Aftermath
(Jesper Nordin has once described his music as being "like if you play a traditional Swedish folk melody in a huge cathedral, and then you take away the melody". It is the resonances, residues and remnants of things that is his focus. In "Aftermath" for saxophone quartet and live electronics, it is not just soft melodies that are the base but also large eruptions from the powerful sounds of four saxophones. To get resonances from the saxophones the musicians have been playing their instruments into a grand piano which was recorded and used as a base for the electronic sounds. To add a different quality to the sound drum sticks were put on the strings and left to rattle, in that way they produced a kind of "acoustical distortion".
A lot of the music was composed with a new technique of drawing music instead of writing it that Nordin has developed, he says: "I programmed an environment where I can control the harmonic and rhythmic framework and then, using a pen on the computer-connected drawing board, I can play freely within this framwork. This is the utlimate tool for me who has always searched for controlled freedom using improvisation in different ways. Here I can improvise and still have an exact control over harmony, microtonality and direction."
"Aftermath" was commissioned by Swedish Radio for the Quasar saxophone quartet and published by Edition Peters, Frankfurt.