Currier, Sebastian: Nightmaze (2005) 45'
multimedia work with narrator and chamber ensemble
Scoring
fl.cl-trp-perc(1):vib/SD/2cyms/hi hat/cowbell/tamb/glsp/brake drs/crot-pft.kybd-vln.vcl.db-narrator-video projections-4 channel electronics
Composer's Notes
Nightmaze is a multimedia work for live instrumental ensemble, spoken voice, digitally
processed sound, and video projection. Commissioned by the Network for New Music with funding from the Barlow Foundation, Nightmaze was created by composer Sebastian Currier (music) in collaboration with video designer Sage Carter (video) and writer Thomas Bolt (text, roadsigns).
As Nightmaze begins, a college student, after studying without sleep for three days straight, has just finished his final exams in Physics, Cosmology, Psychology, Economics, and “the Male Sublime.” He falls into a deep sleep and—his mind saturated with half-understood ideas—dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway on which he is the only driver.
Nightmaze follows his journey through a dream world of sexual desire, fear, and longing
that is ordered only by the strange roadsigns that loom up along the way, forcing him to
choose his course from among the stark, binary options they present.
Nightmaze uses tightly interlocking music, narration, and animation to evoke the dark and glittering sweep of the nightmare Interstate (labeled UNCONSCIOUS 1). The music’s incessant motion underscores the road’s changing rhythm as the dreaming protagonist is confronted again and again with foreshortened warnings, forced instructions, and paired alternatives out of Freud, physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of Edmund Burke.
- Sebastian Currier
multimedia work with narrator and chamber ensemble
Scoring
fl.cl-trp-perc(1):vib/SD/2cyms/hi hat/cowbell/tamb/glsp/brake drs/crot-pft.kybd-vln.vcl.db-narrator-video projections-4 channel electronics
Composer's Notes
Nightmaze is a multimedia work for live instrumental ensemble, spoken voice, digitally
processed sound, and video projection. Commissioned by the Network for New Music with funding from the Barlow Foundation, Nightmaze was created by composer Sebastian Currier (music) in collaboration with video designer Sage Carter (video) and writer Thomas Bolt (text, roadsigns).
As Nightmaze begins, a college student, after studying without sleep for three days straight, has just finished his final exams in Physics, Cosmology, Psychology, Economics, and “the Male Sublime.” He falls into a deep sleep and—his mind saturated with half-understood ideas—dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway on which he is the only driver.
Nightmaze follows his journey through a dream world of sexual desire, fear, and longing
that is ordered only by the strange roadsigns that loom up along the way, forcing him to
choose his course from among the stark, binary options they present.
Nightmaze uses tightly interlocking music, narration, and animation to evoke the dark and glittering sweep of the nightmare Interstate (labeled UNCONSCIOUS 1). The music’s incessant motion underscores the road’s changing rhythm as the dreaming protagonist is confronted again and again with foreshortened warnings, forced instructions, and paired alternatives out of Freud, physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of Edmund Burke.
- Sebastian Currier
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