Neil Rolnick: Silicon Breath

by Neil Rolnick
performed by Ted Nash, alto sax & Neil Rolnick, laptop computer
from "Neil Rolnick: Ex Machina" (Innova CD 950) released 2016
© Copyright 2015 by Neilnick Music (BMI)

Breath is what animates us. Without breath, a saxophone is just a bent metal tube and valves. Add breath, and it comes to life. In writing this piece, I had the image of the player’s breath animating the computer as an extension of the horn. One way of thinking about Silicon Breath is as a catalog of ways the instrument and the computer can interact with each other: from building layers of loops, to complex canons, to using processing on accented notes to make a kind of counterpoint, to building chords which take their dynamic shape from the player’s breath.

My New York neighbor Ted Nash is normally heard with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He’s got an international reputation as an incredible sax player, but had never worked with interactive electronics until he jumped into this project. He jumped with both feet, unintimidated by the technology, figuring out how to create and coordinate loops of his playing, and how to trigger various aspects of the computer processing with his articulations and dynamics. The virtuosity and musicality of his sax playing seemed to elevate and accelerate his integration of the technology.

While Silicon Breath is a piece for solo saxophone, the sound world it creates is multilayered and multi-textured in a way that is impossible for a solo horn. Yet all of the sound of the piece comes from the player’s breath, on stage, in real time. There’s nothing pre-recorded, and Ted is controlling much of how his playing is transformed by the computer.

Another way of thinking about Silicon Breath is as a story about us and computers. It’s not much of a relationship if we think of the computer as an inanimate object which we use to do mundane tasks. But if we breathe life into it, and take it on as a partner to expand the scope of what we can create and the breadth of our ability to express ourselves, then perhaps we get a whiff of silicon breath.

This piece was made possible by an Individual Artist Grant from the New York State Council On the Arts.