Videos

The taal, or time cycle, for this performance is known as Rupak, and is a cycle of 7 beats; each cycle is divided into groups of beats, 3+2+2, and from this division comes the basic agogic accent pattern that permeates throughout the performance. Each composition, then, describes this rhythm, sometimes in unison, often in syncopation, and always with great adherence to style and musicality. This Rela was a spontaneous composition for my April 5, 2008 performance at Machine Project, as part of Robin Sukhadia’s “TablaCentric” residency, in Los Angeles, CA. Rela is type of composition renowned for its fast motion and water-like flow; it literally translates “a flood,” or, “gushing.” This Rela is a demonstration of “DheReDeRe,” and was improvised onstage for this special performance.


This is the final two and a half minutes of a long, ten-minute expansion of a simple Kaida in Rupak, a cycle of seven beats. This kaida is in tishran laya, or 3-speed (triplets) and so the basic subdivisions are 3, 6, and 12. This video was shot during the Gurupurnima celebration for my guru, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, which took place on July 29, 2006.



"I sing a flight of birds" is inspired by the city of Los Angeles and its contradictory nature, as a gigantic urban sprawl colliding with the Mojave Desert, the San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. The piece was developed in collaboration with dancer Michael Szanyi. The percussion part is a structured improvisation, designed to develop pre-composed thematic material across different instrumental combinations. Always present throughout the piece is an ongoing 3-with-2 polyrhythm, inspired by drum and bell patterns of West African drumming. Melodic material is limited, though the piece follows a slow moving progression of chords, with the exact progression improvised in performance.


“These Liquid Ceilings, I’ve been trapped” is a percussion solo in 4 movements, utilizing live percussion melodies fed directly into a looping mechanism. The resulting textures are a combination of previous materials super-imposed upon one another, played back at altered speeds, creating a rhythmically dense canon, upon which the performer improvises. “These Liquid Ceilings” explores aesthetic themes of poverty and obsession, entrapment and liberation, through the process of a refined and coldly calculated catharsis. This video documents Movement 1 from a live performance in collaboration with visual artist, Sayo Mitsuishi, on June 10, 2007, at the Dangerous Curve Art Gallery and Performance Space. Having just witnessed the 2007 Griffith Park fire, Sayo traveled to the fire scene to obtain charcoal samples, which she used to color and manipulate 3 plain doors, mounted to the pillars and walls inside the Dangerous Curve gallery space.



Audio
Marimba Solo: Decaying Orbits (T.J. Troy)
This solo was composed for my performance sequence “10 Oxherding Pictures,” in satisfaction of the 2nd recital requirement for my MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts. I began with the concept of a satellite slowly falling from its orbit, coming ever closer to crashing into the earth. The piece is broken into two main sections of a right-handed melody over left-handed self-accompaniment, interrupted by long, elaborate lines are improvised from the low end of the marimba to the high end.

Marimba Solo: A shower of praise from above (T.J. Troy)
A murmuring chorale for the marimba.