Debut Recording of Composer’s Orchestral Works Performances by the GRAMMY Award-Winning Boston Modern Orchestra
Project (BMOP), Percussionist Lisa Pegher, Hornist Adam Unsworth,
led by Conductor by Gil Rose
Hailed for its “artistic courage and technical accomplishment (The New York Times),” the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by conductor Gil Rose releases Paul Dooley: Masks & Machines (#1101). The director and founder of the Performing Arts Technology’s annual Computer Music Showcase at University of Michigan, Paul Dooley is one of the most prolific and performed composers in America today. Hailed for his cross-cultural range of contemporary music, dance, and art, it is Dooley’s exploration of technology that has enraptured new music aficionados and novices alike.
For the first time on record, four of Dooley’s orchestral scores—Point Blank, Mondrian’s Studio, Masks & Machines, and Circuits & Skins—demonstrate the quick evolution of electronics in the concert hall and its growing place in creativity. “While all of these compositions have been ‘successful’—with two of the works being among my most-performed—finishing each resulted in my asking ‘What the heck am I going to do next?’,” explains 41-year-old composer Paul Dooley. “The four works presented here became important compositional milestones between which I went through extended periods of grinding and experimentation.”
The album opener Point Blank is a fusion of “acoustic-fied” synthesizer pads, leads, and keys filled with a youthful, “kitchen-sink” energy. This exhilarating work was recognized with the 2013 Jacob Druckman Award from the Aspen Music Festival and has received global performances.
Dooley’s search for a new direction is heard in the discipline and structure found in Mondrian’s Studio, a three-movement tribute to the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) featuring virtuoso solo hornist Adam Undsworth. A former member of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Undsworth currently serves as Principal Horn of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and crosses over into the world of jazz as a member of the Gil Evans Centennial Project, Miho Hazama’s M-Unit Band, and horn quartet Quadre.
Inspired by another modern artist—this time Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) whose work merged art, technology, and performance—Dooley explores the interplay between past and present, visual and auditory, in Masks & Machines. This composition has garnered critical acclaim, hundreds of performances, and multiple awards, including the 2016 Sousa/ABA/Ostwald Award and the 2015 William D. Revelli Prize.
Finally, the album closes with Dooley’s most challenging composition project, Circuits & Skins. Showcasing Dooley’s newly discovered way to fuse digital sounds with the orchestra, Circuits & Skins is an EDM-inspired electronic percussion concerto written for Lisa Pegher. Pegher is an American percussion soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has been hailed as “tremendous” by The New York Times, “forcefully balletic” by The Boston Globe, and “more than just a drummer — an alchemist of time, sound, and space, crafting visceral landscapes that penetrate the ears and mind,” by The Glass. In Circuits & Skins, she expertly weaves two carefully programmed Roland SPD-SX drum samples into the percussion battery. These electronic instruments contain field recordings and Dooley’s own synthesized instruments which balance the acoustic orchestral forces.
