A Recovering Modernist Travels a Compelling and Beautiful Journey - Mark Engebretson

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Mark Engebretson, composer and professor out of Greensboro, NC, writes music that is driven by  a desire for fresh, engaging forms and modes of musical expression in which performers are asked to face and overcome novel technical and musical challenges. Listen as Mark explains and performs his piece The Outside,  live in the WHUP studio. Based on a poem by Greensboro, NC poet Brian Lampkin, the computer listens, responds, suggests, interrupts, and challenges the saxophone and poet much like a regular collaborator might, revealing the opportunities and questioning the implications of our increasingly close relationship with computer technology, especially artificial intelligence. We discuss what Mark means when he says he is a recovering modernist in a piece based on Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans. Finally, we close out the show with Luminous, a work inspired by the light filled art installations of artists like Olafur Eliasson, that uses the audience’s smartphones as sound sources, revealing new possibilities for the relationship between the composer, performers, and the audience. We barely scratched the surface on this one! Mark left us all wishing we had a two hour show.