Sonic Sky Matrix

Stephen James Taylor

Stephen James Taylor has been a full-time film composer since 1981. His credits include most all of Charles Burnett’s films (The Glass Shield, To Sleep With Anger,..), many of Robert Townsend’s films (Holiday Heart, Beyonce’s Carmen-A Hip Hopera..) and numerous episodes and theme songs for Hanna Barbera, DIC, Disney, Warner Brothers and the Marvel’s TV Series, The Black Panther.

He has explored transcendent tonality in many of his scores including Clark Johnson’s Boycott, Eames Demetrios’ The Giving (the first all microtonal score), and more recently, Richard Tanne’s Southside With You. In 2012 directed and scored the film, Surfing the Sonic Sky about the transcendent tonality of Ervin Wilson, with whom he studied for 20 years. The film won the Special Jury Award at the Houston Film Festival in 2013. A former private student of classical composer, Henri Lazarof, his works have been performed by orchestras throughout the US. He has also written music for Disney theme parks and continues to develop new trans-tonal capable instruments that expand the lexicon of contemporary music. Samples of his transtonal work below:

“Rondo 575”

“MOS Tutorial Music”

“53 Tone Chromatic 4ths”

from “Lake of Air”

Whassup? (Hip Hop)

For more information on Stephen and his work, visit: http://www.stephenjamestaylor.com/

Gary David

Gary David, Ph.D. in epistemology, is currently engaged in a private counseling practice, as well as giving seminars teaching the role of the biology of emotion in the meaning-making processes of the whole human being. A former professional musician, he was the leader of an experimental jazz group called “The Sound of Feeling” and was one of the early, longtime students of Erv Wilson.

Vocal Hexanies 1

Vocal Hexanies 2

Circle Revisited

Jose L Garcia

“I’m black, I’m white, I’m red and yellow. I am brown.
Can we be one?”
Brown —Lyrics by Marsha Mann

Jose L Garcia (1953-)—a searcher, conscious of mystery, vessel of transcendence, holder of opposites. Enraptured with art and sound growing up in a diverse technological, ethnic and popular cultural landscape in the 50s and 60s, Jose began creating art by age 11. A fast expansion of ideas and expressions in the 70s and 80s led through tours in Mexico with a jazz band (The Dick Whitsell Quintet), exploring Erv Wilson’s tonal universe, performing in world music ensembles (Gagaku, West African), composing ambient computer music, and founding, with Marsha Mann, the L.A. based microtonal rock band, Cipher. Jose still composes up to this moment, as the muses still find him communicable. You can find his artistic output, for this blink, at https://SoundCloud.com/jolohaga.

Kraig Grady

Kraig Grady is a US-Australian-Anaphorian composer. He has composed and performed with an ensemble of microtonal instruments of his own design since 1975 and also worked as a shadow puppeteer, tuning theorist, filmmaker, world music radio DJ, and concert promoter. His works feature his own ensembles of acoustic instruments. His compositions include accompaniments for silent films and shadow plays. An important influence in the development of Grady’s music was Harry Partch, like Grady, a musician from the Southwest, and a composer of theatrical works in Just Intonation for self-built instruments. Since meeting tuning theorist Erv Wilson, he has composed and performed in alternative tunings based on Wilson’s theories. In the early 1980s Grady and filmmaker Keith Barefoot created a number of performances combining live music with silent film. In his 1989 opera War and Pieces, he used film to project stage settings as well as illustrate the inner thoughts of the live performers.

Since 1993 Grady’s work has been connected to the activities of “The North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island”, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization promoting the culture of this fictional island, which Grady characterizes as a “metaphorical geographical locale”. He has produced numerous solo and ensemble works and ten shadow plays representing the “traditional” repertoire of Anaphoria: Ten Black Eye I-II, Black Eye Meru, Her Stirring Stone, Their Ventures Beyond The Horizons, The Stolen Stars, Frenzy At The Royal Threshold, The Quiet Erow, The Pilgrimage of Mirrors, and The Follies of Dr. Placebo.

Despite the fact that the size of his instruments make touring difficult, his work has been presented at Ballhaus Naunyn Berlin (Germany), the Chateau de la Napoule (France), the Norton Simon Museum of Art, the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, the Pacific Asia Museum, as well as numerous live performances on radio KPFK, KCRW, and KXLU. His work was also presented as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s American Music Weekend as well as New Music America 1985. He has been nominated four times for the LA Weekly Music Awards best uncategorizable artist and was chosen by Buzz Magazine as one of the “100 coolest people in Los Angeles”. In 2007 he moved to Australia where he has performed at Liquid Architecture, The Aurora Festival and the Now Now festival to name a few. His present activities also center around his duo Clocks and Clouds (http://anaphoria.com/clocksclouds.html) with Terumi Narushima:

More music from Kraig:

“Our Rainy Season”

“DawnCrossingOfTheBridge”

Marcus Hobbs

Marcus Hobbs, aka Marcus Satellite, is a software engineer and digital artist based in Los Angeles. From a young age, he wrote his own software tools to create visual and musical art. His professional computer graphics career is credited on many Walt Disney animated features. His musical work is created with his own custom software synthesizers which have expanded harmonic and melodic features. He is currently focused on making his musical tools available to the public by developing interactive technologies such as the mobile application “Wilsonic”.

Chuck Jonkey

Chuck Jonkey is an adventurer/composer/musician/filmmaker who transforms his wild experiences into sound, music, and film. Chuck’s exotic adventures have taken him to the furthest reaches of primitive worlds. Referred to as an “ethnomusicianthropologist” Chuck travels around the world in search of adventure among the world’s most isolated tribal groups. He has explored the deep Amazon and the rainforests of Thailand, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Mexico. Chuck’s travels have also taken him to West Africa, Borneo, French Polynesia, Morocco, Venezuela, Russia, China, India and many other countries.

Chuck owns Sonic Safari Music. He has produced and published over 110 CDs of exotic music. Chuck recently composed 5 hours of tribal music for Disneyland, Shanghai “Adventure Isle” and worked on “Avatar land: Pandora” in Orlando Florida.

For more information on Chuck and his work, visit: http://www.sonicsafarimusic.com

“Chuck’s Kecak” features 100 villagers performing the Kecak Monkey Dance. The instruments were tuned to the vocals which are a variation of the Pelog musical scale. The recording was made in a rice field (in Bali) with the performers in full costume recreating the Ramayana tale of the abduction and rescue of Princess Sita by Hanuman’s army of monkeys.

“Deep Wood Overture” features many of the wood and bamboo instruments in my vast collection. The tune starts with Balinese influenced kotekan (interlocking parts) using wood bars made using 2X4 lumber in exotic pitch variations. Tribal chanting is featured from my trips to Indonesia and giant “tone bars” are featured in “Deep Wood”. These and many more instruments make up the album “Deep Wood”.

“Septanya” is from Chuck’s CD “Mask Music”. This all-acoustic recording features Balinese gamelan instruments in Pelog tuning (no two gamelans are pitched exactly the same). The instruments are made in pairs that are slightly de-tuned to give a shimmering effect. This song features interlocking parts also using other bamboo and metallic instruments.

Terumi Narushima

Terumi Narushima is a composer, performer and sound designer who specialises in alternative tuning systems. Her works include Tritriadic Chimes, a sound installation for LA MicroFest (http://www.anaphoria.com/trichimes.html)Hidden Sidetracks, a composition for custom-made instruments premiered by Ensemble Offspring at the Sydney Opera House (https://soundcloud.com/ensemble-offspring/terumi-narushima-hidden>), Mizu No Rin, a commission for Synergy Percussion (https://vimeo.com/194619596), and a project to build microtonal flutes using 3D printing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJH5250aGJA). She has worked on various film and theatre collaborations, including Yasukichi Murakami: Through a Distant Lens which was presented at the Darwin and OzAsia Festivals, as well as the Griffin Theatre in Sydney and Parramatta Riverside Theatres. She performs with the microtonal ensemble Clocks and Clouds and she is also a senior lecturer in music at the University of Wollongong. Her book, Microtonality and the Tuning Systems of Erv Wilson, will be published by Routledge in late 2017 (https://www.routledge.com/Microtonality-and-the-Tuning-Systems-of-Erv-Wilson/Narushima/p/book/9781138857568.).

Subhraag Singh

Subhraag Singh is a composer/woodwind artist/inventor based in Stuttgart, Germany. His invention, the Infinitone, “the saxophone of the future”, won first prize at the 2017 Guthman New Musical instrument competition. His primary background as an artist has been as a saxophonist in the field of jazz music. Subhraag has extensive international performance experience and has had some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time as mentors. Currently, he is now engaged in developing and utilizing new technologies that allow musicians to greatly expand harmonic/melodic possibility. For more information on Subhraag and his work, visit: http://www.infinitonic.com

“Bazaario” is a piece for “transtonal woodwind quartet”, featuring 2 Intinitones, 2 retuned saxophones, and percussion. It was composed using custom just intonation scales based on Alain Danielou’s 53-tone “Universal Scale of Sounds”.