Works by Jerry Tabor

Click here for recordings for sale featuring Jerry Tabor's music.

Note: PayPal has not been added yet, please email us if you wish to make a purchase!
Price $10.00 per work

In Circles of Blue (2008) for Orchestra

Commissioned by the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra

In Circles of Blue reflects my experimental approach to making music, but also incorporates my roots as a jazz musician. In fact, this composition represents my attempt to get back to what inspired me to become a musician in the first place. Always fascinated with harmony and wishing I could “live in the sound” of it, I composed In Circles of Blue to create one dimension of the sound world in which I wish I could live. Every sound in the piece was chosen because it resonates within me in a particular way. The process of finding these sounds is just as important to me as the actual discovery of them. It was this experimental perspective that compelled me to incorporate the process of discovery in the structure of the composition (much the way Charles Olsen did in his poetry). Thus, a cycle emerges in which the music returns to, and intensely explores, harmonies that were previously presented only in passing. The meditative nature of the music that this process engenders—the way the harmonies reemerge and “hang” in time, almost motionless—is for me like standing in front of a painting by Mark Rothko. His huge canvases engulf the viewer so that all the inner workings of each color field become the primary focus. Likewise, the monolithic soundscapes of In Circles of Blue require us to look inside the sounds because we can’t very easily see the outside of them.

The large fields of sound found in the music also seem to eschew a sense of time. An acknowledgement of that is built into the very annunciation of chords throughout the piece. The beginnings and endings of harmonic statements are often written to be “messy,” not at all together within each instrumental family. But at times this messiness is filtered out and the harmonies are presented with “clean edges.” Going one step farther is the way the chords sometimes interrupt one another, which requires the utmost precision in the ending of one harmony and the beginning of the next. While the music seems to totally lack a sense of time, these moments of temporal clarity, as they “bubble” up to the surface, reveal that time is actually the backbone of the structure.

As a composer who resides deeply within the American experimental tradition I hope anyone listening to In Circles of Blue will not expect anything of the music, but instead simply allow the sounds to “pour over” him/her for the purpose of discovering and rediscovering—along with me—what makes these sounds who they are.

lemon;birch (2002) sterophonic computer generated audio

The title, lemon; birch, is an implicitly descriptive metaphor for the procedures and sonic objects employed in the composition. The metaphor calls attention to a high amount of connectivity, interaction, substitution, and extraction that results in apparently disparate sonic components. These processes were applied to the composition’s sounds through the capabilities of a PC-based, real-time version of Iannis Xenakis’s UPIC System. In this program, sonic events are drawn on a virtual page on the computer screen by using the mouse. All or portions of each drawing can be copied and reconfigured with different dimensions that bear a strong or not-so-strong resemblance to the original visual image. Additionally, the images can be, in effect, scrolled through very quickly or slowly, or a moment within them can be settled on so that each component of the sonic event can be examined for its own validity to the compositional idea. In many cases, these explorations yielded new events that were also subjected to the same procedures previously mentioned. On the surface it may seem as though the sounds are unrelated but they are actually generated from the same four drawings. From this perspective the composition explores the relationships between well-defined and refined images and their often-ragged reflections. These intersections were created from the ground up as well as by grafting intensified components from existing sonic images into new contexts, giving them a completely new presence. The effect is in some ways similar to that of Robert Rauschenberg’s painting Ace, in which seemingly isolated images reappear elsewhere in the work with new personality, thereby creating an almost imperceptible level of unity through unexpected forms of repetition. This is also true of the connections between uses for the lemon and birch trees. While they seem to be very different on the surface, they both have properties and uses that are strikingly similar, such as chemical extraction.

assemblage, montage…icon, image (2001) percussion (primarily vibraphone), piano

assemblage, montage...icon, image articulates the composer’s realization that when one works with sounds in a focused, non-linear manner, they become objects or images that exist and are appreciated in isolation. They can function to build perceptual frames of reference for the listener when combined with other non-linear sonic images. (They inevitably become somewhat linear when presented together in time, as in this composition.) By treating these sound images as objects that take on new meaning when processed in various ways (as one might expect in digital audio processing or computer sound synthesis), they were stretched, shrunk, taken apart, stripped, and separated as their traits became clearer and more meaningful in their contexts. Occasionally, the original images appear as though the deeper levels of the composition bubble up to the surface, revealing, momentarily, the components on which the entire composition depends. At other times, only semblances of these images appear, as icons that represent what is actually being listened to the entire time, but in disguise. The resulting surface texture presents separated individual notes of prominence—all representatives of various levels of the structure—that when combined produce near melodic qualities. Still dynamically further back in the texture are secondary melodic structures that bridge the gaps between the more prominent moments. These various melodic features evolve between chaotic washes of sound and clearly grouped and demarcated events, the most extreme of which give the impression of chords but are in fact simultaneities of notes from various levels of structure; they are rarely in perfectly harmonic alignment.

The treatment of the sonic images in this composition is very similar in sound to the visual impressions of the Ocean Park series of paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, in particular, Number 70 of the series, from 1974.

engaging Causey (1996) computer generated audio

Ambit (1994) for large chamber ensemble (piccolo, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, 2 trumpets, trombone, violin, 2 cellos, piano, vibraphone, marimba, snare,

duration: approx. 14 minutes

for six percussionists (1993) for 6 percussionists on unspecified instruments

duration: approx. 9:15

veneer/semblance, extremities, verities (1992) for 2 violins, 2 violas

duration: varies

veneer/semblance, extremities, verities (for string quartet) reveals complexities often hidden within an apparently simple sonic event. Through its structure four string players identify a uniform sound and stretch it to its limits. In this way the sound’s microscopic design (rich and intricate in nature) is revealed. Such singular sonic events are often overlooked in more traditional composition because they exist merely to function within some larger context, or structural design. Here, in contrast, the moment becomes the entire composition. As such it affords a rare opportunity to glimpse the rich inner life of sound—an inner life filled with subtle yet audible variations in pitch, rhythm, texture, and timbre that a listener may not ordinarily notice in more traditional compositional contexts. In much the same way that a painter like Mark Rothko helps us to see the perceptual “truth” in the complexity of the color fields he painted, veneer/semblance, extremities, verities exposes the very makings of a mere moment of music, yielding yet another kind of music altogether.

Released on “New Music Series, Vol. 4,” Neuma Records #450-102