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CD29

ASTRAL WAVES & PHOSPHOR
Avant-garde space music by Richard O. Burdick’s

Dark deep colored avant-garde space music for horn and tape and glowing "Phosphor" for horns in a live cathedral.

Released: January, 22, 2012

Phosphor, opus 34a (1986 rev. 2011)

Astral Waves I, opus 62

Astral Waves II, opus 64

Astral Waves III, opus 67

Mind without Matter (1979)

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Dark deep colored avant-garde space music for horn and tape and glowing "Phosphor" for horns in a live cathedral.

Program Notes:

It was in the early 1990's, just before I had my own computer and soon after, that I was writing these "Astral Waves" pieces. I like that these seem now like antiquated computer generated sounds. I am so happy to be able to present these works, like markers of my path through the latter part of the 20th century with quickly changing technologies, which are presented here and on my other recordings.

I am proud to have had opportunities to create electronic tape music; I think it's really cool that I have worked on tape music from tape manipulation styles of the 1960's, Moog and Buchla patch cord synthesizers of the 1970's and this early computer generated style of the late 1980's. Other examples of my tape music can be heard on CD5 "Let Me Out", opus 30, with its 1960's technology tape manipulation. " . . . Moments When We See . . . , " opus 44" constructed in California State University's electronic studio in 1981, and CD6 "Richard Burdick with Tape".

My piece: "Phosphor" from 1986 was written to be played in a very live space, this version, almost completely revised in 2011, in variations for solo, trios and quartets is a wonderful mix with my "avant-guard" poly-rhythmic space music style of the Astral Waves.

My Astral Waves pieces, in general, were my attempt at finding weird space music; music with mostly deep dark colors. These were written at a time when I was studying the methods of composition teacher Joseph Schillinger, who inspired me to look at complex poly rhythms.

Astral Waves I, opus 62 for horn and tape has been performed a number of times, it seems to build and build and the silences later in the piece are quite effective. This work is a cycle that happens three times with different views. I think this sort of work is important; because a student can spend hours of practice with the tape, alone in preparation for such things as a student recital. I wrote this before I had my own computer, late in 1991, so my copyist created the computer-generated-tape. The original tape part is on a cassette tape and that is probably why the pitch is at A= 437.

Astral Waves II, opus 64 for Violin, Horn and Tape takes us through expanding poly-rhythms from simple triplets to 3:4, 5:6, 7:9, 8:11, 11:13, 9:13 back to 3 and then through a version of the poly-rhythms that are slow and sustained, a third time back to the triplets and we hear the faster poly-rhythms along with sustained chords, sort of a plugging together of parts one & two. Right at the end we finally have what I might called a real melody and this is symbolic of the zodiac Aries and the landing on planet earth from stars.

Astral Waves III, opus 67 once again presents very complex poly-rhythms with "melodies" of sustained tones in the horn and violin based on when different melodic tones occur in the complex rhythmic patterns.

I recently discovered "Mind without Matter" written in 1979, when I was a freshman in College. I recorded this in a horn version. The original is scored for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin, Viola and Cello. It is written in a graphic notation, with only one reoccurring measure of "normal" metered notation. If I had heard this piece then, I would have written much more in this style.

Richard O. Burdick

About the Recording:

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About the Performer:

Richard Burdick as a musician:
French hornist: Richard O. Burdick is the first horn of Regina Symphony Orchestra and the Regina Symphony Chamber Players in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a prolific composer.

His move to Canada in 2003, with his wife Rebecca and his two boys, marked the start of the fourth major period in his musical Career.

In the 1980’s Richard was first Horn of Napa Symphony, a member of a San Francisco based theater orchestra and played lots of chamber music as manager of Trinity Chamber Concerts, a chamber music series in Berkeley California.

Starting in 1990 he played fourth Horn full-time for Sacramento Symphony, which went bankrupt in 1996. He then won auditions for Fresno Philharmonic, Napa & North State Symphonies and played in Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera.

He is a prolific composer and has many self produced CD’s of his own compositions, Bach, his classical natural horn playing and multi-track performances of many of his favorite pieces.

He performs on a variety of horns, a baroque natural horn (1720), a classical era natural horn (1800), a romantic era (1840's) natural horn, a single F horn from the 1880's, his main symphony horn is a Brendan Model Finke triple horn.

He has also done many music related jobs such as arranger for Sacramento Symphony, librarian and personal manager for Sacramento Philharmonic, and manager of Trinity Chamber Concerts (chamber music series) in Berkeley, California for 19 years starting in 1984.

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