Output details

It Had to Be You

It Had to Be You was commissioned by Esther Lamneck and Premiered at Steinhardt School at the New York University in 2012 and received a subsequent performance at SARC in 2013. The output consists of a printed score and a Max MSP patch. The research goal was to explore the extent to which a light-hearted 1920’s song, It Had to Be You, could be integrated into the fabric of a work that seeks to express a profound outcry and contemplation for the atrocity of the 911 events. Above all, the New York City environmental recordings that I made in 2007, including the Sounds from the Subway and a Busker in Central Park, required extensive musical exploration in order to be integrated structurally and form a convincing musical narrative. The piece investigates clearly disparate stylistic expressions and explores these through a range of interacting compositional strategies. In addition, the work investigates the role of the composer-computer performer and its relationship with the live acoustic instrument as the work is expressed during a performance. At the heart of this particular issue lies Human, rather than computer, interaction.