Electric Fabric (2024), amplified prepared violin, fixed media, 15 min
What is beauty for you? I know what it is for me…sometimes (2024), prepared bass, 8 min
Worlds Within (2023), violin (2), singing bowls, objects, shells, 30 min
Leslee Smucker is a performer-composer utilising violin, voice, synthesisers, electronics, film, and poetry. For Rewire 2023’s Sensory Sensitive Concert, Smucker has developed the performance Worlds Within, a concert performance that evokes and invites discovery of sound within ourselves. Through this concert — suitable for stimulus-sensitive audiences — she invites the audience into sound worlds and resonances that reside within us by creating an environment conducive to listening, accompanied by resonances that invite deep listening and reflection.
The concert takes the setting inspiration from a prehistoric cave, and travels through six tableaus composed for solo violin using octave lower strings, mutes, low-rosined bows, and handmade ceramic resonators. The hope of the work is to celebrate what is usually unheard or unnoticed—illuminating resonances with our ancient selves.
Bowls made by Laurent Merchant
Commissioned by Rewire Festival
Silver Willow (2023), 8ch
BLACK the 10 (2022), 10 min, Wavefield Synthesis/8 channel reduction
is a theatre work for Wavefield Synthesis based on the collaboration of Argentinean painter Luis Tomasello (1915-2014) and poet Julio Cortázar (1914-1984). Negro el 10 is a booklet of ten serigraphs by Tomasello with ten stanzas by Cortázar for each serigraph. The prints are photos of Tomasello’s works from his Lumière Noire, acrylic on wood. Tomasello’s work relies on relief abstract qualities—forms are made from planes and squares. Many works comprise a single plane with slots cut to create a feeling of depth. From a few techniques, a vast array of effects are found in his work: edges of volumes and planes form features, the thickness varies—causing the surface to undulate, shadows are cast and move in accordance with the illumination of the shapes. Cortázar’s evocative poem brings many of these effects to life, dancing between physical qualities of the paintings and abstract conceptualism that the works exude. Cortázar’s prose is often situated in non-linear time, this cyclical nature is reflected in both the paintings and poetry. My theatrical portrait adds my own imaginary sonic tapestry to Tomasello and Cortázar’s work
Mutable Passage (2022), violin, synth, 4 channel, 15 min
The work is based on the passage of mutable sound: fragile fluctuations in layers of sound are sent along paths that develop and change over time. This 20 minute continuous work develops the flux and flow of time, how we experience imperceptible changes, and how sound can travel through a labyrinth passage to come out changed on the other side. The audience is a static observer, while the sound moves and changes--sometimes by close frequency shifts, other times by the interaction of loudspeakers and instruments. It is meant to place the viewer in a perceptive and observational state of mind as the sound advances, full of doubts.
Aeolian Duo (2022), for two sustaining instruments (amplification optional) and whirly tube players (audience on stage)
Aeolian Duo is a work designed to create a large wind-harp. inspired by a fascination I have with naturally occurring wind-harps, when I hear one, I usually record and document the event.
The score is both strict and free. It is wriDen for two sustaining instruments. The instruments must be able to create sustained tones that shiE in pitch and amplitude (so, naturally, no piano). The wind tube players are amplitude followers. half follow Instrument 1 and half others follow Instrument 2 (see tech rider). The wind tube players are purely reacting to the amplitude changes of their respective Instrument leader, so they are an extension of what their instrument leader is doing. Their reaction time will be slightly delayed, and this is how the piece is written and should be.
Tableau Vivant (2022), for bray harp, electronics, and transduced pedal harp* commissioned by Gaudeamus for Michela Amici
This work creates a speaking instrument(s) out of by-standing harps. With the help of transducers, one (or two) harps are transformed into their own aeolian objects—making music on their own. The small bray harp is amplified through a harp that resides on stage either to the right and/or left side of the performer.*
*If there is no access to another harp(s) a version of this work can be performed with two loudspeakers, although the theatricality and concept of the work will be greatly diminished.
I use Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho, If not, winter. Carson writes:
Sappho was a musician. Her poetry is lyric, that is, composed to be sung to the lyre. She addresses her lyre in one of her poems (fr.118) and frequently mentions music, songs, and singing. Ancient vase painters depict her with her instrument. later writers ascribe to her three musical inventions: that of the plectron, an instrument for picking the lyre (Suda); that of the pektis, a particular kind of lyre;...and the mixolydian mode, an emotional mode also used by the tragic poets, who learned it from Sappho. All Sappho’s music is lost.
The movements follow three fragments of Sappho’s poetry:
i. fr. 118 yes! radiant lyre speak to me // become a voice
ii. fr. 51 I don’t know what to do // two states of mind in me
iii. fr. 147 someone will remember us // I say // even in another time
Mixed Messages (2019), violin, live electronics, answering machines
Mixed messages is an interactive sound experiment based on the tension between technology, communication, and human interaction. This semi-improvisatory, modular, sound collage has two parts. Part I runs through eight messages and builds layers by recording recorded and live sounds; streaming undercurrents from past massages as well as new techniques. As the messages progress, the recordings become more distorted; recording on top of recording, resulting in feedback, disintegration, and degradation of the message. The installation consists of cassette recordings placed throughout the audience. The audience can control which players are sounding at any given time by an on/off foot switch.
During the first part, I ask my audience to record messages on a portable tape recording during the performance. Part II is a live manipulation of the first half messages. In each half, eventually the tape loops, answering machines, violin, and voice change, degrade, dissolve, and modify.
The performance allows for audience members to consider their role in the performance; allowing for a rumination on non-verbal communication, and the degradation of message through technology.