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for 15-30 kitchen bowls and 4-channel playback
premiered May 2002 at MicroFest 2002, Lyman Hall, Pomona College, Claremont, California
Bowling Belles: Allison Ellsworth, Cynthia Fogg, Catherine John, Emily Petrick, Elizabeth Siegel, Alexandra.Thompson. |
| “The program drew a large if not full house; the sounds were handsome. (I would extend that accolade even to Tom Flaherty's antic Bowling Bells, which used a surrogate "gamelan" of kitchen bowls of various sizes and states of emptiness, played with a variety of implements including combs, toothbrushes and you-name-it.)” |
– Alan Rich, L. A. Weekly |
| Bowling Bells is an excuse to listen carefully to a few everyday sounds, and
to celebrate their extraordinary beauty. Central to the piece are two stainless steel bowls which have served hundreds of pounds of salad to our
many guests over the years. I have always marveled at the rich sonority that
each produces with the slightest encouragement. They are nearly perfectly
tuned a minor third apart (though with everyday use that perfection does
vary from dent to dent,) and they signal major points of arrival in the piece. The four channel playback is of digital retunings of the metal bowls, yielding 15 equally spaced pitches within the minor third. The 16 glass bowls used in the premiere have served hundreds of gallons of soup to many guests over the years, and have a range or nearly a minor third also, with many pitches in between. Performers sound the bowls with various implements found in most homes: toothbushes, marbles, combs, trickling water, and fingers. |
February 2009 performance
17th Annual Ussachevsky Festival, February 21, 2009 Lyman Hall, Pomona College, Claremont, California
Bowling Belles: Brianna Balke, Mary Buchner, Liz Carnathan, Megan Dick, Cynthia Fogg, Paula Goldsmid, Kathy Lawrence, Rebecca Lent, Kelly Park, Genevieve Peaslee, Jordan Pedraza, Lucy Shelton, Sayuri Soejima, Leah Wald
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