Michael Pisaro
Michael Pisaro was born in Buffalo in 1961. He is a composer and guitarist, and a member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble. He has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations, including several pieces for variable instrumentation. A particularly large category of his works is solo works, notably a series of 36 pieces (grouped into 6 longer works) for the three-year, 156-concert series organized by Carlo Inderhees at the Zionskirche in Berlin-Mitte from 1997-1999. Another solo piece, pi (1-2594), was performed in installments by the composer on 15 selected days in February, 1999, in Evanston, Illinois, and in Düsseldorf in 2000-2001.
Michael Pisaro was born in Buffalo in 1961. He is a composer and guitarist, and a member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble. He has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations, including several pieces for variable instrumentation. A particularly large category of his works is solo works, notably a series of 36 pieces (grouped into 6 longer works) for the three-year, 156-concert series organized by Carlo Inderhees at the Zionskirche in Berlin-Mitte from 1997-1999. Another solo piece, pi (1-2594), was performed in installments by the composer on 15 selected days in February, 1999, in Evanston, Illinois, and in Düsseldorf in 2000-2001.
Member of: Pisaura
Transparent city (volumes 1 and 2)
Field recordings, electronic sound. Field recordings made in greater Los Angeles from December, 2004 to August, 2006. Each recording is an unedited ten-minute take from a single location. Sine tones and mixing completed in Michael Pisaro's home studio in Santa Clarita, California. Each ten-minute piece is followed by two minutes of silence. Recordings were mastered with home stereo playback in mind. In general, it is best to set the volume control on your system to a normal level (that is,…
Harmony Series 11-16
In the 'Harmony Series 11-16', very small events are happening in every nook and cranny of the music, and these subtle changes give magical effects to the music. This is in fact not magic at all - all the events are due to the theoretical structure of the music, but the way Pisaro incorporates them into his compositions is so subtle and natural, that the whole impression on his music becomes poetic. When I listen to each piece while carefully paying attention to the details, I feel that the nuan…
Transparent city (volumes 3 and 4)
Field recordings, electronic sounds. Field recordings made in greater Los Angeles from October, 2006 to February, 2007. Each recording is an unedited ten-minute take from a single location. Sine tones and mixing completed in Michael Pisaro's home studio in Santa Clarita, California. Each ten-minute piece is followed by two minutes of silence. Recordings were mastered with home stereo playback in mind. In general, it is best to set the volume control on your system to a normal level (that …
Mind Is Moving IX
Intonema is proud to present the first CD release of an album by a Wandelweiser composer in Russia ! In April 2013 Denis Sorokin played Michael Pisaro's 'Mind Is Moving IX' at the Teni Zvuka Festival which became its Russian premiere performance. Since that time we have been working on the release, we made several recordings in different spaces, listened and discussed all the details with the composer and the performer. In 2015 we entered the final stage when in June we recorded the versi…
A mist is a collection of points
Michael Pisaro (b. 1961) is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, an international organization of musicians which he has defined as 'a particular group of people who have been committed, over the long term, to sharing their work and working together.' Its members have shared an interest in John Cage and experimental music, and extended durations, indeterminacy, and silence have featured in many works they have made; but Michael Pisaro is quick to point out that the members of the colle…
Schwarze Riesenfalter
An evocation of “Nacht,” Graham Lambkin and Michael Pisaro’s chilling, malefic collaboration directly references Giraud’s collection of poems, Pierrot Lunaire, and Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama of the same name. Despite the continental subject matter, Schwarze Riesenfalter isn’t an academic act of re-rendering a historical text. Their use of verse comes across as the result of warped poetic fascination and fixation, where a text crawls underneath skin, finding ways to subtly influence the mundan…
Melody, Silence (For Solo Guitar)
Michael Pisaro - Melody, Silence (for guitar solo). Cristián Alvear. Melody, Silence is a collection of materials for solo guitarist, written by Michael Pisaro in 2011. There are up to 12 fragments (or pieces) which can be played in any order and which allow for various transformations, cuts, extensions and silences. Cristián Alvear developed his own version over a period of several months in 2014. This chilean guitarist has been focusing on contemporary and experimental music, in particular o…
Continuum Unbound
Michael Pisaro's Continuum Unbound is a three CD box set, featuring three individual as well as linked CD-length pieces, each 72 minutes long. 'Kingsnake Grey' is a field recording of sundown in the Congaree National Park in South Carolina. The beautiful and erratic sonic transformation that occurred over the 72 minutes was the model for the other two pieces.'Congaree Nomads' takes as its basis 24 three-minute recordings Greg Stuart and I made in the park, along Cedar Creek and the Kingsnake, th…
White Metal
“White Metal” is a new piece by Michael Pisaro, realised by the composer and Miguel Prado. “When I first heard that Michael was thinking of working on a project with the name “White Metal”, I contacted him, excited to know more about it. At first we talked about general aspects of the piece, without knowing the route it would take, beyond a couple of conceptual premises. At some point, Michael suggested that this project be included in his “Grey Series” a series of noise-oriented scores he was …
Closed categories in cartesian worlds
We are very happy to announce the release of GW 010, a 72-minute CD version of Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds, for crotales and sine tones (composed by Michael Pisaro, performed by Greg Stuart, mastered by Michael Pisaro and Joe Panzner). Those interested in more info and sound examples can look below. The disc also comes with extensive notes and a reproduction of a page of the score. From the notes: 'This record consists of four crotales, each bowed for 16 minutes. Against each crotale I…
This Place / Is Love
An extended work from Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro, defined by six stanzas written by Beuger, Anna Swir, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugger and Edmond Jabes, a subtle cycle on love and permanency realized in tone and voice."
"The work begins in very un-Wandelweiser fashion, with a strong note played on, I think, a harpsichord (prepared spinet?), quite forthrightly. After several identical notes, a recording of an interior space enters and a surprising sequence of chords occurs, four of them, very…
Tombstones
LP version. Comes on milky clear vinyl with grey splatter, housed in a gatefold sleeve. The long-awaited, groundbreaking, pop album by acclaimed composer Michael Pisaro. Featuring Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, Cassia Streb and Rob Esler. "Voice: soft, pure (no vibrato), more like folk or pop singing than lieder singing." -- from the book of scores. "I began writing these pieces with a question in mind: what happens to old political songs?" -- Michael Pisaro, 2011. Tombstones reconstitutes the …
The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
The punishment of the tribe by its elders'
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
D minor / Bb major
Composed by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto. Performed by Casey Anderson: computer, Matt Barbier: trombone, Eric KM Clark: violin, Devin Disanto: clarinet, Paul Fraser: trumpet, Kristin Haraldsdottir: viola, Stefan Kac: tuba, Ingrid Lee: piano, Daniel Letourneau: guitar, Heather Lockie: viola, Sepand Shahab: keyboards, Cassia Streb: viola, Christine Tavolacci: flute, Chaz Underriner: guitar, Michael Pisaro: guitar, Taku Sugimoto: guitar. Recorded by Michael Pisaro at the Wulf, Los Angeles…
Crosshatches
Crosshatches was composed, recorded and assembled by Tsunoda and Pisaro over a period of 14 months, as a single 85 minute work in eight sections.
Fields Have Ears (6)
A 56-minute piece for guitar and electronics. It has had a long composition history, starting from a solo for classical guitar and sine tones (premiered in Munich in July of 2010). It was subsequently performed in Seattle (August, 2010), A Coruña, Galicia (May, 2011) and New York (September, 2011). For each performance a new version was created, incorporating recordings from the previous locations (including parts of previous performances), and other sounds that I began to associate with the his…
Hearing metal 3'
In contrast to the melange of its ‘successor,’ Hearing Metal 3 has moments of separation wherein Stuart and Pisaro can be discretely heard. For this piece, Stuart revisits the textures of ricefall (2), delicately and not-so-delicately pouring grains onto surfaces. When combined with Pisaro’s tones, the resonances explore a full territory uncharted by ricefall (2). However, there are still moments of Pisaro/Stuart mixing, like when Stuart’s “sixteen suspended cymbals” bow against Pisaro’s s…
Hearing Metal 2
Pisaro’s “Hearing Metal” series is a multipart lecture of the above, now on its third rendition. Each is in dedication to the sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi, with track names and piece subtitles littered with Brâncuşi references (Sleeping Muse, The Endless Column, Prometheus, 1911). Although the orchestration differs across each entry, each piece is primarily composed of electronic (sine tones, field recordings, a guitar, etc.) and percussive (cymbals, tam-tams, ‘surfaces,’ almglocken, etc.) eleme…
Ricefall
Gravity Wave, a new CD label, curated by composer Michael Pisaro, designed by Yuko Zama. Icefall (2), a 72-minute piece for 64 separate tracks of rice falling on objects. This recording is the second part of a trilogy of the first disc length works by Stuart and Pisaro (an unrhymed chord is the first part, and A wave and waves is the third). The dynamic range of the recording is extremely wide. In the second of the four sections, there is a storm of falling rice that is certainly the loudest mus…