House of Solitude: An Installation Concerto

House of Solitude: a Poet’s Labyrinth (2011) is an installation concerto for amplified violin, KBOW, electronics, video, and lighting. It is a VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison production. Performed at CSUF Strings in the 21st Century on March 3, 2011, at River to River festival in NYC on July 10, 2011, and February 4th, 2012 at SUNY Fredonia.

Cornelius Dufallo, violinist
Carmen Kordas, filmmaker
S. Katy Tucker, projection designer

House of Solitude makes part of LABYRINTH, an evening length work made of two conjoined installation concertos for violinist Cornelius (Neil) Dufallo, and cellist Maya Beiser. This work tightly incorporates sound and lighting design, and projected visuals, with the musicians’ performance through the use of the K-Bow. This level of integration was inspired by the concept of solitude within the labyrinth of life; the physical performances will be the sole and direct cause of all that occurs onstage.

House of Solitude, is a collaboration with German video artist Carmen Kordas; it places the soloist as poet in the labyrinth of life; it catches the performer in the moment of self-discovery, the act of self-creation. From the performers first tentative essays, we live within his struggle to comprehend the human condition.
The labyrinth is a mysterious enigma and emblem of the modern world in which we can see ourselves as trapped, caught in a web of winding paths from which it is not easy to disentangle. However, every labyrinth offers the possibility to escape, and because of the performer’s control over the bow and certain improvisational elements in the music, each performance will vary in terms of the “answer” or “exit” to the labyrinth of life, enhancing the deeply personal experience for each viewer.

House of Solitude takes place within a house whose walls eventually disintegrate. The film and sound world hover between the poles of the essential human predicament: the frailty and folly of everyday existence on one hand, and the attempt to attain enlightenment and divinity, on the other. This tension throws the poet (violinist) into nature as inspiration, and solitude as the context of life.

This interdisciplinary work embraces the cutting-edge technology of the K-Bow, an invention by famed instrument designer (inventor of ZETA instruments) Keith McMillan. It is a hand-crafted composite sensor bow that empowers the string player by harnessing software tools to seamlessly realize another level of freedom and creativity without interrupting performance, such as triggering or modifying vocal samples, film clips, and lighting. The triggering is done through different physical movements that I designed with Neil. For example, we have programmed a circular bow movement to mean a circular modulation of sound that represents a labyrinth. Other specific K-Bow manipulations include the scrubbing of my voice (the bow plays words I have recorded), and, octave displacements of particular passages in the music.

I am designating this work as a concerto because of the virtuosity of the solo writing and the depth and richness of the electronic scape. The backing tracks include over ten layers of contrapuntal writing for strings (each track recorded by the soloists in the studio) in addition to an “orchestra” of found sounds.

ABOUT CORNELIUS DUFALLO:
” As a violinist and a composer in the string quartet Ethel and the collective ensemble Ne(x)tworks, Cornelius Dufallo has made substantial contributions to New York’s burgeoning new-music scene.” -Steve Smith, New York Times

Heralded by the New York Times as one of the “new faces of new music” in 1999, Cornelius Dufallo has since firmly established himself as a constant innovator at the forefront of the American contemporary music scene. Adept in multiple roles, he currently serves as director of the creative music ensembleNe(x)tworks as well as a member of the world-renowned amplified string quartet, ETHEL, in addition to being an accomplished composer, violinist and curator in his own right.  He has performed in several prestigious venues and festivals globally and premiered works by phenomenal composers such as Osvaldo Golijov and Phil Kline.

Recently Dufallo crafted a new trajectory with the release of Dream Streets, a solo CD of his own music for electric violin on the Innova label.  Time Out New York hails Dream Streets as “a beautiful, evocative disc of electroacoustic soundscapes…all [of which] serve as apt reminders of this vital artist’s considerable gifts.”  His ongoing commitment to cutting edge musical ingenuity has produced fascinating collaborations with many of today’s most compelling performers and composers.  Most evident of this is the series Journaling, which Dufallo inaugurated at The Stone in New York this past season, showcasing his own work with extraordinary living composers while tracking various paths in twenty-first century music. Journaling (part one) presented world premieres by Anna Clyne and Corey Dargel, as well as recent works by Alexandra Gardner, Annie Gosfield, and Huang Ruo.

Dufallo has recorded for the Mode, Tzadik, Cantaloupe and Innova labels, and holds Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki.
For more, visit www.corneliusdufallo.com.