'I am especially taken with the Shapiro 'Bioplasm,' a slightly bizarre but attractive new piece. Kyle Gann, Chamber Music America magazine And since there are passages of growling, pitch-bending techniques in low register breaking into suave glissandos in both directions, it's easy to see how I was so completely fooled. Imagine my surprise, upon looking at the score later, to find that it's merely a flute quartet! It starts and ends with a calypso- like texture of booming alto and bass-flute key clicks (those were my imagined hand drums), and has sections in which the flutists hum and sing while playing. Listening to it while going about my business, I gathered that it was a large ensemble piece for exotic percussion, voices, winds, maybe even electronics. Jules Langert, San Francisco Classical Voice As such, it was a well chosen finale, sending the audience home in an elated mood.' was a particular favorite, receiving strong gusts of applause and even shouts of approval. Later, there are passages that seem to evoke a more 'tropical' mood and one episode of vocalizing along with the sound of the flutes, before the quasi-Andean music of the opening returns. 'The final work was Bioplasm, by Los Angeles composer Alex Shapiro, which flirts with theatricality and runs an eclectic gamut of styles, beginning with the pseudo-ritualistic entry of the quartet onto the stage, rhythmically clicking the keys of their instruments and blowing short, sharp breaths into the finger-holes. Winner of a 2005 award from the Music Teachers National Association.īioplasm has been featured on many radio shows across the U.S., including WNYC-FM's New Sounds program, hosted by John Schaefer in New York City, and KUSC-FM's program, Modern Masterpieces, hosted by Alan Chapman in Los Angeles. Mary Gheen, Willie Santiago, Benjamin Sledge, In Greenville, North Carolina, April 2015: The ever-changing textures provide a constantly changing sound environment.ĭOWNLOAD the password-protected perusal score and audio fileįor BIOPLASM ( email Alex to obtain the access code): The re-orchestration has the ensemble morphing between two voicing sets (see diagrams), reminiscent of the original Flute Quartet voicing, in addition to including a few solo sections in which players slowly reunite with the choir. Grondin's Flute Choir setting of Bioplasm takes the 'choir of plasma' to a whole new level.

Piece at the MacDowell Colony in the fall of 2003, and reading his timeless Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony' as I began composing this Happened to be reading one of his books, 'Late Night Thoughts On Thomas, author of many marvelous essays about our fragile planet. One of my heroes of both life science and the human condition was Lewis Is a throbbing pulse of life add to this four human voices, and it'sĪ choir of plasma, looking for life to begin. The blend of homogenous sound with four flutes To create an organism that oozes across the sonic floor as one tetheredĮntity, sometimes slowly, sometimes at a quick pace, but always as Piece: rather than exploit the individual voice of each flute, I wanted Matter that's essential for living beings to generate. Bioplasm is the stuff of life, the germinal Then, you have to select the sound effect you want to use with the MuseScore Mixer 'Sound' box.I named this piece Bioplasm because 'Oozing Up From the Primordial Sludge' To use the sound effects, you have to load this soundfont inside Musescore Synthesizer and verify it is at the top of the soundfont list. I'm not sure if there is some 'full completed' sound effects soundfont, because I don't know if there is some 'universal rule' about this.įollowing the Standard General MIDI rules, the soundfont called: 'GeneralUser GS v1.471.sf2' has a lot of sound effects.īut, this is not the only one soundfont with sound effects.

It is about the SOUNDFONT file you are using.

Piccolo keyclick