On February 28, 2023, I’ll be at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen’s University to introduce a performance of my first string quartet Madra (1999) by The Isabel Quartet. The concert is at 7:30 pm Eastern. This will be the premiere of the newest revision of the score, which postdates the Madawaska Quartet’s recording. I’ve been working with the Isabel on the piece and am excited to hear where it lands. In-person and livestream tickets are available here.
Author: elmahboob
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Way Back When
I began compiling the songs for this mixtape at the beginning of 2020, letting the playlist shift and grow over three tumultuous years. This is my “ultimate” mixtape; one that covers the formative decade of my childhood that began a half century ago (concentrating on the early 80s), and focuses on Black legends in the genres of R&B, jazz-funk, disco and boogie during the final period of analog recording. This is music that finds me most at home in my body, with familiar and positive lyrical themes. It’s a Black yacht rock movie dream.
As with previous mixtapes, there is melodic and harmonic mixing as well as beat matching and a smooth tempo curve. I worked to create an occasionally seamless conversational flow from song to song, and was surprised that led me to include well-known anthems alongside my usual “rare groove” selections. The result is a more unified mood and less eclectic set. No effects have been used, and where possible, songs are segued naturally with little or no crossfading.
PART I
Barry White | Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up (1973)
DeBarge | I Like It (1982)
Wally Badarou | Preachin’ (1980)
Gene Dunlap Featuring The Ridgeways | It’s Just the Way I Feel (1981)
George Duke | Corine (1979)
Syreeta | I Don’t Know (1977)
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson | Alien (Hold on to Your Dreams) (1980)
Tania Maria | Come with Me (1983)
Minnie Riperton | Adventures in Paradise (1975)
Anita Baker | Do You Believe Me (1983)
D Train | Children of the World (1983)
Jeffrey Osborne | Ain’t Nothing’ Missin’ (1982)
Herbie Hancock | Magic Number (featuring Sylvester) (1981)PART II
The Jones Girls | Nights over Egypt (1981)
Odyssey | Love’s Alright (1982)
Billy Ocean | Everlasting Love (1981)
Patrice Rushen | Get Off (You Fascinate Me) (1984)
Brenda Russell | Way Back When (1979)
Chaka Khan | I’m Every Woman (1978)
Aretha Franklin | Jump to It (1982)
Luther Vandross | I Wanted Your Love (1983)
Bernard Wright | Move Your Body (1983)
Dazzle | All (1979)
Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly | Love Is the Key (1983)
The Emotions | Here You Come Again (1981)
Sylvia St. James | So I Say to You (1980)Ibrahim El Mahboob
January 2023 -
2012+10 Fourths + Fifths
“Fourths + Fifths” is the first of three movements from Kenza (2012), and the fourth movement in the cycle of nine in Children’s Suite (2007-2014). It was composed the year my second child Kenza was born. Like all the other movements in the suite, it’s written entirely on the white keys of the piano, in pandiatonic C major. My intention was to create music that was both childlike and abstract.
The movement is structured around a sequence of six diatonic modes, each associated with a melodic pattern. Each pattern is built up from a single, seven-note arpeggio into a homophonic canon by layering the pattern against copies of itself with different starting points. The intervals of the fourth and fifth predominate throughout.
Performed by Stephen Clarke, piano, as part of a composer portrait concert by Arraymusic, November 2020
Audio and image from video by Daniel Tapper
Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022
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1997+25 urfunk etude
urfunk etude (1997) is for solo piano with or without electronics. In terms of the sequences of minimalist canonic material and the parallel alignments of pitch, rhythmic structure and register, it is a precursor to my string quartet Madra (1999) and other works. It also builds upon a particular piano technique that worked around my limitations as a self-taught pianist. It can be performed in the just intonation tuning heard here or in equal temperament. I gave the premiere performance in February 1997 at Love Salon, an informal monthly event held at Liminal Laboratory, an artists’ loft in a now demolished and rebuilt part of Toronto.
The piece was performed and recorded on my Korg 01/WFD workstation, technology which dates to 1991. With some minor score tweaks, the present audio is of the original sequence and effects played back to digital in 2022.
Composed and recorded December 1996–January 1997
Image from video by Carsten Knox, Liminal Laboratory, February 1997
Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022
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Li’l Shadd: A Story of Ujima
My music was included in a concert reimagining* of the picture book Li’l Shadd: A Story of Ujima, that paired the story with music by composers of African descent. The book was originally commissioned by the Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum, and the reimagining was created for the Regina Symphony Orchestra as an online education tool for their RSO in Schools program: “This story chronicles one of Saskatchewan’s first settlers of African descent, Dr. Alfred Schmitz Shadd. The concert features music by composers of African descent, performed by the Regina Symphony Chamber Players. The story is narrated by Sharon-Ann Brown. This education program includes the concert, which is available for online streaming, as well as a teacher’s guide with detailed background on the story, activities and information the contributions Black composers have made to classical music.” *The teachers’ guide download icon is below the video embed in the link.
(Excerpt of Madra for string quartet, 3:42-4:47) I’m grateful to have been included in this project, and it was a special thrill to find my bio in the guide on the same page as the esteemed Florence Price!
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World Premiere: in the sea of being
On Thursday, June 23, Thin Edge New Music Collective will give the world premiere of my sextet in the sea of being as part of the inaugural edition of Reverb, at 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education, in Toronto. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to work with TENMC, whom I’ve long admired for their adventurous and broadly inclusive approach. After thirty-odd years of composing, this marks only my second commission, but it was well worth the wait. The title is taken from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven (1971).
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World Premiere: dream of a blue elf
On Saturday, February 19, 2022, pianist Stephen Clarke of the Array Ensemble will present the world premiere of my solo piano work “dream of a blue elf” (2007, from perhaps bells do not play tunes), as part of the prerecorded and livestreamed program “Premieres.” Event details and a link to purchase a ticket (CAD$25 or pay what you want) can be found here.
I also had a “Living Room Talk” with Arraymusic artistic director David Schotzko, to give a brief introduction to the piece. That can be found here.
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Companion
Companion (2019) was composed through late 2018 and early 2019, while the first pencil sketches date to 2011. It is dedicated to my two youngest children. All of the material derives from seven-note rows: orderings of the pitches of the diatonic scale. The harmony resembles traditional tonality heard through a pandiatonic filter. There are four sections, divided by key signature: F major, A-flat major, B major and D major.
Each section is constructed from one or two unique, quasi-symmetrical rows that proceed most often by the interval of a fourth or fifth. Each row is layered against itself in a homorhythmic canon of up to six voices, often accompanied by high and low pedals tones that present an additional canon in augmentation. Almost every chord in Companion is the result of a basic serial process, one exception being the transition between the third and fourth sections, which features chords built from nested fifths. Ultimately, such chords result from the canons as well.
The final chord is arrived at through symmetrical voice leading from the penultimate chord and is also the initial row spelled vertically from bottom to top. Form at the local and vertical levels is highly rationalized, while global and horizontal form—rhythmic structure and phrasing—is loosely associative.
Stephen Clarke, Wesley Shen, pianos
Recorded live at The Array Space, Toronto by Daniel Tapper, November 21, 2020Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022
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1991+30 Indigo Pool
“Indigo Pool” is the first song from my 1991 DIY cassette album ōo, in my lo-fi, high-concept early period. The song was composed as it was recorded, layer by layer, beginning with the rhythmic pattern in 11/8 played on two empty plastic water cooler bottles anchored by an abandoned ride cymbal I found in the cluttered basement of the apartment I was living in at the time. Next, I added the synth patterns and fades — all live to recording without programming, software assists or editing — creating a spacey, minimalist, Lydian mode texture. I also worked without notation, which was typical for me at the time as a self-taught musician who played by ear.
The text was an obscure communication to myself and fellow artists, in a rugged, childlike vocal performance. I still made songs the same way I had as a teenager, in that I didn’t rehearse beyond the testing of word sounds and vocal ranges (which usually doubled as a recording sound check), and made as few takes as possible. Once I had the general idea captured, I moved on and called it a tune, wobbly bits and all.Composed and recorded November 1991, remixed April 1992
4-track cassette recorder, Yahama DX-27, percussion, voice
Cassette mixdown transferred to digital 2017, unmasteredPhoto: cassette inlay designed by the composer
Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2021
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we have lived before at Ottawa Chamberfest
Fresh from giving the world premiere of we have lived before at Toronto Summer Music, Gryphon Trio performs my new work twice at Ottawa Chamberfest, on Wednesday, July 28 (7 pm, virtual only, in-person sold out) and Thursday July 29 (2 pm, limited in-person still available). I’ll be there to introduce the piece and tell the stories behind it. I’m excited to travel—on a train no less—and say a rare hello to the capital city.
EL MAHBOOB 