Chaz Underriner: Shōrin-zu (Pine Trees)

by JukeBoxx NewMusic · Published 3. September 2020 · Updated 4. July 2024

Description:

For video, clarinet, and tape. Commissioned by clarinetist Germaine Sijstermans.

Shōrin-zu (Pine Trees) is inspired by the pair of silk screen paintings of the same name by Hasegawa Tohaku. Germaine and I are both interested in Japanese aesthetics—the idea of Yugen, or the feeling of something that’s unattainable, and the idea of Ma, or empty space. Hasegawa’s Pine Trees exemplifies both of these traits.

My goal in this work is to explore the ‘edges’, the transitions from objects to emptiness of Hasegawa’s Pine Trees in each element of the piece—the clarinet’s niente approach to each dyad, the field recording and wavering image in the video, the crescendi and dimenuendi in the tape part. The overall result in live performance is a kind of viewing of Hasegawa’s Pine Trees through my artistic imagination.

Score and video are available at http://chazunderriner.com/composition/chamber/shorin-zu-pine-trees/

Biography:

Chaz Underriner (b. 1987 in Texas, USA) is a composer, intermedia artist and performer based in DeLand, Florida where he is an Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Stetson University. Chaz’s work explores the representation of reality in art, especially landscape, through the juxtaposition of video projections, audio recordings and live performers.

Chaz’s work has been programmed both nationally and internationally at festivals and venues such as Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Utrecht), the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s National Composer’s Intensive, the Moscow Philharmonic Society (RU), the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Scotland), the International Computer Music Conference, and the Impuls Festival (Austria).

As an engineer, composer, and performer, Chaz’s work has been released on Edition Wandelweiser Records, Slubmusic, New World Records, Fleur du Son, Task Records, Sedimental Records, and Delos.