Frazar Henry, Composer/Pianist
Recent Works:
Altered
for alto sax, violin, cello, percussion, and piano
Altered began as a sonic experiment: I was playing around with a digital synthesizer, using its wavetable engine to generate sonic material. After trying a variety of ideas, I decided to find out what it would sound like if I used a jazz sample as the wavetable. That’s when I received the inspiration to use my synthesizer to stretch and mold a recording of Ruby my Dear by Thelonious Monk (off the Thelonius Monk With John Coltrane album), and orchestrate the result. The first section is a section of Ruby my Dear picked apart in microscopic detail. The second section of Altered simultaneously diverges in two directions: 1) a granulated version of Coltrane’s sax, dominated in my piece by the saxophone but introduced by the violin; and, 2) a Monk chord progression pursued by the violin, cello, and piano. The long descent—which begins in the second section—returns to the opening stasis, ending where it began, having reconciled the two elements.
It's just sounds?
for bassoon and two percussionists
My inspiration for It’s just sounds? came from my composition teacher Dorothy Hindman, who showed me an interview with John Cage from the documentary Listen (1992). I remember being inspired by it after watching it, but I didn’t really think much about it until about half a year later when writing this piece. I had the idea to compose something that made use of the natural music that is present in speech, and I couldn’t think of a better excerpt to use than this recording of John Cage. My piece starts out with a simple imitation of his voice in the bassoon, and gradually elements are taken away from it, starting with the words. The next element to go is pitch, which disappears when I transfer the melody to the snare drum. Finally, even the rhythm is removed and the piece becomes formless, leaving only background noise.