Music
At The Recreation Club, 11-5-22 (2022)
Recorded live, bootleg-style, at The Recreation Club in Champaign, IL, Saturday, November 5, 2022.
Released November 18, 2022
Edward Breitweiser – modular synthesizers and electronics
Yea Big (Stefen Robinson) – bass clarinet
Briar Darling – cello and moog
James Mauck – drums
Tones for Our Bones (2022)
Around 1966, pianist and composer Chick Corea wrote a tune called, “Tones for Joan’s Bones”, which I adore. It was released as the title track on his 1968 debut album, which I also adore.
After a very long week, I needed tones for my bones. I experimented with layers of bass guitar, feedback, and modular synthesizer, and recorded them during an extended improvisation.
By sharing these with you, they become Tones for Our Bones. (I don’t know who Joan is, but these are for her, too.)
“Tones for Our Bones” is a simple offering for anyone who needs it.
Best used at a loud – but safe – volume.
Released September 2, 2022
All tracks written, performed, and recorded by Edward Breitweiser between August and September 2022.
wintering (2022)
“wintering” is a improvisational piece composed over the winter of 2021-2022. I designed an integrated modular and Buchla synthesizer system with various self-performing “sub-systems” (a subtly-shifting drone, pitched percussion, dry clicks, chirping ’70s oscillators) that influence one another in direct, but unexpected, ways. These sub-systems loop and morph slowly over time, and the performer can improvised to alter how they interact and blend with each other over the course of a performance.
Like a seasonal cycle, the system settles into repetitive patterns and returns to recurring sounds; during winter, the surface sometimes appears static the subtlest changes soon grow into new life.
“wintering” was inspired by the essay “On Cycles” by Julia Falkner: syllabusproject.org/on-cycles/
Released April 25, 2022.
All tracks written, performed, and recorded by Edward Breitweiser between October 2021 and April 2022.
Capitol Riot -> Capital Riot: Sonic Sketches for Four Wednesdays in January (2021)
A full-length album of “sonic sketches” about listening, time, and history.
“Capitol Riot -> Capital Riot: Sonic Sketches for Four Wednesdays in January” was written as an attempt to listen during what was, in hindsight, a loud period of time. January 2021 carried a relentless and eerily recurrent pattern of historical events. As it so happened, every Wednesday in January (four in total) marked a steady pulse of consequence: first, the insurrection; second, the impeachment (or, if you’re in Illinois, the passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act); third, the inauguration; fourth, the insanity surrounding GameStop.
Every Wednesday, our screens glowed and flickered anew. How did you listen?
All tracks written, performed, programmed, and recorded by Edward Breitweiser.
The best of bonds... (2021)
“It is not possible for two things to be fairly united without a third, for they need a bond between them, which shall join them both. The best of bonds is that which makes itself and those which it binds as complete a unity as possible, and the nature of proportion is to accomplish this most perfectly…” – Plato, ‘Timaeus’
All tracks written, performed, programmed, and recorded by Edward Breitweiser.
Meditation: 2017.01.23-31 (2017)
Meditation: 2017.01.23-31 (for string quartet, piano, percussion, and voice) is a collection of four pieces. Written in a brief creative burst in January 2017, these movements share a common musical language and were similarly inspired by the current American political landscape. Each movement takes its title from the writings of a political or cultural theorist whom I believe to be of particular importance at this moment: Étienne de La Boétie, James Baldwin, Theodore Adorno, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams.
Musically, each movement explores a different dynamic between the individual performers and the ensemble format.
Composed and conducted by Edward Breitweiser. Recording of premier performance at Illinois Wesleyan University, March 8, 2018.
Installations
Rehearsals for Resistance (2017)
Rehearsals for Resistance (2017) is a joint project by Edward Breitweiser and Dao Nguyen. Through a series of collaborative gestures, Breitweiser and Nguyen explore resistance as a mode of productive activity. Beginning with an array of historical precedents and conceptual frameworks, they will present research, structures, and improvised acts that invent new futures for a tumultuous present.
Rehearsals for Resistance was presented at Jan Brandt Gallery (Bloomington, IL) in 2017.
Ecology Study (2016)
Ecology Study (2016) by Edward Breitweiser and Michael Junokas is a set of handmade interactive electronic circuits that includes four channels of sound. The circuitry enacts an interplay between discrete parts and a larger holistic system, mimicking the effects of a small natural ecosystem.
Ecology Study was presented at the McLean County Arts Center (Bloomington, IL) in 2016.
b/w (2013-2014)
b/w is an audio-visual-textual feedback network. Using LEDs and light-sensitive electronic circuits, b/w is set into motion–or “excited”–by gallery visitors, stray sources of light, and other LEDs, creating an adaptive symphony of light and humming sound.
Using his previous installation cusps (2012) as a point of departure, b/w is presented as an ongoing process, constantly in transition and subject to the influence of new circumstances (both for the maker and the materials). Standing as an attempt at the extreme of the singular (a thing of things; a sum without defined parts), cusps was an opportunity to observe levels that are higher and larger than an event, an actor, an area of focus. b/w enlarges the scope of Breitweiser’s earlier work from an individual piece to a dynamic, fluid construct within a broader body of works.
b/w was presented at Three Walls Gallery (Chicago, IL) in 2015.
cusps (2012)
cusps (2012) is an audio/visual/textual feedback network. Three feedback loops, constructed from light-sensitive audio circuits that are amplifying their own electromagnetic fields, are routed to custom computer software. This software analyzes the audio signals and uses this data to synthesize three real-time video signals that are projected back onto the electronics. The light from these projections in turn affects the characteristics of the audio circuitry. Through this continual process, the independence of discrete events becomes indiscernible as catastrophic relationships continually sculpt the network’s ecology.
cusps was presented at the Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL) in 2012.