Projects

furious artisans to release new Dawe CD

Now in production, the second CD featuring 21st-century works by Jonathan Dawe will be released in 2010.

Included on the upcoming disc are Concerto for the First Sunday of New Year, Gibbons, Gongs, and Gamelan, Ciphers & Constellations in Love with a Woman (THIRD STRING QUARTET), L'Dafne, and more.

Performers on the disc include The Second Instrumental Unit, The Manhattan School of Music Percussion Ensemble, and The New York Miniaturist Ensemble. 

This release is made possible by The Copland Fund for New Music and the Ditson Fund.

Some of the music on this upcoming CD is available now as lossless downloadable audio files directly from furious artisans:

Dawe Singles Collection Featuring: Concerto for the First Sunday of The New Year Gibbons, Gongs, and Gamelan   More Info...

Furious Artisans Website:
furiousartisans.com

Cracked Orlando

• Recasting energies and sounds of the Italian Baroque, CRACKED ORLANDO Drama per Musica e Fractals (2010) is a opera/ballet that re-forges early eighteenth century music through compositional workings based upon fractal geometry. The affects and emotions of Love, Betrayal, and Forgiveness are augmented and intensified in this highly-mannered miniature work, running just under and hour.  In keeping with these ideas, the text has been extracted from the libretto originally used by Vivaldi, and rebuilt using Fibonacci growth patterns.

Cracked Orlando from the epic fantastic tale by Ariosto, tells the story of Orlando, who in love with Angelica, pursues her to the island of the sorcerer Alcina, only to discover that she truly loves Medoro.  Trapped within Alcina’s enchanted realm and distraught with profound jealousy and despair he is taken by great madness.  His sickness resolves only when Alcina’s power is broken, all illusions are lifted, and her lush island is revealed as the barren desert it truly is.

 Click here to download the Cracked Orlando Press Kit [381.80 Kb]

Audio Player

Dramma per Musica e Fractals BY JONATHAN DAWE

OCTOBER 15/16/17 2010 8pm
Italian Academy  118 St. & Amsterdam

Cracked Orlando
Dramma per Musica e Fractals

BY JONATHAN DAWE
Terry Marks-Tarlow, libretto

2010
SECOND INSTRUMETAL UNIT
David Fulmer/Eliot Gattengno, directors
Ryan McAdams, Conductor
Scenography by Zane Pihlstrom
Directed by Alastair Boag

COMPANY XIV
AUSTIN McCORMICK, director

Photo Credits: Kurt Dietrich/Zane Pihlstrom (scenography)

Fractals

"The most striking element of Dawe's individual style is the brake-squealing collision of two starkly contrasted influences.  The composer draws upon structural elements of early and Baroque music and then proceeds to rigorously work out his ideas using principles of fractal geometry." 
-Lawrence A. Johnson The Sunday Boston Globe 1/8/2006

Rotational Arrays

The first fractal application to compositional workings, I initially applied these recursive operations to 12-tone series and serial fragments (Horn Trio 1993), shortly thereafter I started involving these ideas with strands of Renaissance and Baroque music, imbedding these repeating patterns into the very polyphony, rhythms and forms of this early music, culminating with the full-length opera Prometheus (2004).

Rotational Array Audio Example

Cellular Automata

One of the more pervasive processes pioneered in my work, I’ve focused mostly on growth patterns that are self-replicating, spawning multiple copies of the original material after some number of generations of growth. Piano Concerto (2002) is a large-scale work that engineers Cellular Automata on local, middle-ground, and structural levels drawing its original shapes from the 1610 Vespers of Claudio Monteverdi.

Affine Geometry

	Although existing in the domain of Euclidian Geometry, Affine Geometry involves the translation, rotation, and scaling of shapes, constituting the foundational operations of fractal geometry.  Present in such works as Royal Water Music (2007) and Armide (forthcoming), these compositional workings are pervasive in the Clarinet Quintet (2008) and Longo 415 (2009.)

Complex Numbers

The notions of real number and imaginary numbers interacting on the complex plane to me was so suggestive in the morphing of two pre-existing pieces of music.  In Symphony of Imaginary Numbers (1998) the musical domains of Mozart’s Hafner Symphony and Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony (the inspiration on Mozart’s piece) are added, subtracted, divided and multiplied as complex numbers.  From the union of these two works a new piece is created.

Spectrals

	The sense of deeper and deeper levels resolution resulting from recursions lead me into the very structure of pitch and timbre itself, continuing these fractal dimensional views and manipulation in the realm of pitch overtones.  Present in The Flowering Arts (2005) and Cracked Orlando (2010), it is used throughout L’Dafne (2006.)

Armide

Set in the year 2019, ARMIDE, predicts a dynamic drama cast in post-war Iraq.  In a transformed political and social landscape, a fragile co-existence exists between an integrated American presence, the InnerAmerican Republic led by Renaud, and the Iraqi people. As the Iraqi society is exasperated with the ineffectiveness of current politicians, Armide has emerged as a leader among the people. Armide struggles with ambition, duties, a growing love for Renaud. a driving hope for her country, and deeper understanding of her culture.

Boston Symphony Orchestra: The Flowering Arts

The Flowering Arts, an orchestral work commissioned by James Levine and The Boston Symphony Orchestra, premiered in January of 2006 with four performances in Symphony Hall.