Explorations: Nicole Randall

This week’s featured composer for Explorations is Nicole Randall.  It’ll be airing on Wednesday, May 6 at 7:00 pm.  Tune in at www.wrsu.org or 88.7 fm locally!

 

Nicole Randall is a composer and flautist residing in Atlanta, GA.  She has composed for the concert setting and film and the music explores a wide variety of mediums including chamber music and Electronic Music.  She has received a number of awards for her writing, including “Best Original Score” in 2003 from the Atlanta 48 Hour Film Project for her music in “Storyboard in A Major” and the Atlanta Pen Women’s Composer of the Year in 2008.  Her music has been performed by groups and people such as the Alias Chamber Ensemble and flautist James Strauss in Brazil, and has been featured at the Dartmouth Electronic Music Festival, www.bowed.org, and “Live in Studio C.”  As a flautist she performs regularly with the Mercury Season, New Atlanta Philharmonic and her own group DuoAtl.  She currently teaches at New Atlanta Conservatory.  More information, musical recordings, and upcoming performances can be found at her website, http://www.nikkinotes.com/

 

We’ll be hearing two pieces by Nicole Randall.  I was really excited that she submitted two pieces that vary greatly in style.  The first is Mangosteen, a work for Guitar and Flute, and performed by DuoAtl (Randall on flute and Brian Luckett on Guitar).  The piece covers a wide variety of territory, focusing on the interplay of the two very different instruments and the recurrence of a small handful of ideas.  Beginning with jazz harmonies and dance like rhythms, the piece becomes a mad rush of intensity that is held throughout the work.  Its amazing how she is able to treat the flute as an equal to the guitar in terms of intensity in the pieces. 

 

Discombulation, a work for string quartet and performed by Alias Chamber Ensemble, is full a dark work that begins full of angst, until the instruments seize on a driving tempo refuse to let go. A melodic idea bounces around the ensemble alternating with a progression that almost drags you through the music forcefully.  The piece seemingly sputters out until finding its way again, with a race to the ending by the instruments.  The piece carefully balances dissonance with accessibility, a remarkable feat. 

 

Mangosteen by Nicole Randall

 

Discombobulation by Nicole Randall