Paula Matthusen (born 1978)
Paula Matthusen was born in Arizona and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Wesleyan University where (according to her website), “she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology.”
Paula Matthusen has written music for conventional instruments (such as Prophecy in Reverse which I saw in its world premiere in March 2022 performed by the American Composers Orchestra), but many of her works involve electronics. She has also made sound installations and collaborated with choreographers and theater companies.
This is a 2018 composition entitled by the inexplicabilities we call coincidence for prepared piano and miniature electronics. The title is from the book The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit. The work was commissioned by the pianist Kathleen Supové and uses field recordings made at the Chapman School in Supové’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, of the migratory Vaux’s swifts and other ambient sounds.
About this composition, Paula Matthusen writes:
I was intrigued by the idea of finding unusual resonances, and decided to place these field recordings as well as slowed down recordings of the vaux swifts inside the piano. Two fixed media tracks work together – one resonating the interior of the piano, and then the second articulating the exterior world of the piano by playing through a conventional stereo playback system. The pianist navigates between these two worlds, playing a very slow melodic line on a zither placed inside the piano utilizing a handheld fan. The sound source of the handheld fan is to be obscured from the audience, allowing for a mysterious blend between the timbral worlds inside and outside of the instrument.
The following is a 2019 composition for vibraphone and electronics entitled For these things that can be told / until mystery becomes elegy. The video’s description contains more details on its creation and execution: