Tipping Point CD
This the beautifully composed and arranged soundtrack that Michael D. Mortilla created for Are We Creating a Silence?, the emersive art performance and moving installation that that took place at the Catalina Island Museum on Saturday, July 13, 2019. It was the 3rd ThinkLAB Live event by Elizabeth Turk Studios. This adventurous evening in the arts included a dance by The Assembly Dance Co. and a moving installation in which all attendees participated alongside the artist. The performance was developed with a music & sound landscape created by composer Michael D. Mortilla.
Wearing all white, participants were guided through the process of creating a "Light Canopy", where they wrote messages in the sky with a light wand naming 'that which they most treasure'.
The score for Tipping Point opens with a recording of a wren. All birds sounds subsequent to that in the piece were derived from that single wren call, transposed, time shifted, and otherwise processed. The violin solos in “Tipping Point” are excerpted from Mortilla’s score for the film “The White Shadow” (1924), originally commissioned by Randy Haberkamp and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, where it premiered in 2011 with Nicole Garcia as violin soloist and the composer at the piano. Other tracks of “Tipping Point” are improvisational, done in a single-take with no editing.
“Darkness Expanded” opens with a five minute excerpt from a score Mortilla created during his tenure as Resident Composer for Theater & Dance at the University of California, where he also served as a faculty member and Principal Musician from 1986 to 2000. The second half of the work was created by Mortilla for the Tipping Point project and was also recorded in multi-layered, single take, and unedited tracks.
Michael Mortilla started his full time career as a serious composer in 1976. He was company pianist for legendary choreographer, Martha Graham and was the last composer to work directly with her in the studio on a produced dance work. His work is performed worldwide with commissions from the Library of Congress, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Turner Classic Movies, National Film Preservation Foundation, PBS, NPR, and The Catalina Island Museum, among others.
Track Listing
1. Tipping Point (45:20)
2. Darkness Expanded (10:35)
Michael D. Mortilla, Music & Sound Design
Nicole Garcia, Violin
Published by MIDI Life Crisis (BMI) © 1997 & 2019
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