RAW (2014) by Anne La Berge
for ensemble and smartphones
RAW is an open-ended work for ensemble and electronics made up of fragmented gestures and shards of skeletal speech. A computer program asks the musicians to improvise on unfinished musical material and to collectively create a work in real time as they are given ongoing random choices to make. RAW embraces the unpolished and unbridled opportunities that unforseen combinations offer us to respond to in the process of making art.
The score for RAW is a Max patch where each player influences the structure by sending a message via a smartphone to the patch on a laptop at their own descretion. The Max patch in turn chooses random combinations of players to play, suggestions for the type of music to play and random prerecorded text samples to be played.
The players follow commands and take cues in an unending whirlwind of cause and effect.RAW exudes auras of condensed, stretched, cut-up, pried open and exalted sonic spaces. Pure and raw timbres collide with processed materials, questioning the way in which the ear finds or loses familiarity with musical idoms. And where musicality is to be found from clouds of juxtaposed idiosyncratic sounds. The piece cuts through worn musical habits and jettisons both audience and player back and forth squarely and simultaneously to point zero and point omega. To go even beyond that which music is, is where the fiery spirited and elemental heart of RAW lies.
Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg
The original version was made for MAZE with the instrumentation of flute with electronics, bass clarinet, double bass, electric guitar, piano with electronics and synthesizers. All of the voice samples were made in 2014 and are the voices of the MAZE musicians.
https://annelaberge.com/compositions/selected-available-works/raw/