Composer of the Day!

Today's Composer of the Day! is Charles Amirkhanian.

(b. 1945-)

Amirkhanian's music is mostly electro-acoustic, focusing on recordings of him speaking. He manipulates the spoken words, repeated in various guises, and overlays them. Basically, he composes auditory collages created from words. This has been called several things like sound-poetry.

I find it remarkable that he creates the illusion of space with his recording techniques. Also, the words become so decontextualized that they lose meaning and become only sound-objects.

Here is a link to some pieces. Scroll down to number 10, "Just". (It opens in Windows Media Player.)

The entire composition is made of 4 words, "rainbow, chug, bandit, bomb". Notice the layering and overlapping techniques he uses to change textures and create a sense of growth and decay, building up textures, then collapsing them. Listen to the whole thing!...Neat!

Here is a link to a video (that I can't figure out how to embed) with a piece called "Radii" which is composed of words that have the root "radio". I have no idea what the video has to do with anything, but the piece is cool.

Cool stuff. You should check out his music!
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