for double bass and stereo fixed media
Completed July 16, 1992
Duration: 14′38″
Requested and performed by Luis Gómez-Imbert
ABOUT THE WORK
Portrait: Luis Gómez-Imbert belongs to a series of commissioned sound portraits I began in 1990. The premise was that every sound used in a portrait would originate with the person being portrayed. I used recorded sound much as photography uses film: to capture distinctive traces of an individual’s sonic personality.
Once musicians I knew became aware that I had made a portrait for someone else, several asked me to make one for them. Luis Gómez-Imbert was among them.
In Luis’s case, I decided not to use his voice. The source was a recording Luis provided from a session with Bobby Lombardi and Jon Nelson, consisting largely of extended double-bass techniques characteristic of his improvisational language.
MAKING THE FIXED MEDIA
I extracted a small portion of Luis’s improvisation and encoded its component sounds digitally. I then programmed a rhythmic system of events of varying durations: cycles of different lengths constructed from rhythmic ideas already present in the original improvisation.
The timbral possibilities within the selected segment were explored in their order of appearance by slowly tracing the silhouettes of its waveforms with the computer. This process became part of a technique I call Tracing.
The resulting fixed-media composition is therefore not a conventional accompaniment. It is Luis’s improvised playing taken apart, examined, reorganized, and returned to him as a soundscape.
PERFORMANCE
Luis improvises freely in counterpoint with the fixed media. Both layers of the work—the original recording from which the fixed media was constructed and his live response to it—began as improvisations created at different moments.
The original score consists of four concise instructions:
Play in counterpoint with the tape.
Imitate the prerecorded sound without fear.
Memorize only the beginning and ending of the recording.
Amplify the double bass if necessary.
Carefully blending the acoustic instrument with the loudspeaker sound is an essential part of the performance. The completed portrait emerges through the encounter between Luis’s earlier recorded improvisation and the new one taking place in the room.
PREMIERE
1992
Luis Gómez-Imbert Solo Recital
Sala José Félix Ribas, Teatro Teresa Carreño
Primer Encuentro Nacional de Compositores
Caracas, Venezuela
Performed by Luis Gómez-Imbert, double bass.
PUBLICATION
A studio realization was published in 1994 on Con Corda: Bajo el signo de lo postmoderno, performed by Luis Gómez-Imbert and pianist Juan Francisco Sans and released by Lyric Classical.
The CD lists the recording as track 20 under the title Retratos: Luis Gómez-Imbert, with a duration of 14′38″.
Read about the publication: Con Corda
SCORE DOCUMENTS
Spanish program note describing the work and its compositional process
Original score and letter to Luis Gómez-Imbert, July 16, 1992