MADELEINE

SHAPIRO
cello

SOUNDS NATURE
WORKS
for

CELLO
and

ELECTRONICS

THE NATURE PROJECT

For years I have spent much of my recreational time in the outdoors hiking, crosscountry skiing, biking and, occasionally, camping. As I pursued these outdoor activities, I gravitated toward environmental activism, volunteering with
environmental organizations to work on a variety of issues. Over the past decade,
as the ecological problems that surround us have become more pressing, I
began to wonder if I could find a way to combine my concern for the environment with my long-time work in the performance and promotion of new music.
This led to The Nature Project, begun in 2005 and consisting of more than
twenty pieces, many written for me specifically for this project. In addition to
being performed in traditional concert halls, the pieces have been heard in
venues ranging from the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens and the Shortridge Mt. Morse Nature Conservancy (Phippsburg, ME), to the Ear to the Earth Festival
(NYC) and The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), where it accompanied the
exhibition Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art.
The works continue my career-long interest in electronics and multi-media, and in
the case of Avalon Shorelines, my deep interest in improvisation and loosely notated scores. They also resonate in a more personal way: the memory of spotting a
bald eagle fishing in a river, and recalling a day-long ski trip in Yellowstone National
Park in blowing, swirling snowwith nothing stirring and nothing to be heard except
for my breath, the swoosh of the skis, and the wind whistling through the trees.
2

MADELEINE SHAPIRO, cellist

Called a cello innovator by Time Out New York, Madeleine Shapiro has long
been a recognized figure in the field of contemporary music. Madeleine
performs extensively as a solo recitalist throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin
America. With a focus on recent works by living composers, her concerts have
included numerous premiere performances of works for cello, and cello with
electronics, many written for her. Madeleines first solo CD, Electricity: Works
for Cello and Electronics was greeted as ...focused and cohesive...a polystylistic
collection of pieces that individually push the instrument and technology in
unique ways.(Time Out New York ). As a chamber musician she was the founding director of the internationally known ensemble The New Music Consort, and
presently directs ModernWorks.
Madeleines awards and grants include two Encore Awards from the American
Composers Forum, and a Barlow Award, all to assist in the presentation of
new works. She has also been awarded First Prize in Adventurous Programming
by ASCAP Chamber Music America, and has received numerous grants for
performing, commissioning and recording from The New York State Council
on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Mary Flagler Cary
Charitable Trust and Meet the Composer. She has been a three -time Visiting
Artist at the American Academy in Rome.
Along with her two solo recordings on Albany Records, she has recorded for Naxos,
New World Records, Stradivarius, CRI, Mode and HarvestWorks.
3

In addition to performing, Madeleine is the director of NewMusicMannes

at New Yorks prestigious Mannes College of Music, where she also teaches a
seminar in new music performance techniques. A dedicated and involved teacher,
she presents new music workshops and masterclasses at universities both
nationally and internationally, and has had numerous residencies at a wide
range of institutions.

MORTON SUBOTNICK
AXOLOTL (for cello and electronic ghost score) is the first of two works in
Part I of a series entitled The Double Life of Amphibians. The axolotl is a
Mexican salamander; it is transparent and delicate with two filigree wing-like
appendages extending from either side and floating above the creature.
These are lungs for its future ascent to the surface of the water, but the
axolotl never goes through the final stage of its potential development...
it never reaches air...it remains forever in water.
Morton Subotnick is a pioneering composer in the development of electronic
music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media,
including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a
computer part or live electronic processing, and his oeuvre utilizes many
of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre.
His groundbreaking electronic works, Silver Apples of the Moon and The
Wild Bull, commissioned by Nonesuch Records, were the first works to be
4

composed specifically for disc medium.Both works have received worldwide

acclaim and are often choreographed by leading dance companies around
the world. Subotnick played an important role in developing the electronic
ghost box, which is an electronic device consisting of a pitch and envelope
follower for a live signal with an amplifier, frequency shifter and ring modulator. His pioneering works for electronic ghost and live performers include
Liquid Strata for piano,The Wild Beasts for trombone and piano, Trembling
for violin and piano and A Fluttering of Wings for string quartet.

JUDITH SHATIN
FOR THE BIRDS is an hommage to the birds of the Yellowstone region as well
as a play on Cages book of that name. I include the sounds of the natural world,
sometimes clearly, sometimes digitally transformed beyond recognition. The
joining of the voice of the cello with that of the birds, reminds us of the joining
of the human worlds with those of the birds that surround us and the importance of maintaining their habitats. The transformation of their voices speaks to
the transformative power of music.I am grateful to naturalist Kevin Colver for
sharing his bird recordings. Bird enthusiasts may also know that he is the narrator of the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Western Region.
Judith Shatin is a composer, sound artist and community arts partner
whose music was called something magical by Fanfare, and highly inventive on every level, by The Washington Post. Her practice engages our

social, cultural and physical environments. Known for her path-breaking

electroacoustic music, she has also created a major body of acoustic music.
A four-time recipient of fellowships from the NEA, Shatins work has been
honored with a two-year retrospective sponsored by the Lila Wallace
Readers Digest Arts Partners Program, multiple grants from Meet the
Composer /Creative Connections, and many others. Her music has been
commissioned by ensembles such as Berlin Ensemble PianoPercussion,
Da Capo Chamber Players, the Dutch Hexagon Ensemble, Kronos Quartet,
and the National and Richmond Symphonies as well as organizations
including the Library of Congress, Barlow and Fromm Foundations. Her
music is widely recorded on labels including Innova, Naxos, Neuma,
New World and Sonora. She is currently a William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of
Music at the University of Virginia where she founded the Virginia Center for
Computer Music.
judithshatin.com

MATTHEW BURTNER
Like a skier moving across the snow, I imagined the cellist sliding the bow
across the surface of the cello. The performers breath and the sounds of
the snow reveal contours of two parallel terrains. Fragments from cold:
the snow from outside, the breath within.The tracks of both crossing are left
in noise. Fragments from Cold uses snow and wind sounds from Matthews
native Alaska.
6

Matthew Burtner is a composer and sound artist specializing in concert

music, ecoacoustics and interactive media. Born and raised in Alaska, he is
First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music
Competition, a 2011 IDEA Award Winner, and a 2013 NEA Art Works Grant
winner. His recently published climate change opera, Auksalaq, received
a 2014 Special Judges Citation from The American Prize for Extraordinary
Use of Technology to Expand the Boundaries of Performance. He has been
an Invited Researcher at IRCAM, Provost Fellow at UWMs Center for 21st
Century Studies, and a Howard Brown Foundation Fellow of Brown University.
He is currently a Professor in the University of Virginias McIntire Department
of Music. In 2009 he founded the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono.
Burtners music has been performed in major festivals and venues throughout the world and commissioned by ensembles such as Integrales (Germany),
NOISE (USA), Trio Ascolto (Germany), MiN (Norway), Musikene (Spain),
Spiza (Greece), CrossSound (Alaska), and others. He has also worked closely
with virtuosic soloists such as Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Dimitris Marinos,
Morris Palter, Haleh Abghari, Madeleine Shapiro and Wu Wei.
matthewburtner.com

TOM WILLIAMS
Dart was written for Madeleine Shapiro who gave the world premiere in
2012. The work was shortlisted for the British Composer Awards 2013
7

awarded by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors,

Sonic Arts Category.
The works narrative and musical imagery find their inspiration in the river
Dart. This is a landscape that has very personal resonances for me. The cello
is in dialogue with both digital delay created by live processing and an
electroacoustic tape part that is composed from recordings made of the
river Dart and of the wood body of the cello itself. In the first lines of his
1902 novel, The River, Eden Philpotts evocatively describes the Dart in all
its moods ... ever rolling, ever changing, the river strays; and the nature
of mankind is reflected in her many moods, in her peaceful and sunlit summer-time, in her autumn torrents and winter darkness banked with snow.
Tom Williams is an award-winning composer who specializes in compositions for electroacoustic music. His song cycle, Like Oranges, received
numerous international performances and broadcasts, and was recorded
on the Kitchenware label. Ironwork for piano and tape was an ALEA III
prize-winning work in 1993. His acousmatic work, Can, won the Italian music
medal Citt di Udine in 2010, and Shelter received a honorable mention
at IMEB, Bourges, in 2006, and Break was a finalist in the 2004 Musica
Viva competition. Recent collaborations have included the video works
Voice (aRetracing), and Home (aReplacing), with the dancer Vida Midgelow,
and the 2015 song cycle Meditations on a Landscape, with soprano
Juliana Janes Yaff. He is currently Director of Music Composition and
8

Leader of INTIME experimental music group at Coventry University.

tw-hear.com

GAYLE YOUNG
In Avalon Shorelines the cello plays with two simultaneous tracks of North
Atlantic Ocean sounds of waves recorded at several locations along the
stony shores of Newfoundlands Avalon Peninsula. The number of repetitions
of waves from each location is determined by simple number sequences.
Madeleine improvises with the sounds of water splashing and waves
interacting with varying sizes of stones, as patterns emerge from the
juxtapositions of the waves. She develops these by integrating timbre, noise
and string overtones, sometimes going with the current, sometimes on top of
the waves, sometimes submerged. The composition of Avalon Shorelines
was funded through a project grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Gayle Young composes music for electroacoustics, for orchestral instruments, and for instruments she designed and built in order to work with
microtonal tunings. She studied contemporary music at Torontos York
University with David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, and James Tenney,
among others. In the fall of 2014 she was in residence in Italy as a fellow of
the Civitella Ranieri Foundation where she wrote a piece for solo piano
with optional electronics. As publisher and former editor of Musicworks
magazine, Young facilitates public discussion of music and sound exploration. The Sackbut Blues, her biography of electronic music pioneer
9

Hugh Le Caine, outlines a fertile period of interaction among science, technology and music in the mid-twentieth century as the first compositions
emerged from electronic music studios.
gayleyoung.net

This recording was made possible in part with public funds from
The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Thanks to the following special individuals:
Barry Soicher, Christine Chagnon (for her wonderful artwork),
Susan Dadian, Beatriz Roman, Michael Calvert and Joel Chadabe.
General Production: Madeleine Shapiro and Louis Brown
Recording and Editing: Louis Brown (lbrownrecording.com)
Mastering: Andreas K. Meyer (meyer-media.com)
Art Direction /Design: Christine Chagnon
Photos: Steven Speliotis (Speliotis Photography)

10

11

Morton Subotnick
1. Axolotl for solo cello and electronic
ghost score (1981)
18:43
Judith Shatin
For the Birds for amplified cello
and electronics (2005)*
2. Song Birds
3:39
3. Sapsuckers
3:58
4. Birds of Prey
2:52
5. Water Birds
3:40
Matthew Burtner
6. Fragments from Cold for cello and
8:44
electroacoustics (2005)*
Tom Williams
7. Dart for cello, digital delays and
15:40
fixed media (2012)*
Gayle Young with Madeleine Shapiro
8:41
8. Avalon Shorelines* (2011)
Total Time: 66:22

*written for Madeleine Shapiro / The Nature Project

TROY1577

SOUNDS NATURE
WORKS
for

CELLO
and

ELECTRONICS

MADELEINE
SHAPIRO
cello

Called
Called aa cello
cello innovator
innovator by
by Time
Time Out
Out New
New York,
York, Madeleine
Madeleine Shapiro
Shapiro has
has
long
been
a
recognized
figure
in
the
field
of
contemporary
music.
long been a recognized figure in the field of contemporary music. Madeleine
Madeleine
performs
performs extensively
extensively as
as aa solo
solo recitalist
recitalist throughout
throughout the
the U.S.,
U.S., Europe
Europe and
and Latin
Latin
America.
With
a
focus
on
recent
works
by
living
composers,
her
concerts
America. With a focus on recent works by living composers, her concerts have
have
included
included numerous
numerous premiere
premiere performances
performances of
of works
works for
for cello,
cello, and
and cello
cello with
with
electronics,
many
written
for
her.
Madeleines
first
solo
CD,
Electricity:
electronics, many written for her. Madeleines first solo CD, Electricity: Works
Works
for
for Cello
Cello and
and Electronics
Electronics was
was greeted
greeted as
as ...focused
...focused and
and cohesive...a
cohesive...a polystylistic
polystylistic
collection
of
pieces
that
individually
push
the
instrument
collection of pieces that individually push the instrument and
and technology
technology in
in
unique
unique ways.
ways. (Time
(Time Out
Out New
New York
York ).). As
As aa chamber
chamber musician
musician she
she was
was the
the
founding
founding director
director of
of the
the internationally
internationally known
known ensemble
ensemble The
The New
New Music
Music Consort,
Consort,
and
presently
directs
ModernWorks.
and presently directs ModernWorks.

Inside
Inside Right
Right
CD
CD Slot
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Madeleines
Madeleines awards
awards and
and grants
grants include
include two
two Encore
Encore Awards
Awards from
from the
the American
American
Composers
Forum,
and
a
Barlow
Award,
all
to
assist
in
the
presentation
Composers Forum, and a Barlow Award, all to assist in the presentation of
of
new
new works.
works. She
She has
has also
also been
been awarded
awarded First
First Prize
Prize in
in Adventurous
Adventurous Programming
Programming
by
by ASCAP
ASCAP Chamber
Chamber Music
Music America,
America, and
and has
has received
received numerous
numerous grants
grants for
for
performing,
commissioning
and
recording
from
The
New
York
State
performing, commissioning and recording from The New York State Council
Council
on
on the
the Arts,
Arts, The
The National
National Endowment
Endowment for
for the
the Arts,
Arts, The
The Mary
Mary Flagler
Flagler Cary
Cary
Charitable
Trust
and
Meet
the
Composer.
She
has
been
a
three
-time
Charitable Trust and Meet the Composer. She has been a three -time Visiting
Visiting
Artist
Artist at
at the
the American
American Academy
Academy in
in Rome.
Rome.

Along
Along with
with her
her two
two solo
solo recordings
recordings on
on Albany
Albany Records,
Records, she
she has
has recorded
recorded for
for
Naxos,
New
World
Records,
Stradivarius,
CRI,
Mode
and
HarvestWorks.
Naxos, New World Records, Stradivarius, CRI, Mode and HarvestWorks.

In
In addition
addition to
to performing,
performing, Madeleine
Madeleine is
is the
the director
director of
of NewMusicMannes
NewMusicMannes at
at
New
Yorks
prestigious
Mannes
College
of
Music,
where
she also
also teaches
teaches aa
New Yorks prestigious Mannes College of Music, where she
seminar
seminar in
in new
new music
music performance
performance techniques.
techniques. A
A dedicated
dedicated and
and involved
involved
teacher,
she
presents
new
music
workshops
and
masterclasses
at
teacher, she presents new music workshops and masterclasses at universities
universities
both
both nationally
nationally and
and internationally,
internationally, and
and has
has had
had numerous
numerous residencies
residencies at
at aa
wide
range
of
institutions.
wide range of institutions.

Morton
Morton Subotnick
Subotnick
1.
Axolotl
for
cello
1. ghost
Axolotl
for solo
solo
cello and
and electronic
electronic
(1981)
18:43
score
18:43
ghost score (1981)
Judith
Judith Shatin
Shatin
For
For the
the Birds
Birds for
for amplified
amplified cello
cello
and
(2005)*
and electronics
electronics (2005)*
2.
3:39
2. Song
Song Birds
Birds
3:39
3.
Sapsuckers
3:58
3. Sapsuckers
3:58
4.
2:52
4. Birds
Birds of
of Prey
Prey
2:52
5.
3:40
5. Water
Water Birds
Birds
3:40
Matthew
Matthew Burtner
Burtner
6.
6. Fragments
Fragments from
from Cold
Cold for
for cello
cello and
and
electroacoustics
(2005)*
8:44
electroacoustics (2005)*
8:44
Tom
Tom Williams
Williams
7.
7. Dart
Dart for
for cello,
cello, digital
digital delays
delays and
and
fixed
media
(2012)*
15:40
fixed media (2012)*
15:40
Gayle
Gayle Young
Young with
with Madeleine
Madeleine Shapiro
Shapiro
*
(2011)
8.
Avalon
Shorelines
8:41
8. Avalon Shorelines* (2011) 8:41

Back
Back Panel
Panel

Total Time: 66:22

Total Time: 66:22

for Madeleine Shapiro / The Nature Project

*written
*written for Madeleine Shapiro / The Nature Project
TROY1577
TROY1577

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SOUNDS
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NATURE
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WORKS
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WORKSand
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ELECTRONICS
ELECTRONICS

MADELEINE
MADELEINE SHAPIRO,
SHAPIRO, cello
cello

OUNDSNN
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MADELEINESHAPIRO,
SHAPIRO,cello
cello TROY
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MADELEINE
MADELEINE SHAPIRO,
SHAPIRO, cellist
cellist

MADELEINE
MADELEINE
SHAPIRO
SHAPIRO
cello
cello

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