An urban canvas for temporary art and community collaboration . .

Virus Cosmos: Introduction is the first of a seven-movement oratorio for choir, instruments, and electronic sounds. My colleague, the late Andrea von Ramm wrote the libretto which was influenced by an exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich called Virus Express: Rendez-vous im Überall (“Virus Express: Meetings in Everywhere”). The central theme of the oratorio Virus Cosmos is envisioning the concept of God as a Virus which “affects and inflicts” people in several different aspects, including religious, technical, and medical . These aspects are musically explored in each of the 7 movements.

The present realization of Virus Cosmos: Introduction for 8 loudspeakers and 2 pre-recorded narrators is an experiment which the Pieces of Eight concert has given me the opportunity to try out. The narrators for this piece were Ellen Mclain and John Patrick Lowrie.

David's web site: http://www.davidhahnonline.com/

"World Music" composed by Nan Avant
I created this piece after reading about an organization dedicated to helping woman of all countries and nationalities. The organization is called World Pulse, www.worldpulse.com. From their web site " World Pulse is a media enterprise covering global issues through the eyes of women". My composition " World Music" is layered with African Udu rhythms, classicaly performed violin and piano, melodic tones of women's voices which crescendo into dance rhythms and drift away to the peaceful ringing texture which is heard at the beginning of the piece.

Award winning Seattle Composer, Nan Avant, has collaborated with directors from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and New York. In 2009 she was awarded a "Silver Medal for Excellence Award" for her score in the short film Alistair MacLean:Y'did Nefesh and In 2008 the "Best Musical Score” Award for The 48 Hour Project in Seattle.

Ms.Avant graduated from California Institute of the Arts and received a BFA degree in Piano Performance. She studied film scoring and orchestration with two time Emmy Award winner, Hummie Mann.

For more information and samples of her work

Visit www.nanavant.com for more information

Scientific American aka C Andrew Rohrmann is a Seattle based composer and producer. His audio career spans many styles, disciplines and mediums of presentation. Creative content includes: • Creating hiphop tinged electronic albums for Slabco Records and Mush Records. • Composing original music for advertising clients such as Adidas, Volkswagen, and Becks. • Audio installations and performances for the Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Film Forum and Bellevue Art Museum. • Feature film scoring - including the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival hit "ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction". • Remixing the music of other artists, including Tristeza, Red Stars Theory, and Modest Mouse.
A repository of his work can be found at www.strongforthefuture.com.

Jim Bartz / StringStation - Ghost Of A Nova - parts 1-4 ( total time- 19:33)

This music is inspired exclusively by the sky. A billion Suns at midnight circling overhead in a wide open vista, sometimes day and sometimes night but always instilling a sense of awe and outer complexity that draws one in. There is thunder and calm and then like the random Universe from which we arise... there is a constant evolution. This piece is an ‘Evolver ‘ and is from my Album entitled ‘Evolver Vol. 1- a foray into sonics derived from stringed instruments to inspire big sky thoughts. No synths were used to create this audio architecture. It introduces a new 40-string musical instrument called the StringStation that I hope to find support to construct here soon in Seattle. Please have a look- www.stringstation.com

This piece is my first writing for an environmental space. I'm looking forward to the opportunities allowed by eight discreet channels in an outdoor setting.

www.zproinc.com

Requiem for a Mannequin: A sound collage of original field recordings, electronic sounds, analog tape feedback, and improvisations for the Thai sung played with bottleneck slide and ebow. Composed and mixed in 8 channels by Pete Comley.

www.EndorphinSound.com

My piece was recorded using the Akai MPC 5000 as the only instrument.  I have broken it into 8 sections for each of my 8 parts of the piece.  I hope you enjoy it.

More info can be found at www.myspace.com/MattMenovcik

Jeff Aaron Bryant is a student of composition at Cornish College of the Arts. Bryant studies and writes for gamelan, percussion ensemble, and sound installation. He is the music director/composer for All Is On, a modern dance company formed with choreographer Allie Hankins. The company was awarded the creative residency at Seattle's Open Flight Studio, summer 2009. Grand prize recipient at the 2008 Southwest Songwriters Competition, Bryant tours his songwriting under the name Casper Pony. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of New Mexico.

Both Pieces of Eight and ZAIREEKA were inspired by :

The Parking Lot Experiments
During 1996 and 1997, The Flaming Lips ran a series of events known as "The Parking Lot Experiments." The concept was inspired by an incident in Coyne's youth, where he noticed that car radios in the parking lot at a concert were playing the same songs at the same time. Wayne Coyne created 40 cassette tapes to be played in synchronization. The band invited people to bring their cars to parking lots, where they would be given one of the tapes and then instructed when to start them. The music was "a strange, fluid 20 minute sound composition".
Pieces of Eight will be playing the Flaming Lips eight channel experiment called ZAIREEKA in its entirety. This is a wonderful opportunity for Flaming Lips fans and experimental music fans to here this epic piece in its entirety the way it was envisioned.

impacttestdummy experiments with sound and technology to reflect their image of the world.

More info can be found at :impacttestdummy

Almost four hundred harp strings will resonate when Leslie McMichael’s eight harp ensemble performs her new work for the B/IAS Pieces of Eight concert event on August 15 and 16. The composition was written in three movements and is brought to life by past and present members of McMichael’s studio. The sprightly first movement is dubbed “Joie de Vivre,” and its happy theme echoes between the harp sections. A “Fandango” is next, and this Spanish courtship dance is enlivened by the harpists’ percussive tapping on their sounding boards. The piece concludes with “Fare-Thee-Well,” an eloquent valediction dedicated to past students.

One of harpist-composer McMichael’s great pleasures is in presenting harp music to new audiences in interesting venues. Since she grew up in the Highline schools and spent many happy formative years in Burien, she is especially delighted to be involved in the B/IAS project.

For more information about Leslie McMichael and her music, visit :pluckmusic.com harp music for everyone

Tony Cochran and Jerry Riess from the electronic music research laboratories collective have been producing noise, sounds, and silence for over 15 years. The chance to work on a piece of this magnitude could not be passed up, although the main focus of the technicians at emrlabs is the advancement of sonic purity through the the study of the low frequency oscillator and related fields, as well as producing music and sound efx for casual and core games. You will currently find some work at Archive.org "background_noise" and the startup website of http://www.emrlabs.net.

David Stutz composes experimental music based on mathematics. The performance setup for Pieces of Eight has a pleasingly symmetric mathematical structure: a circle constructed of eight irregularly- spaced sound sources. David will highlight the circular structure by producing a site-specific version of his piece "Mascheroni Circles," which explores circles and their incidence relations. There is also abundant symmetry within eightfold combinations of elements, and the group theory underlying these symmetries will form the skeleton for a live performance built from electronically modified field recordings of frogs, birds, and insects. (The wonderful recordings were captured by David's frequent collaborator Perri Lynch last December in the Amazon rain forest.)

Bronze and Bamboo was created in 2008 at Drab Studios and mixed as 8 separate channels in 2009. The piece was composed with layers of computer processed, chopped and looped sounds including samples from field recordings, as well as studio recordings of accordion and other acoustic and electronic instruments. Source sounds include glass bottles, bamboo and bronze percussion instruments, rattles, and other folk instruments.

Marc Barreca has been composing and performing electronic music for over twenty-five years. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s he performed with the Seattle-based electronic music group Young Scientist and released recordings on K. Leimer’s Palace of Lights and Jeff Greinke’s Intrepid labels. He was also a member of K. Leimer’s studio group, Savant. Marc uses digital and analog synthesizers, digital samplers, environmental field recordings and computer processed audio loops to create multi-layered audio compositions.

Marc’s recent work, “Big Dahomey Funeral” is available online from Palace of Lights, www.palaceoflights.com
Contact: drabone@msn.com

"Little Jehovah Universe Kit"
Music and text by Sean Dunn
Voiceover by Eldan Goldenberg

The Little Jehovah Universe Kit is a light work of Absurdist science fiction. The piece was realized on a conventional DAW using a homemade octophonic surround system and custom audio control programming.

Double Negative is a "traditionally" scored, through-composed piece by Dick Valentine. For the purpose of Pieces of Eight, a few adjustments have been made, for example to the tempo, and the spatial aspects of the piece have been re-imagined. Voices for the present recording were realized by Pete Sanders..

David Miles Huber is a producer and musician in the electronic,
dance and downtempo genres, whose CD have sold over the million mark. The chilled foundation of David’s music is perfectly energized and balanced out by lush, downtempo beats and live acoustic instruments that can be performed in stereo or surround sound. These combine to create a “Zen-meets-Tech experience” that pulls the listener into a musical soundscape that’s rich, enticing and energizing. His latest music and collaborations can be heard on www.51bpm.com and www.MySpace/51bpm.

So I just kind of hung out at the B/ IAS until I heard some notes in my head. Then I built of those notes trying to involve as many "8's" as possible (wrote using 8th notes, in 8, 8 measure sections, the tempo is 80bpm, ect..) Also as a coincidence the virtual instrument I used is called "FM8." I was gonna make it 8 minutes long as well but I'm not that skilled so it's about 3:14......WAIT! 3,1&4?... that adds up to 8!!!! YES! Anyway my piece is at best; simple, quaint and hopefully pleasing, but if not it's at least short. Big thanks to Dane and the rest for putting this together.

Graeme Smith is an 18 year old composer from Olympia who has recently finished a 3-movement composition for the harp. Thie first movement starts the piece with fast, lively sounds of dancing, drinking, and merriment in an up-beat, Eastern European style. The second movement takes you into the quiet night with a jazzy baseline echoing the melody, making it sound like your are being followed as you walk in the dark. The piece then ends with long passionate chords and a groggy trumpet finally announcing the sunrise.