DESCRIPTION:
Glyph Tropes is a 12 minute work for midi percussion controller and interactive computer media system running an elaborate "patch" created with the max/msp/jitter programming language. The computer responds to live performance input in a variety of way, at times allowing percussive strokes to trigger sounds, chords, indeterminate gestures, successions of pre-determined pitches or even entire algorithmic processes. The live percussionist also "plays" an image synthesizer, causing the presentation and alteration of video images.

While many of the composer's earlier works for live performer and video made extensive use of projected texts (De Profundis for clarinet, Sonata with Words for piano, 48 Movements for Snare Drum), Glyph Tropes was composed for the purpose of reaching beyond english-speaking audiences. In this piece, the shapes, sounds and implied meanings of glyphs from various cultures, languages and even planets (note the crop circles) are used as inspiration for a succession of musical passages, or tropes.

The piece progresses somewhat like a video game, with each new trope (or perhaps "game level") challenging the percussionist in various ways— sometimes to read precisely notated gestures from the laptop screen while at other times to improvise within parameters, etc— always with the goal of musical coherence and escalating drama. In the tradition of the classical theme and variations, the piece is also a challenge to the composer and the audience. How many different ways are there to re-imagine glyphs as music? After the more obvious solutions are exhausted, the spectacle become increasingly elaborate, whimsical, eccentric and wild.

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