{"id":2550,"date":"2016-07-14T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T00:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/?page_id=2550"},"modified":"2016-07-14T18:11:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T02:11:35","slug":"chimers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/chroma\/chimers\/","title":{"rendered":"Chimers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/29850009\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/29850009\">Phyllis Chen, Chimers (2011)<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/iceorg\">ICE<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Chimers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which pits a clarinet and violin against a shimmering chorus of tuning forks \u00e2\u20ac\u201d proved that Chen is a master of the art of play \u00e2\u20ac\u201d serious, serious play.&#8221;&#8211;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/music\/phyllis-chen-and-carla-kihlstedt-put-play-back-into-playing-contemporary-classical-music\/2013\/04\/12\/bcb09fc4-a3a6-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html\">Washington Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"f0GxOPPH7NpSQp\" class=\"moat-trackable pb-f-theme-normal full pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-page-newsletter-inLine\" data-chain-name=\"no-name\" data-feature-name=\"no-name\" data-feature-id=\"page\/newsletter-inLine\">\u00c2\u00a0<i>Chimers<\/i> was written for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iceorg.org\">International Contemporary Ensemble<\/a> and the 2011 Mostly Mozart Festival.\u00c2\u00a0 ICE asked me to write a new work inspired by Mozart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s famous opera <i>Die Zauberflote<\/i>. Aside from the flute,\u00c2\u00a0 chimes are also used in the opera as a magical instrument that protects Papageno and Tamino during their journey. The orchestration for the chimes in the original score is written for three &#8220;keyed&#8221; glockenspiels. I found this to be a\u00c2\u00a0 great entry point to use my toy piano. In this work, I used a toy piano along with another set of toy piano rods that are attached to the instrument, standing upright on top of the toy piano. These exposed rods are played by all five performers in the piece with tuning forks as mallets. The tuning forks\u00c2\u00a0 are made of a heavy metal, very similar to the rods of the toy piano, creating a metallic and electric rattling sound effect.\u00c2\u00a0 As the piece progresses, the forks are then played in their more &#8220;conventional&#8221; approach in a homophonic texture, singing\/resonating on the body of the toy piano.\u00c2\u00a0<em>Chimers<\/em> was released on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/?page_id=2522\"><em>The Nature of Thingness<\/em><\/a> (Starkland) 2016.<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>Performance Notes:<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Chimers<\/i> is written for five players:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Violin<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Clarinet<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Toy Piano<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Toy glockenspiel<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Tuning fork player<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The piece requires no electronics except for toy piano amplification. A contact microphone is placed under the lid of the toy piano for two functions. First, is to amplify the instrument so that its volume matches the other acoustic instruments. Second, is to amplify the sound of the tuning forks. Since tuning forks need to be placed on a resonating chamber after being struck, the forks are placed on top of the toy piano lid, allowing the microphone from the instrument to pick up the pitches of the tuning fork. By using a low-fi speaker\/sound system for amplification, the tuning forks resonate with a slight distortion that is desirable. Every player is responsible for two or three different tuning fork pitches throughout the work. These chorale sections demand additional attention for choreography\/movement around the toy piano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phyllis Chen, Chimers (2011) from ICE on Vimeo. &#8220;Chimers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which pits a clarinet and violin against a shimmering chorus of tuning forks \u00e2\u20ac\u201d proved that Chen is a master of the art of play \u00e2\u20ac\u201d serious, serious play.&#8221;&#8211;Washington Post \u00c2\u00a0Chimers was written for the International Contemporary Ensemble and the 2011 Mostly Mozart Festival.\u00c2\u00a0 ICE [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":83,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2550"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2559,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2550\/revisions\/2559"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phyllischen.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}