This is My Scary Robot Voice
Argus Quartet performs “This is My Scary Robot Voice” (Kerrith Livengood)
About Kerrith Livingston
I compose chamber music, vocal music, orchestral works, and electroacoustic music. I am also a flutist, drummer, vocalist and improviser, performing with many different new music and experimental music groups, such as Alia Musica Pittsburgh and with members of eighth blackbird at the Music09 and Music11 Festivals.
Between September 2010 and September 2011, I created a new piece of music every day, posting each piece online as an ongoing project called Clang Jingle Clang. Coming up with and executing new ideas in just a few hours each day helped me develop a better knowledge of myself as a composer – I became more interested in pattern variations and combinations of noisy and pitched sounds. You can learn more about Clang Jingle Clang on the Projects page.
My music uses timbrally complex and harmonically rich sounds to generate unexpected musical forms, often featuring patterns subverted by secondary musical events. Frequently, I write music which challenges normal relationships between individuals and groups, especially conductors and ensembles, as a means of exploring different possibilities for decision-making and rebellion among performers. Often this takes the form of text-based, graphic, and open form works, inspired by my participation in the experimental and improvisatory music community in Pittsburgh.
Currently I am setting four poems by contemporary poet Jennifer L. Knox for mezzo-soprano, flute, and piano. Each song has its own harmonic language, ranging from diatonic to harshly dissonant, and each features noisy nontraditional sounds that contradict or comment upon the poem’s apparent meaning.
You can find my CV here.
About the Argus Quartet
The Argus Quartet is quickly gaining a reputation as one of today's most dynamic and versatile young ensembles. Praised for their "supreme melodic control and total authority," (Calgary Herald), some of their recent and upcoming performances include appearances at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall, Roulette, the Albany Symphony's American Music Festival, Bang on a Can at the Noguchi Museum and the Hear Now Music Festival.
Argus is dedicated to reinvigorating the audience-performer relationship through innovative concerts and diverse repertoire. The quartet also believes that today’s ensembles can honor the storied chamber music traditions of our past while forging a new path forward. In that spirit, their repertoire includes not just staples of the chamber music canon but also a large number of pieces by living composers.
In the fall of 2017, the Argus Quartet will begin an appointment as the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the Juilliard School, where they will work closely with the Juilliard String Quartet - Argus will make their Lincoln Center recital debut with a performance at Alice Tully Hall in May of 2018.