Match-Mismatch
For Clarinet Quartet and Interactive Electronics
Match-Mismatch was written in 2022-23 in collaboration with fellow UBC graduate students Patrick Pata and Christina Draeger from the department of Earth, Oceanic, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Los Primos Clarinet Quartet. Match-Mismatch was premiered as part of a collaborative project between the music and EAOS departments, creating and performing new compositions on themes of earth’s changing climate.
This piece is about the match-mismatch hypothesis, which attempts to explain the temporal trends in ocean life. This hypothesis implies that the growth and survival of organisms depend on the timing of their life cycles and the availability of prey. This cascade of synchronies ripple all across the food web affecting the survival of whales and the seafood on our tables. Inherent in how dynamic the Earth is, climate and water properties are different from one year to the next. So in a good year when timing of oceanic events matches up, the biomass of life is high. But in years when there are considerable mismatches, biomass and potentially diversity decreases.
As greenhouse gas emissions from human activity continue to increase, atmospheric and ocean temperatures and glacial melting are rapidly increasing. These changes are a test of resilience for the ocean ecosystem. Slight mismatches can be buffered by the ecosystem, but extensive mismatches can be disastrous and cause crashes in fish populations and regime shifts that completely change the entire ocean ecosystem.
Match-Mismatch presents this idea through musically aligning or mis-aligning various parts, presenting a gradual shift from a well-matched ecosystem to one where timing events are mismatched, and population is in decline. The electronics (run in Max/MSP) use real oceanic time-series data to distort and manipulate the audio signal from the clarinets, presenting an audible analogue to human industry and its effect on the ocean.
for information on obtaining sheet music, please contact me at WalkerWilliamsMusic@gmail.com
For Clarinet Quartet and Interactive Electronics
Match-Mismatch was written in 2022-23 in collaboration with fellow UBC graduate students Patrick Pata and Christina Draeger from the department of Earth, Oceanic, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Los Primos Clarinet Quartet. Match-Mismatch was premiered as part of a collaborative project between the music and EAOS departments, creating and performing new compositions on themes of earth’s changing climate.
This piece is about the match-mismatch hypothesis, which attempts to explain the temporal trends in ocean life. This hypothesis implies that the growth and survival of organisms depend on the timing of their life cycles and the availability of prey. This cascade of synchronies ripple all across the food web affecting the survival of whales and the seafood on our tables. Inherent in how dynamic the Earth is, climate and water properties are different from one year to the next. So in a good year when timing of oceanic events matches up, the biomass of life is high. But in years when there are considerable mismatches, biomass and potentially diversity decreases.
As greenhouse gas emissions from human activity continue to increase, atmospheric and ocean temperatures and glacial melting are rapidly increasing. These changes are a test of resilience for the ocean ecosystem. Slight mismatches can be buffered by the ecosystem, but extensive mismatches can be disastrous and cause crashes in fish populations and regime shifts that completely change the entire ocean ecosystem.
Match-Mismatch presents this idea through musically aligning or mis-aligning various parts, presenting a gradual shift from a well-matched ecosystem to one where timing events are mismatched, and population is in decline. The electronics (run in Max/MSP) use real oceanic time-series data to distort and manipulate the audio signal from the clarinets, presenting an audible analogue to human industry and its effect on the ocean.
for information on obtaining sheet music, please contact me at WalkerWilliamsMusic@gmail.com