Nox

Nox was written in 2024/2025 for Vicki Ray for the Piano Spheres Festival 2025 in LA, with the support of a Fromm Foundation commission.

Nox is a set of fourteen pieces, conceptualized together as the passage of time through a single night: falling asleep, dreaming, deep sleep, wakefulness, and gradually awakening in the predawn. The music explores this by drawing on my personal experience of unconscious and semi-conscious states where logic becomes fuzzy and imagination goes to unusual and seemingly-impossible places. With the use of interactive electronic sound and audio-reactive projections, the lighting follows the passage through the night that Nox portrays. The projections are intended as a subtle addition to the music that helps to focus concentration and perception on the music.

The titles of the individual pieces that make up Nox are:

1. Crepusculum (prelude)
2. Lullaby
3. Interlude: Synapse
4. Paramnesia
5. Ballad
6. Interlude: Crystallization
7. Toccata (midnight)
8. Spiral
9. Interlude: Fungus
10. Numbers
11. Eros (after Ligeti)
12. Interlude: Muscles
13. Bes
14. Hypnagogia (predawn)

Each of these pieces has a unique focus and character, often exploring tuning, microtonal harmony, and experimenting with musical tropes. Most of these pieces are precisely notated, but the interludes are semi-notated guides for improvisation. For these interludes, the soloist is prompted to interact with the electronic sound, sometimes asked to only use a single note, and other times provided with more complex instructions to improvise in reaction to.

Nox uses a set of piano retuning devices called Maqiano, allowing for the piano to play pitches outside of twelve-tone equal temperament. Four of these devices are used for this piece, blending the acoustic piano with retuned piano sounds in the electronics to create a rich harmonic palette.

The electronic sounds are made exclusively with Pianoteq, which is a physical modelling synthesizer with a realistic piano sound. Some sections of the piece are set, where the live pianist and virtual pianos are synchronized with a click track, while other sections are interactive, with the software listening and responding to what the live pianist plays.

The projections were created using TouchDesigner, based on the programming of Simon David Ryden.

Premiere: Vicki Ray, Piano Spheres Festival, Thayer Hall, Los Angeles, February 19, 2025.