Cold Stability » Chris Whyte - Percussion – Timpani

Available November 10, 2023 on New Focus Records via
bandcamp, streaming, and compact disc

cold stability is my debut solo recording, including works by Lou Harrison, Sarah Hennies, Toshio Hosokawa, and my own composition for solo percussion with live electronic effects entitled A Cold Stability.

Album Credits:
producer: Christopher Whyte
all recordings engineered by: Branic Howard at Open Field Recording
editing for A Cold Stability by: Christopher Whyte
editing for Reminiscence, Psalm 1, and Solo to Anthony Cirone by: Branic Howard
art design by: Trevor Calabro

The motivation for this collection of recordings began during the COVID-19 pandemic, spurred by the commission of my composition by Third Angle New Music. As the piece came together, I began to think extensively about the need and search for calmness in my own life, community, and society. The result was this collection of works, each in their own way a different exploration of the concepts of tension and release.

I was fortunate to meet and work with Sarah Hennies in 2018 when we performed her “contralto” with Third Angle New Music. It stands out to me as one of the most emotionally taxing performance experiences I’ve had, and I was drawn to the intimacy and authenticity of Sarah’s music ever since. In Psalm 1, I connect with the slowly-evolving textures, the exploration of timbre, and the arc of the piece, which on its surface can appear simple at first glance, but with nuanced exploration reveals a very carefully constructed process of the evolution of sound and harmonic development.

I began work on A Cold Stability during the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The working-through and working-out of the ideas in the piece became a respite for me, with most nights spent researching the techniques used in Ableton Live to create the live effects. In live-performance, all of the sounds in the piece are created in real-time, with no pre-recorded samples. Even some of the electronic sound effects are controlled in real-time using a Novation Launch Control XL, and it was important to me that the electronics were another instrument in the realization of the piece, and not simply added ear candy. The piece was finally finished in June of 2021, and was recorded later that year at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, Oregon.

Since my days as an undergrad, I have always held a fondness for the music of Lou Harrison, and when my good friend Terry Longshore let me know he’d written a solo piece, I was surprised to know I’d never heard of it! I quickly learned it and it became its own form of retreat for me sonically. In this collection, I hear it as a fitting closure for this collection, which when viewed as one arc, traverses through different shades and shapes of tension and release.