Music by Douglas Henderson played at EM-hören:

• The Nature of the 102nd Thing (of 10,000) and The 103rd Thing (2001/2003) 4 channels 11’
• (pages of illustrations) (2005) 4 channels 12’14”
• Music from Empty Holes (2003) 4 channels 31’00”

Details on the pieces:

The Nature of the 102nd Thing (of 10,000) and The 103rd Thing (2001/2003) (11’)

The conception for the piece began in the summer of 2001 at the Centre de Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX) in Paris, where discussions of Julio Estrada’s “imaginaries” and Iannis Xenakis’ exploration of the unimaginable sparked the idea of creating a fully spatialized work in which the fundamental compositional trajectories and imperatives would be directed by the construction of shapes and vectors in space, wherein the nature of the sound composition would develop from the dictates of a kind of sonic holography. I am always looking for ways to turn my ideas about musical structure and inside out, to explore beyond the limits of what I can imagine, and I settled on a structural means to achieve this. Realizing that any pitch/time, or frequency/amplitude system or algorithm will inevitably land me in something familiar, I decided to adopt an extra-musical foundation, and to follow it with my best compositional instincts, but to trust the initiating idea fully until given reason to do otherwise. These are the first two of what will eventually comprise nine movements.

(pages of illustrations) (2005) 12’14”

is a portrait of gusts of wind through a tree, and a meditation on the nature of representative art in sound. The human organism is a far superior analyst to microphones and tape decks. When I listen carefully to wind in a tree, I can sort out the parts, I can hear the ripples of the foliage and understand the positions of all the elements of the tree. I can see every leaf, and in this piece I performed every leaf, using over 7000 recordings to experience individually each aspect of the tree. Focus, depth of field, the illuminated night sky behind a groomed birch, bluish and crisp as razors -- I wanted to capture that whole impression and to deliver it. The song of a gust is as compelling as any sonata; however, even a sophisticated recording offers none of this, it is the mind and the ear that are able to sort the parts and to find the narrative in them -- the microphone merely documents the whole, generalizing all into an enigmatic hiss. For this project I wanted to return the mind’s limitless focus to the realm of artifice, and then back to a new, impossible reality. It is first my dream of the tree, and then the tree’s dream of us.

Music from Empty Holes (2003) 31’00”

is a 4 channel electroacoustic work revealing the secrets of enclosed spaces. An empty milk jug in a rainstorm, empty drain pipes at the top of a windy hill, and the interior of a woodstove are the basis for studies of resonance, both sonic and phenomenological. The piece culminates with the sound of 65 bottles of different sizes, left strewn about after a wedding, being filled slowly with water and layered one atop the other. The harmonic structure gradually separates from their sense of “bottleness”, dividing into a hail storm of harmonic percussion against a background of wavering identity.

It is inspired by a paragraph from Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher of the 6th century BC. I had wanted for years to take on the challenge of working from this text, and a stay at a friend’s farm finally broke the ice.

?In sleep men's spirits go visiting; in waking hours their bodies hustle. With everything they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds in strife sometimes grandiose, sometimes sly, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor. insolence -- music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us....?

Biography:


Douglas Henderson’s current work is focused on multi-channel electroacoustic sound installations, sound-producing sculptural installations and scores for modern dance. He has been presenting work in and around New York City for more than 23 years with a variety of musicians, including Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and Ikue Mori. He has composed music for numerous modern dance pieces including works by choreographers David Zambrano, Jennifer Monson, Mia Lawrence, Nina Martin, Tim Feldmann and Jeremy Nelson, as well as for Ricochet Dance (London, UK) Phoenix Dance Theatre (Leeds, UK) and Wildadance, Copenhagen DK. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and in Europe performing original work.

He studied music composition and theory with Joan Tower, Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and J.K. Randall. He received his Doctorate in Music Composition from Princeton University, his Bachelor's degree in Music from Bard College and a classical recording certificate from the Aspen Music Institute. He recently chaired the Sonic Arts Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and conducts master classes in electroacoustic composition, sound design, multi-channel audio and recording arts. He was a 2002 Artist in Residence at Harvestworks, NYC, a 2004 Dance Theater Workshop ARM Fellow, and a guest artist for Cabinet Magazine (NYC) and for Resonance Magazine (London).

He received a 2005 Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Program Award for work with choreographer Luis Lara Malvacías, and the New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for his work on Kriyas (1998). His performances and installations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Performance Space 122, The Kitchen, Diapason Gallery, Dance Theater Workshop and Sadler’s Wells Theatre have enjoyed the support of grants from Meet The Composer, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, The Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, Creative Time, the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts, and been included in festivals from New Music America in New York, to the Seoul International Festival of Computer Music in South Korea.

He also designs and builds experimental instruments, such as the double-necked and 8-string guitars employed by Elliott Sharp and the electric harps employed by Zeena Parkins.

Solo show of 3 new sound works.

2 person show for the month, with painter Cecilia Galiena (I).

Interactive sound/scupture installation.

2002
Apr. Cabinet Magazine: Sodapop, Lbs/sq.in.
2 pieces included on mag.’s sound art CD collection alongside works by Pauline Oliveiros and Yasunao Tone.

2001
Feb. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA: What Could Replace Opus?

A sound installation work employing 8 piano-wire strings, 35-65 feet long, stretched across the atrium 25 feet in the air , activated by computer-controlled motors and using the building structure as a resonant body.