Five Seconds To Realize
Five Seconds To Realize 13 min. vln, pre-recorded turntables and drum machine. Also available in a violin duo version.
performed by Mary Rowell
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Version for two violins (pdf)
Everything is Green
Everything is Green 13 min. fl, pno, pre-recorded soundtrack with electronics and narrator. text from a short story of the same name by David Foster Wallace
Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"At first blush, listeners might have thought Randy Woolf's Everything Is Green to be a nod to the lime "team" colors of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Turns out, the composition may be a standard bearer of its own, for an intriguing niche of the art song genre. This achingly exquisite work for flute, piano and tape highlighted another outstanding concert by PNME Friday at City Theatre.To consider Everything Is Green as song is a bit of a stretch. For one, there was no singer. A pre-recorded narrator, Rinde Eckert, related a short story by David Foster Wallace over the playing of flutist Lindsey Goodman and pianist Daniel Spiegel. But it felt like song and engaged with the same power. The story, set in a trailer park, is elegiac. A world-weary middle-aged man confronts his cheating girlfriend. Rather than yelling at her, he desperately tries to explain to this younger and less complex companion what his deeper, spiritual needs are these days.
Woolf captured the blend of hopelessness and passion the protagonist feels. The piano assumed the role of the singer with a pensive melody while the flute portrayed the man's ranging emotions. A sampled pedal steel guitar lent the strains of country music. The girlfriend is embodied by an intrusively synthetic, Laurie Anderson-like sample. This punctuates her lack of depth. But, in a score roughly in G major, her line slips into E minor at the end, showing that she, too, felt depression. The crux of the work finds the man deciding to ignore her shortcomings and stay, a choice echoed with the flute emphatically playing a high G. Goodman performed the difficult part with agility and emotion."
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Where The Wild Things Are
Where The Wild Things Are 40 min. fl/pc, cl/bs. cl, tpt, tbn, drumset, marimba, electric guitar, 5-string electric vln, (acoustic) vln, Kurzweil PC88, sampler, contrabass/elec. bs.
Music for the ballet created with Maurice Sendak and Septime Webre. The ballet has been performed over a 100 times nationwide, by The Colorado Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet, Columbia City Ballet, and many others. The complete ballet is 40 minutes, and there is also a 10 minute suite version.
François Couture, All Music Guide:
"This is the music composed by Randall Woolf for a production by the American Repertory Ballet based on Maurice Sendak's classic children's book {-Where the Wild Things Are}. So technically speaking, this is theater music for a children's play. But it's so much more. Randall Woolf, one of the most promising young composers of the late '90s, wrote music that stands on its own and owes very little to the language of standard children music. The heavy guitar (electric), complex forms, sometimes very atonal modes and inventive arrangements turn Where the Wild Things Are into a delightful contemporary composition. The child universe is present through a highly imaginative world of sounds, the occasional use of danceable beats, simple melodies and heavily-treated voices appearing here and there. Although very serious writing can be seen throughout this suite, there is a refreshing lighthearted quality to it that will keep the children's attention while entertaining adults. Thanks to a perfect meeting between classical, rock and avant-garde music, this album is full of surprises."
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Download Max Misbehaves Score (pdf) Listen
Download Max's Jungle Score (pdf) Listen
Download Ocean Voyage Score (pdf) Listen
Download Island Score (pdf) Listen
Download Wild Rumpus Score (pdf) Listen
Download Max is Homesick Score (pdf) Listen
Download His Dinner Still Not Score (pdf) Listen
See clips and photos from the ballet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tV4suu3lI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9vmluZ-BqQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdOY_-afThA&feature=related
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loungelistener/442323890/in/photostream/
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Blues For Black Hoodies
Blues For Black Hoodies 14 min. string orchestra, pre-recorded rapper, turntables, drum machine. 3 versions: 20 strings (6,4,4,4,2), 14 strings (4,4,3,2,1, and string sextet (2 vln., 2 vla., 2 vcl.)
A setting of the rap song Blues For Black Hoodies by emcee and producer Wordisbon. The lyrics explore the plight of young urban African-Americans, set in a bed of strings, beats, and turntables.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times:
"The concert ended with Randall Woolf's "Blues for Black Hoodies" (2008). The basis of the work is a recording by MC Wordisbon, a rapper, on which Mr. Woolf has superimposed a beautifully detailed, slowly flowing string score. ...The combination of Mr. Woolf's strings, the scratches and the text created a movingly melancholy atmosphere, bluesy in spirit and rich in texture."
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Women At An Exhibition
Women At An Exhibition 20 min. fl,ob/eh,cl/b.cl/sax,hn,tpt,tbn,tba,kybd.elec. guit,2 vln,vla,vcl,db, pre-recorded electronic soundtrack, video
A collaboration with filmmakers Mary Harron (American Psycho) and John C. Walsh. The film makers created the video to Randall Woolf's score, using images of women from the collection of the Akron Art Museum.
Full orchestral version also available.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times:
"Women At An Exhibition (2004), with a score by Randall Woolf and video by John C. Walsh and Mary Harron, was decidedly more pleasing. The video, a survey of paintings, sculptures and photographs of women, had a musicality of its own: some of the more striking images returned near the end of the piece, almost like a sonata recapitulation. Mr. Woolf's score was a quilt of orchestral and electronic timbres, inventively blended."
Download Chamber Orchestra Score (pdf)
Download Full Orchestra Score (pdf)Listen
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Modern Primitive
Modern Primitive 18 min. fl/pc,cl in Bb/A/bs. cl, pno, perc, vln, vla, vcl (also available without vla)
Paul Griffiths:
"Randall Woolf escapes the primitive label by virtue of his virtuosity and the modern for his fond, yet amused, cherishing of the U.S. vernacular. The title track, delivering the longest of the five works here, is an alarmed Brandenburg with its roots in country music and jazz. Different instrumental groupings keep bubbling to the surface, take over for a time, but soon have their lead places usurped (though they might take a while to notice). Though the piece plays continuously, its span of close on twenty minutes has an ABA pattern of hectic music enclosing slower rotating dreams."
Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
"Modern Primitive (1991) is a latter-day "Rite of Spring." The outer sections are juggernauts of driving, violently syncopated rhythm sandwiched around a stunned, floating middle section that dotes on a monotonous, childlike tunelet. "Modern Primitive" is tremendously exciting, and not only for its speed. You're not only rolling in this piece, you're careening."
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Gandharba's Song
Gandharba's Song 4 min. for vln., electronic track and video.
Gandharba's Song is about life in Katmandu, Nepal, where the ancient, modern, sacred and commercial parts of life mix freely and constantly. The track is made from a solo by Sarangi virtuoso Bharat Nepali. The video was made by Mary Harron and John C. Walsh.
Watch video.
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Shakedown
Shakedown 11 min. fl/pc,ob/e.h.,cl in Bb/A/bs.cl.,bsn, hn,tpt,tbn, pno,perc, vln,vla,vcl,db
Morihiko Nakahara. cond., Spokane Symphony
" 'Shakedown' is very rhythmically charged with no relief from the rhythmic action, getting you into almost a techno-like groove."
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Toxic Rainbows Of The Sea
Toxic Rainbows Of The Sea 11 1/2 min. percussion quartet, pre-recorded turntables, synthesizer and drum machine
performed by John Ferrari
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My Insect Bride
My Insect Bride 12 min. soloist: Hohner Clavinet or Nord Electro with distortion device and wawa pedal (synth. substitution possible) fl/pc, ob/e.h., cl/bs. cl, tpt, tbn, tba, drumset/glock, vln, db
My Insect Bride, inspired by the film The Fly, marries the cold cruel beauty of insects with humankind's soft sense of compromise and empathy. Relentless and sentimental, it also creates a musical marriage of the heartless Hohner Clavinet with the sounds of 'human' winds and strings. It's an imaginary sound track to a horror film for humans and a "love story for arthropods."
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HEE HAW
HEE HAW 8 min. fl/pc,ob.,cl, bsn, 2 sax, hn,tpt,tbn, 2 vln,vla,vcl,db,sop, alto voice, sampler or pre-recorded electronics
Steve Smith, Time Out/NY:
"Detroit-born New Yorker Randall Woolf is one of the few to adapt tactics such as sampling and hiphop turntablism as viable elements in a postmodern compositional vocabulary. Hee Haw, the work that opens Woolf's new CD, provides the perfect introduction: A prerecorded square-dance caller sets a chamber orchestra aswirl, with only a brief, heartsick-ballad interlude allowing the players to catch their breath."
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Try To Believe
Try To Believe (from Bodegas) 4 min. vln, pre-recorded turntables, synthesizer and drum machine. Optional video accompaniment by Eric Dyer and Co.
Also available in a version for string quartet.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times:
"Mr. Woolf's work, a movement from a set called "Bodegas," puts the violin against an electronic drumbeat and samples originally played, hiphop style, on turntables and included in the computer track. There are few boundaries here: Minimalism morphs into a dense, electric blues solo and then into a single line that has the character of a Bach prelude."
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Watch the video on YouTube