Martha Mooke, composer/electric viola
No Ordinary Window
No Ordinary Window, by groundbreaking Electro-acoustic/composer Martha Mooke is her new CD/performance experience of highly evocative, provocative and emotion driven music. It is a journey of the illuminating power of music – to the world, to the soul, to the imagination... where music is a window that never closes.
About the No Ordinary Window experience, Mooke writes, "No Ordinary Window started as the title of a new work for solo electric viola and has evolved into a passion about sharing music that reaches inside and opens windows to the soul. It's about moving the listener in profoundly personal ways."
"At the core of the project is an album of five compositions, ranging from just over 7 minutes long to nearly 17 minutes. They are rhythmic, meditative soundscapes that explore the potential of her instrument." Steven P. Marsh, The Journal News
Upon her return from presenting No Ordinary Window in Havana, Cuba Layda Ferrando of CMBF Radio Musical Nacional wrote "Exploration, creation and spirituality deployed through electronic impulses; but above all, from the imagination, Martha Mooke opened windows for aspiring musicians."
Martha Mooke is a pioneering composer/electro-acoustic violist, in demand as performer, composer and educator. A leading Yamaha and Eventide Artist/clinician, Mooke is Violist/Artistic Director of the Scorchio Quartet, featured on David Bowie’s Heathen CD. She has played with Barbra Streisand, Peter Gabriel, Star Wars in Concert, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Elton John, Trey Anastasio, Lou Reed, Patti Smith. Mooke received the prestigious ASCAP Concert Music Award for creating the new music/boundary defying showcase THRU THE WALLS. Her new CD, No Ordinary Window is produced by Grammy winner Cynthia Daniels.
www.MarthaMooke.com
For more information please contact:
music@marthamooke.com
Program notes:
The title track, No Ordinary Window, scored for solo viola and electronics (recorded using the Eventide H9 and Boss RC300 Looper), is as much an ensemble work through the interaction and interplay of the effects processing. Digitally delayed harmonization, enhanced resonance of selected pitches and special looping techniques created by the composer, serve to significantly augment the palette of the viola’s musical world.
Virtual Corridors begins with haulting steps through the metaphorical corridors of the universe. As it progresses, the work picks up courage and momentum, with the solo viola adding textures, exploring echoed patterns and reaching a rhythmically driven climax before seemingly returning to yet another hallway, whistling a ghostly line of reminiscence.
Future Prayer intones the tolling of church bells, utilizing harmonic effects to represent the rewinding of time and setting up an overdriven rhythmic ostinato under soaring viola lines, and disturbing musical images from the evening news. Peace eventually triumphs, in the form of a final meditation by a wordless choir.
In ICE 4, the word “ice” takes on many forms including frozen water, icicles, frozen in time, ICE is also an acronym for “In Case of Emergency”. Harmonics, pizzicato effects and digital delay emphasize the frozen nature of the music. A nod to the music of Brazil serves to warm the landscape along with a passage that seems to set the “bow” on fire. In the end, the temperature plunges and returns to the frozen world once again.
A Dream in Sound is a sonic representation of the dream state, incorporating an extended sound world of atonal melodies, extended string techniques, cascading harmonies and electric guitar-like elements infused by rock and jazz styles.
Café Mars connotes a smoke-filled lounge complete with Martian denizens of the night and strange extraterrestrial jazz. Odd meters infiltrate the opening walking bass line, then run through the middle eastern tinged dance section as the viola assumes the role of Indian tabla player. Before the return to the opening scene, clusters of chords build to an ecstatic climax. This solo version of Café Mars is adapted from the original for electric viola and electric guitar co-written with my Randolph A. Hudson, III.
released March 9, 2021