Ensemble Intercontemporain: Maryvonne le Dizes-Richard, violin; Sylvie Gazeau, violin; Simone Muller, viola; Pierre Strauch, cello; Alain Marion, piccolo, flute; Gérard Perreau, oboe; John Wetherill, bassoon; Jean-Jacques Gaudon, trumpet; Jens MacManama, horn; Jérôme Naulais, trombone; Marie-Claire Jamet, harp; Alain Neveux, piano; Philippe Mace, percussion; Michel Cerutti, percussion; Peter Eötvös, Conductor

Jane Manning, soprano; Barry Guy, bass

Notes by Tod Machover

Light and Soft Morning, City! form a natural pair among my compositions. Both were completed within the space of one year, deal with similar compositional pre-occupations, and employ related uses of technology in music; together they are the culminating points of my work to that date.

Among the similarities between them, the presence of computer-generated sound is perhaps the most obvious. My real introduction to computer music (other than some preparatory studies at Juilliard, MIT, and Stanford University) came when I arrived at IRCAM, Paris, in the Fall of 1978. It was an exciting time there; a new technology, that of real- time digital synthesis, was just being perfected, thanks to Giuseppe di Giugno, an Italian physicist who had been invited to the institute by Luciano Berio. His machines, at that time the 4A and 4C (now superseded by the 4X!), for the first time gave composers the possibility of hearing their music immediately and of including gestural control and performance nuance. By a series of lucky accidents I became intimately in- volved with these machines at an early stage and was able to appreciate the beauty and power that they represented. When IRCAM commissioned me to write a piece for the Ensemble InterContemporain later that year, I decided to employ both the 4A and 4C machines in combination with a large instrumental ensemble...

This title, originally issued on the CRI label, is now available as a burn-on-demand CD (CD-R) or download in MP3/320, FLAC or WAV formats. CD-Rs come in a protective sleeve; no print booklet or jewel case included. Full liner notes are accessible via the link above.