprising sonic variety, even a bracing grandeur. The recording is mixed and mastered by engineer Michael Riesman, noted for his long association with Philip Glass.

The release schedule is as follows:

• March 10: Compositions - Parallels (50', 2013) for tuned triangles, hi-hats and 4-channel 1-bit electronics; Meehan/Perkins Duo
• May: Compositions - Telescope (7', 2007) for two bass clarinets, two baritone saxophones and 4-channel 1-bit electronics; Argeo Ascani + Alex Hamlin, saxes; Sara Budde + Eileen Mack, clarinets
• August: Compositions - Dual Synthesis (23', 2009) for harpsichord and 4-channel 1-bit electronics; Daniel Walden, harpsichord
• November: Compositions - Active Field (25', 2007) for ten violins and 10-channel 1-bit electronics; Ensemble Signal conducted by Brad Lubman

PROCESS + OBJECT:

Says Perich, "With this series, I'm experimenting with presenting my compositional work as a collection of singles rather than curated albums.By including the score,I want to connect the listening experience back to the original composition, as well as highlight the separate roles of composer and performer. It is the performer who translates score into sound, a live event that is captured and becomes the recording.

"That live, physical aspect of performance is important to how I work with both acoustic instrumentation and electronics. In my work with 1-bit music, the audio waveforms are streams of 1s and 0s, on and off pulses of electricity that the audio speaker turns into sound. I build my own circuits to make the connection between code and sound as direct as possible. Similar to performance, computation itself is a physical process, so these compositions are essentially duets between human and machine, explorations of this soundmaking process."

One of the most striking features of the Compositions series is the way it integrates image, object, and sound. Starting with the scores themselves, each element has been designed by Perich, who is as prominent in the art world as in the musical community. His Microtonal Wall, a sound installation with 1,500 microtonally tuned speakers, was mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013. His Machine Drawings - ink-on-paper or wall drawings executed by a custom-built machine - have been described by BOMB magazine as "elegantly delicate."

For Perich, Compositions harks back to an era before recordings, when the unit of a composer's output was the individual score - an "old-fashioned" point of view that resonates equally with today's playlist-driven soundscape. His music tends to be dense in texture - he favors groupings of like instruments - and driven by propulsive rhythmic patterns. Yet the Compositions range widely in mood, from the stately, pastoral quality of Active Field (the most "orchestral" of the pieces), to the nocturnal ebb and flow of Telescope and the effervescent skitterings of Dual Synthesis and Parallels.

The compositions series will be available as a year-long subscription for $50, or individually: $18 for Parallels, $12 for Telescope, and $15 each for Active Field and Dual Synthesis. Subscribers will receive each release a week before it is available to the general public. The separate limited Artist Edition releases will each sell for $250, or $750 for the set of four. For further information, visit www.physicaleditions.com.

ABOUT MEEHAN/ PERKINS DUO - The Meehan/ Perkins Duo, founded in 2006, is dedicated to creating a new body of work for percussion duo. Todd Meehan and Doug Perkins have collaborated with the composers David Lang and Paul Lansky, among others, and have shared their music with audiences worldwide (mpduo.com).

ABOUT TRISTAN PERICH - Tristan Perich's (New York) work is inspired by the aesthetic simplicity of math, physics and code. The WIRE Magazine describes his compositions as "an austere meeting of electronic and organic."

1-Bit Music, his 2004 release, was the first album ever released as a microchip, programmed to synthesize his electronic composition live. His latest circuit album, 1-Bit Symphony, has received critical acclaim, called "sublime" (New York Press). His award winning work coupling 1-bit electronics with traditional forms in both music (Active Field, Observations) and visual art (Machine Drawings, Microtonal Wall) has been presented around the world, from Sonar and Ars Electronica to MoMA and bitforms gallery.

This season he will have work at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago, Chile, and at L'Auditori, Barcelona. He received a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He was a featured artist at Sonár 2010 in Barcelona, and in 2009, Austria's Prix Ars Electronica awarded him the Award of Distinction for his composition Active Field. Rhizome awarded him a 2010 commission for Microtonal Wall, an audio installation with 1,500 speakers, which was shown at MoMA. He was artist in residence at Issue Project Room in 2008, at Mikrogalleriet in Copenhagen in 2010, and at the Addison Gallery in Andover, MA and Harvestworks in New York in Fall 2010. His work has received support from New York State Council on the Arts, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer and others. He has spoken about his work and taught workshops around the world. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University and received a masters in art, music and electronics at Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. (www.tristanperich.com)