DESCRIPTION:
Propolis is a collaborative electro-acoustic work composed for The Morning Line by Bryce Dessner, David Sheppard, and Evan Ziporyn. Propolis is the resinous wax produced by bees to fill up spaces in the hive. Its medicinal uses and healing powers for humans are myriad and mysterious, and the substance itself—what it's made of—varies considerably from hive to hive. In The Morning Line—which, like the hive, is built using hexagonal geometry—sound becomes the propolis, the connective tissue of the structure.

Propolis explores the idea of The Morning Line as a sonic instrument and live performance environment by combining prerecorded spatialized sound and generative MAX/MSP software patches with composed and improvised live bass clarinet by Evan Ziporyn.

Propolis was developed through close interaction with artist Matthew Ritchie and architects Aranda/Lasch and a collaborative compositional process among the three composers. The work uses the scaleable 8:3 ratio applied fractally in the architecture to generate several different rhythm devices, as well as the cyclical thematic basis of the structure as formal inspiration. Propolis is a multilayered, nonlinear composition with a palindromic form based around the order/chaos continuum. Six interchangeable movements, each with different sonic and spatial properties and different software patches, migrate from recognizable sounds (bass clarinet, drones, sine waves) and clear musical relationships (rhythm, phrase, spatial counterpoint) to dissociated and heavily processed sounds and chaotic/threatening sonic activity.

Propolis exists in two versions: a prerecorded sound work, diffused within the installation and sampled by Ghost Net, the permanent sound work of The Morning Line, and a live version, in which the three composers interact with the sound work on instruments ranging from bass clarinet to mixing board. As with its apiary counterpoint, this propolis is thus altered by its environment, reflecting not only the work of the collaborators but also the specific physical location of each performance.