Coppice Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom and Turning Concert

Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom, Turning Concert and By The Ankles

2014-2017

Photo by Zsofi Valyi-Nagy

Photo by Alexander Babbitt

Photo by Nathan Keay

Physical modeling synthesis
Modular synthesizer
Multi-material Filter
Transmission Line
Handheld Samplers
Inductor Table
Field Generating Boxes
Modified Boombox IV
Cymbal
Real and fake amp
Plastic tubing
Multiple speakers

Six developmental live sets of material from Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom were presented between 2015–2016, each capturing different stages of multiple components of the project, including spatialized and decentralized multi-channel systems of multiple speaker types.

Disgusting Set at Emporium (with live video by Ryan Dunn) and Elastic in Chicago
Slimy Set at Hideout Inn and Comfort Station in Chicago
Exploded Set at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago
Surveillance Set (within installation by Jessica Stockholder) at Kavi Gupta in Chicago
Stained Glass Set at Dreamland in Louisville, The Artifex Guild in Bloomington, and The Spot in Lafayette
Mesh Set at High Concept Laboratories (with live video by Vaudeo Motion) and Empty Bottle in Chicago

Turning Concert took place as part of a residency at Silent Funny in Chicago on August 26 and 27 2016, to develop staging and spatialization of selections from Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom. The performance and audience areas flowed between each other, marked by two rooms of Cold Light and Fake Fire. The audience was invited to change places throughout the concert. The music happened in varying degrees of performance and reproduction (shifting between live playing and listening to studio pieces played back), over a decentralized arrangement of multiple speakers and speaker types.

Coppice was joined by special guests: sound artists Lou Mallozzi and Peter Speer. A fire-based dual-projection installation by Phil Peters filled one of the rooms with dim flickering and impressions of warmth.

Lou Mallozzi conceived and performed two improvisations with Coppice. The first consisted of two 20-foot pieces of .75-inch diameter steel conduit connected to Mallozzi’s ears as he sat between the two different rooms. Coppice performed very delicate, quiet sounds using mouth-blown Capillaries (collections of tubes of different lengths) at the two separate spaces into Mallozzi’s tubes. While Coppice couldn’t hear each other, Mallozzi heard them both in separate ears, and in response improvised vocal sounds with two microphones very close to his mouth, amplified over two loudspeakers placed in each of the separate spaces. The second improvisation used two microphones in and around Mallozzi’s mouth to create controlled feedback in a pair of drones that shifted pitches and beating patterns, combining and colliding in the bifurcated architecture. In response, Coppice performed with their custom Multi-Material Filter, plastic tubing, and a Rhodes Piano Bass, while Peter Speer joined with modular synthesizer.

Thank you to Matt Baron.

As inversions of Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom at its inception and conclusion, the concerts By The Ankles were presented in Chicago at 6018 NORTH in 2014 and at Constellation in 2017.

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