Portfolio For Hodder Fellowship

These are the samples for Jon Paul Mayse for the Hodder Fellowship 2021-2022

Included are:

Assembly for Recorder Trio (Performed by Tabea Debus, Charlotte Barbour-Condini, and Olwen Foulkes)

Well-Played Game (created/performed by Subpatch)

Downloads

These are available below, without needing to download.

Assembly for Recorder Trio

When I was little, I played with Legos.

A lot.

It’s possible entire summers were spent on the floor of my room, sunlight streaming in, blocks in hand. I never bothered to follow the instructions and just made whatever I felt like. I think that may have influenced my present compositions.

Assembly, for recorder trio, is simply playing with some musical blocks, building new things from the basic materials of a work. Little musical objects (a clockwork rhythm, a murmuring gesture, stillness), are presented in varied states of construction.

Premiered in London, March 2019 Charlotte Barbour-Condini, Tabea Debus, and Olwen Foulkes

Well-Played Game (with Subpatch)

In A Well-Played Game, we reframe the simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to present its ramifications in a new light. While the traditional game is one of straight-forward victory, A Well-Played Game emphasizes agreement rather than adversity as the desired objective. This naïve and beautifully simple game is transformed to become an immersive musico-dramatic experience, combining music, film, and theatre.

Under each player’s hand is a Leap Motion interface, which tracks the players’ movements and feeds the data to a Max/MSP which organizes the light and audio interface elements, which are responsive to the players’ motions. The audio is comprised of two tracks: one serene and nostalgic, the other glitchy and chaotic. Should the players ‘agree’ (i.e. both throw the same movement simultaneously), the music is pleasant; should the players ‘disagree’, (i.e. throw different movements, therefore resulting in a ‘win’ in the traditional game), the music becomes distorted and glitchy, crossfading to the less pleasant soundtrack. The film follows suit as well – if the players ‘agree’, the lights dim and the film becomes more visible, displaying scenes of childhood gaiety, whereas upon ‘disagreement’ the film glitches and becomes uncomfortable.

A Well-Played Game puts an interesting spin on the nostalgic singlemindedness of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Through the connection and subversion of nostalgic elements and childhood games, WPG explores what it means to agree, to disagree, and to toe the line between the sentimental sublimity of childhood and the chaos of conflict.