When you click play on a digital song or drop the needle on a turntable, you expect to hear the same version of a song every time. East Carolina University percussionist Quintin Mallette was attracted to a new project happening in the School of Music (SOM) this academic year thanks to the freedom of improvisation and the potential for new, contemporary music to inspire unique connections to an audience.
SOM musicologist Navid Bargrizan and Mallette, with SOM coordinator of audio services Alex Davis, have received just under $10,000 to record, produce, and market an album called “Echoes and Rhythms: Bridging Soundscapes.” The funding is through the College of Fine Arts and Communication (CFAC) Research and Creative Activity Awards, which support innovative research and creative projects by college faculty members.
The tracks start with six electronic, or electroacoustic, tracks Bargrizan composed and produced over the last decade. When Bargrizan joined ECU’s faculty in 2023, he heard Mallette perform and the collaboration bug bit. What emerged were “big ideas” for Mallette to improvise a percussion performance over those electronic tracks.
“I asked Quintin, ‘How do you feel about a project like that?’” Bargrizan said. “I have all these fixed-media performances, and then you conceptualize percussion improvisation, which brings another layer, another perspective, more possible depth, more situations for interpretation.”
ECU School of Music contemporary album project
This day on stage, the trio is recording two of the album’s six tracks at A.J. Fletcher Recital Hall on campus. With the electronic music — and sometimes Davis — in his ear piece, Mallette pours water into a metal container and drags a string bow against varying lengths of metal rod sprouting from the top. He adjusts how the metal bowls sit on a table as Davis follows, adjusting the microphones that will record individual percussive sounds they will produce into the final album track.
While the produced album also will sound the same with every listen, it will be created with improvisation, and any live performances will be a new experience, with the album serving as a souvenir of that.
“Audiences will see something that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Mallette said. “The electronics aren’t going to change, but the way I respond to it is going to change, and the room is going to change, and how (the audience) experiences the electronics will change based on the mood they’re in or the room they’re in.
“There’s all this kind of feedback for a very original experience.”
While Bargrizan’s electronic pieces are already recorded, he said they are still based on improvisation, like bird sounds recorded from nature. One piece was composed with only 20 or so field recordings of the sounds around sand dunes.
“Funny enough, some of the best feedback I got was from that,” he said. “The birds are improvising in nature and being recorded. Another piece is just people; I gave them a text and they are reciting, and make mistakes freely. They are improvising.
School of Music coordinator of audio services Alex Davis sits at the school’s studio production equipment, speaking to faculty members Navid Bargraizan and Quintin Mallette as they work on recording percussion improvisation over electronic music tracks.
“And that’s something that I as a composer really care about.”
Mallette compared such a “very direct interaction” to the music to a current world where people experience a rich social media culture. They interact, but through the wall of a computer or phone screen; you might think you know all about the friend of a friend, but then meet them in person and realize you have nothing to talk about.
“To have something that breaks that wall and allows for classical music to be organic and this really rich experience, that’s vulnerable and new, and kind of fun,” Mallette said. “That’s what I think is really compelling about this.”
Bargrizan and Mallette performed a trial run of the album tracks last fall, a great success based on feedback from their colleagues and students. Bargrizan said his students aren’t always open to contemporary music, but a benefit to a creative sound project is the audience can explore why they like or dislike what they hear.
“Somebody would reflect on themselves or the sound, or on the social aspect of the concert,” he said. “I literally heard that behind me (last fall); somebody behind me said, ‘That’s so cool.’
“It provokes reaction, it makes us think, whereas less so with the things that we know. It’s going to make people react.”
Mallette gives an example of another reaction when he started playing contemporary music as a student. He said he didn’t talk much about it, thinking his family wouldn’t relate. Nonetheless, he invited his mother to a concert performed by himself and a friend.
“One of the pieces, we sat on stage and dismantled tree branches and leaves, and that was the entire piece,” he said. “After the concert, I was like, my mom is going to have hated this, and it was her favorite piece. It helped her think about nature differently, stepping on a leaf and hearing the sound.”
Mallette hopes audiences will make similar connections between their new music and other parts of life.
And while artists often like to shine and take a lead role, Bargrizan said their tracks are a real conversation. The team listened to Bargrizan’s tracks, discussed percussion ideas, and Mallette looks for his role in the existing sounds.
Bargrizan said, “This concept of conversation, debate; it’s much more subtle and much more interesting.”
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