Program Note

6:46 makes specific reference to John Cage's 4:33. Cage's work invites the audience to experience all the various sounds present around the listener's environment during moments of silence. This altered experience of silence brought Cage to redefine silence (at least for Cage's own philosophy) as the "absence of intended sounds, or the turning off of our awareness." For many performers, composers and audience members, these non-intended environmental sounds can be unwanted noise, negatively influencing one's experience of intended, or crafted sound. The goal of 6:46 is to organize and manipulate these environmental sounds through computer processing, turning them from unwanted noise into intended, organized sound. The material used to create 6:46 is taken from recordings of my own music. These recordings are filled with clicks, bangs, crowd noise and a variety of unwanted, distracting sounds. It is not my intent to exploit these sounds but to transform them into something greater than their initial existence. Included among these unintentional sounds are excerpts from the recorded works.