Michael Pisaro-Liu / Forming — Concentric Rings in Magnetic Levitation (Sawyer Editions)
This is the second commercially available recording of Michael Pisaro-Liu’s composition Concentric Rings in Magnetic Levitation. The composer originally devised the score with sonic bricoleurs Haptic in mind, completing it in 2011. While that group realized it in the flesh via live performance, it was the trio of Teodora Stepančić (piano & electronics), Assaf Gidron (electronics & objects), and Martin Lorenz (percussion) who first generated a physical manifestation of the piece. It was that recording, gifted by Pisaro-Liu to Ryan Seward in 2018, that inspired the Colorado-based percussionist to assemble a group with Carl Ritger (electronics, field recordings) and Andrew Weathers (piano, sine tones) to give the composition another breath of life.
[[MORE]]With this piece, Pisaro-Liu conjured a series of rings of increasing size, each hosting a unique sonic element; he envisioned these rings orbiting a nucleus of sine tones. The smaller, innermost loops are the most musical. The rings get noisier as they stray from the center, eventually becoming completely abstract. In his score, the composer has the three players utilize piano, percussion, objects, found sound, and electronics, with live performance and pre-recorded elements melting together in a living, breathing three-dimensional sonic field.
This pattern of concentric rings exists in nature at scales both cosmic and atomic, defining matter, electromagnetic force, and planetary motion. Pisaro-Liu’s complex arrangement of interwoven sonic threads reflects this fundamental notion. Like a scientist, he seeks to understand the world around him — its synchronicities, periodicities, and fundamental rules — and how he fits within it.
The timing of the score is precise, an hour broken up into equal segments, but Pisaro-Liu encourages the players to mix themselves into the structure, introducing a sense of variability and personality to the piece. In a 2009 essay called “Wandelweiser,” in which he describes the formation and impetus behind the composer/performer collective (of which he’s an integral part), Pisaro-Liu describes his desire to collaborate with his performers: “I wanted to stop telling musicians what to do in every detail and to start creating possibilities for performers to explore a particular, individual sense of sound within a simple clear structure I would provide.” As listeners, we are also collaborators, albeit unintended. The composition and its realization both drive our focus and arousal.
Comparing the two recordings of Concentric Rings in Magnetic Levitation, one clearly hears the players’ selves living inside the sonic space. Forming (Seward, Ritger, and Weathers) choose to highlight the spikier, noisier, and more unconventional elements. Bowed and amplified percussion, electronics and field recordings rattle and buzz over the much quieter piano and sine waves. On their recording, Stepančić, Gidron, and Lorenz homed in on the piano/sine interactions, pushing the noise to the background. Both are fascinating realizations of Pisaro-Liu’s intent, but Forming proves to be the more texturally adventurous trio, amplifying the nooks and crannies of the abstract and living at the outer fringes of sound’s possibilities.
Bryon Hayes
