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Bill Alves The Terrain of Possibilities Bill Alves' music is based on fascinating patterns and lovely timbres, including computer transformations of vocal and instrumental sounds. It's sensitive, musical, and it's all the more amazing that many of the sounds and tunings, such as just intonation, are based on mathematics. As Alves says, "Ancient Greeks considered music to be literally audible mathematics ... " Well, if this music is based on mathematics, it's not at the expense of musical talent. This is a gorgeous CD! Critic David Beardsley observes (Juxtaposition Ezine) that Bill Alves' music "moves forward with the drive of gamelan while displaying Alves command of timbre." In fact, Alves' musical influences reflect many international sources. One hears Indonesian musical sounds, intonation, and cyclic patterns, as well as West African drumming polyrhythms, samples of Korean instruments and English change ringing, a system of varying orders of pitches which developed as a folk art among the bell-ringers of England. The compositions include: 'Redundant I', based on modifications of the voice of soprano Eva Vazzana singing a text by New York writer Mark R. Harborth; 'Bending Space', written for a collaboration with robot choreographer Margo Apostolos and computer animation expert Richard Weinberg; 'Time Auscultations' and 'Spectral Motion', written for a collaboration with robot choreographer Margo Apostolos; and 'The Question Mark's Black Ink', a work for live performers (Vicki Ray, piano, and Mark Nicolay, percussion) and electronic sounds. Bill Alves composed most of the music on this recording on a Synclavier II. He teaches electronic music and world music in Claremont (California). Buy it!

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