Photophonics
All photos copyright Merryl Riley
I've uploaded a few of the audio tracks. Click on the track title for the link.
This compilation of music was created for my masters portfolio which I completed in 2008. The purpose of the project was to interpret a selection of Merryl Riley's photographs using a different correlating concept for each translation. Some of these tracks are studio productions, others are recordings of live performances .
All works copyright Fiona Tozer 2008 (member of SAMRO)
All photographs used by permission from Riley Photographic
Snapshots
piano : Catherine Morrow
Biographical narrative. A series of nine short piano sketches, linked by speech recordings of people discussing selected photographs in different languages, creates a musical portrait of the photographer.
Recorded at UKZN studio, 29th July 2008
Feng Shui
guitar :Fiona Tozer, flute :Keri Povall
Emotive interpretation. Expressing the calm meditative atmosphere of this scene, with a suggestion of the force and energy of the falling water.
Recorded live at Howard college Theatre, UKZN campus, 14th May 2008.
Baobabs
double bass : Simon Milliken, Andreas Kappen ; cello : Jennifer Cox, Fiona Grayer ; viola : Jabulani Dlamini, Claire Hamilton
Visual representation. The baobabs are represented by double bass, cello and viola, their reflections by a similar trio of prepared instruments. The music explores the mirror image aspect of the photograph, using themes and their inversions.
Recorded live at Howard college Theatre, UKZN campus, 14th May 2008.
Here water once ranThe tree of consciousness bloomedThen returned to dust
No desolationOnly promise and endlessPossibility
Life once establishedClings to its existence withSuch tenacity
Matter to matterEnergy to energyNeither birth nor death
Metaphor for lifeOasis of awarenessIn a desert land
Ferrum High School Choir conducted by William Silk
Symbolic interpretation. The scene is interpreted as a metaphor for the singularity of the occurrence of life in an essentially hostile environment. The empty desert symbolizes the extent of space-time in the known universe, while the tree, as a focal point, represents the Earth and human existence.
Recorded live at St. John's Anglican church, Durban 26th November 2007
Elim Dune for saxophone quartet
Graphic score. The photograph itself constitutes the score. The image is divided into 4 equal vertical sections - one for each instrument - and played from the bottom up. The players can use my interpretation or improvise their own.
1. Saxophone quartet : soprano Jeff Judge, alto Chris Wigens, tenor Dave Holland, baritone Jeff Robinson] recorded at UKZN studio, 3rd June 2007.
2. Improvisation : soprano Reanne Leigh, alto Kirsty Madgen, tenor Chris Wigens, baritone : Jeff Robinson. Recorded at Cinnamon Express Studio, engineered by Marciano Monjane, 12th September 2006.
3. First Draft : Stockholm Saxophone Quartet - soprano Sven Westerberg, alto Jörgen Pettersson, tenor Leif Karlborg, baritone Per Hedlund. Recorded live at New Music Indaba, Grahamstown, July 2006.
Multiple Exposure for Marimba Quartet.
Magda de Vries, Ilse Minnie, Cobie van Wyk, Bryan Clarke.
Recorded live at Howard College theatre, UKZN campus, 5th March 2008.
Multiple Exposure for piano quartet.
Schubert Ensemble - violin Simon Blendis, viola Douglas Paterson, cello Jane Salmon, piano William Howard.
Recorded live at Sunnyside Concert Hall, Unisa 13th October 2007.
Technical translation. The photograph was created by taking several exposures of the same subject, each shifted vertically through space. The composition parallels the process of construction by shifting the musical phrase through time. A new melodic theme emerges that represents the composite image. This piece was originally compsoed for marimba, and reorchestrated for piano quartet for the New Music Indaba in 2007
Digital translation. Created using the computer program MetaSynth to digitally reinterpret visual information as audio data. Various input parameters were applied to cricket and cicada sound samples, generating several renditions which were then arranged to achieve the final soundscape.
Created at the UKZN School of Music electronic studio 2007, and mixed at my home studio.
Story narrative. Kolmanskop was a diamond mining town established in Namibia in the early 20th century by German settlers. It developed quickly but once the diamonds reserves were depleted, the people left and the buildings were reclaimed by the desert. The ghosts of the community are recalled by a collage of recordings of German speech and song from the period, introduced by and fading away into a backdrop of the sound of the wind. Mixed at my home studio.
I constructed Kolmanskop using a collection of recorded audio clips to create a collage that tells the story of the ghost town. It is, in a way, a movie without visuals, but is not meant to be a historically accurate account of the growth and decay of the town, but rather an expression of how I imagine it to have been. The final soundscape is constructed from several audio layers: the relentless wind, the synthesized sound symbolising the presence of diamonds, the ticking of the clock (representing time), the sounds of human activity which degenerate as the town slowly dies and the faint ghostly voices that remain behind afterwards. The wind sounds were created using a free-ware plug-in synthesizer called Sounds of Nature. The synth "diamond sound" was created by DJ Malcolm Blake in Reason using the Thor polysonic synthesizer. I recorded the old wall clock at the Mission House Museum at Hermannsburg, situated on the site of the first mission station established in 1854. The human activity sounds are a collection of field recordings made in a variety of locations: Hermannsburg School, the Deutsche Schule in Durban, the residence of the Fechter family in Durban and a family residence in Germany.