"alt.music.ballistix"

from the Sept 1998 issue of Australian Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine

Õ98 Beijing International Clarinet Festival Review

...The closing work was one of the most interesting (and entertaining) of the Conference. Entitled Alt.Music ballistix for Clarinet and Tape by Resanovic, it opened with industrial noises, including the sounds of an overseas telephone operator combined with a lyrical clarinet line, then moved into an ersatz folk dance complete with synthesised accordion and percussion sounds. This was extremely fast and energetic. Then the piece closed with more of the opening, including requests for passwords and counter signs which were incorrect. All in all, a sort of parody of modern life, but with a human response in the middle....

Floyd Williams

Well, now... to be fair here's an entirely different review of the same piece. Perhaps I should thank Mr. Tracy for not mentioning the composer ;-)

By RYAN TRACY

Closing the first portion of the program was a contemporary piece called "Alt.Music.Ballistix for Clarinet and Tape." Though novel in concept, the four-movement piece lacked depth, and was the only unsatisfying number of the evening. After a purely electronic first movement, "A Matter of Fax," Rosengren commenced the "Soliloquy," a reasonable duet for clarinet and computer.

Even the third movement, "A Balkan Dance," was charming and not all that uninteresting. But what occurred in the final movement, "Convolution@dax.cc.uakron.edu," was something reminiscent of a Yanni concert. Our Balkan dance morphed into a Balkan discotheque, with thoroughly incessant drones and minimal development.

Published Thursday, March 23, 2000, in The Orange County Register.

...and now I will run Mr. Tracy's review through my special ultra-wideband-reject filters...and...viola!!!

"...Novel in concept...charming..."

Ryan Tracy, Orange County Register.

...and here is a quite recent review of the piece from the International Clarifest 2000 Conferenceheld in Oklahoma this past summer .

"...Perhaps the most provocative piece of the entire conference was Nikola Resanovic's "alt.music.ballistix," superbly performed by Babette Belter (Oklahoma State University). Resanovic's 12 minute piece for clarinet and digital autdio tape (in four contiguous movements) contains a labyrinth of unique and stimulating aounds including an "unrelentingly polite voice-mail lady" and an exciting and vigorous Balkan folk music section which utilizes Macedonian and Bulgarian dance idioms. This wild and fascinating work is very playable and requires no extended contemporary techniques. Hopefully, it will be published, enabling this promising new piece to receive the broad exposure it so justly deserves..."

from p. 61 of the december 2000 issue of"THE CLARINET" journal.

Program notes by the composer

Bearing a title suggestive of a fictitious internet news group, "alt.music.ballistix" is an electro-acoustic composition scored for solo clarinet and digital audio tape which I composed for Professor Hakan Rosengren in the fall of 1995. The 12 minute work is divided into four contiguous movements as follows:

Mvt. 1 - "A Matter of Fax" ( a three-minute sonic montage featuring original samples from various technological sources including a fax/modem, telephone, short-wave radio, satellite transmissions, mingled with the most precious of all musical comoditiesÑ silence!)

Mvt. 2 - "A Soliloquy" (a three-minute, 11-tone, unaccompanied clarinet solo based on every pitch but the pitch 'D' which appears later as an accompanimental 'ison' or drone)

Mvt. 3 - "A Balkan Dance" (influenced by Macedonian and Bulgarian dance idioms, the movement features many references to the folk music of this region of the Balkans.)

Mvt. 4 - Convolution@dax.cc.uakron.edu (The above three movements are polyphonically combined, and a fourth elementÑthe unrelentingly polite voice-mail ladyÑis injected into the sonic recipe.)

"Ballistix" is a musical representation of some of the bizarre realities of our modern era of digital communications and information. It is the metaphor of the seemingly backwards peasant down-loading the latest nasdaq figures via his cell phone/modem onto his lap-top computer in some remote region of the BalkansÑhis cows grazing in the background. This juxtaposition of the modern and the timeless, the sophisticated and the simple, the sublime and the ridiculous, expresses itself in a music which combines "atonality" with the 'ison'; "emancipated rhythm" with a metric straight-jacket; a clarinet with an accordion, tambourine and modem. "Ballistix" is convolved music: it takes musical events that seem isolated and unrelated at there first presentation and restates them in a contrapuntally intertwined manner. In this new context these same musical events are transformed by their very interaction as they combine to reveal a higher order of relationships.

"Ballistix" was premiered at the Pitea festival in Sweden during the summer of 1997 by Hakan Rosengren who was Clarinetist in residence at the University of Akron from 1995-1999 and is presently on the faculty of California State University at Fullerton, CA. The work has since been performed by numerous clarinetists around the world and throughout the United States.

And now for those of you nintendo-heads out there. "Ballistix" was realized using the following equipment: A Kurzweil K2000s sampling keyboard and synthesizer; an Alesis ADAT 8-track digital audio tape recorder; a Panasonic 3700 DAT recorder; a DATAsync syncbox; a Mac Classic; a PowerMac 7100AV; MasterTracks Pro. 5 sequencing software. a Mackie 1202 mixer; a Carvin 1688 8-bus mixer, and an Electrovoice EV20 microphone.

N. Resanovic

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