Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Hailed as “whirlwind” (Gramophone), the music of composer Dana Kaufman has been heard throughout North America and Europe. Her works have been featured at venues/festivals including New York Opera Fest, Jordan Hall, Contemporary Music Center of Milan, Carlow Arts Festival, Boston New Music Festival, Ravinia Festival’s One Score, One Chicago youth division, National Opera Week, Hartford Opera Theater, Opera on Tap Chicago, soundSCAPE Festival, and Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival; they have been performed by ensembles such as Great Noise Ensemble, Na Wai Chamber Choir, Wet Ink Ensemble, 5th Wave Collective, Passepartout Duo, So Percussion, and members of OperaRox Productions and the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra. In addition to receiving a Fulbright Research Grant in Estonia and being a four-time American Prize awardee/honoree (including in the Opera/Theater/Film Division), Kaufman has received awards/honors from the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, Black House New Operas Project, Boston Choral Ensemble, New American Voices, and more. An advocate for social justice through music and a frequent speaker, Kaufman has delivered lectures/presentations at institutions/conferences such as the LA Opera, Music by Women Festival, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, College Music Society National Conference, and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and was a panelist for “Gender Representation in New Opera” at New Music Gathering. Kaufman graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College (Bachelor of Arts in Music in Russian), completed her Master of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at University of Miami Frost School of Music as the first Frost student to be a Dean’s Fellow. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Music Composition–and will be continuing as Assistant Professor in Music Composition beginning July 2020 at the University of California, Riverside. danakaufmanmusic.com

Originally titled Motet for Intangible Loss: I. Tolls, this work initially was part of a commission by flutist Rebecca Johnson and oboist Elizabeth Sullivan, with funding support from UNC Charlotte.

Image: Luther Gerlach, Burning Bush, Unique Silver Gelatin Print, 2017, Courtesy of the artist

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Aram Ethan Adajian is a PhD candidate at UC Riverside. This is his first collaboration with Joan Wulf.

Seeing “shapes” in the fire is a running theme. Hopefully, the assemblage illustrates that audiovisual patterns have the potential to combine and guide the imagination of the viewer to something organic and new, something unique to an individual’s perception.

Image: Joan Wulf, Smoke Series 1, Smoke Soot on Rag Paper, 2013, Courtesy the collection of Peter Larsen

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Roberto Casillas is a composer, trumpeter, guitarist, and pianist with a Bachelor’s Degree of Arts, with an emphasis in Music Composition. Roberto has performed with various groups both in and outside the university. Alongside performing, Roberto has written various pieces for small ensembles including The Mojave Trio, pianist Keith Kirchoff, clarinet and trumpet duet, various electronic pieces, and has scored soundtracks for the Theatre, Film, and Digital Production Department, as well as outside films and commercials.

The piece takes the listener to the tragic fire at Joshua Tree, as flames quickly rise, decimating a large portion of the land. The piece begins with a combination of pitched percussion and synth strings in their low, dark register, personifying the violent flames that devoured over 155 acres of land. The fast electronic runs are inspired by light sparks evolving into wildfire. As the piece progresses, a subtle sense of optimism increases, portraying beauty and rebirth amidst the fiery ashes and beautiful night sky. Firefighters can be heard panning left to right in the struggle to extinguish the roaring flames as they continue to dominate Joshua Tree.

Image: Stuart Palley, Burned Joshua Trees, Erskine Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2016, Courtesy of the artist

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

The music for this image was written by Alena Kutumian, a third year neuroscience major and music minor. Alena has also written for ensembles such as choir, saxophone quartet and piano and violin, as well as a micro-opera.

Burnout is meant to capture the seriousness of a fire. An uncontrollable fire can cause destruction and loss of life, and firefighters put their lives at stake to save nature and to save lives. This piece is meant to capture the risks they take.

Image: Noah Berger, Mendocino Complex Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2018 (Printed 2020), Courtesy of the artist and European Pressphoto

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Leonora Viburnum (23) is a composer, cellist, and multimedia artist, from San Diego, California currently studying music at the University of California, Riverside. her work is a series of irregular and anomalous fabrics formed thru the interweaving of memory-time with shredded emotional space. Influenced by ambient electronic, IDM, and noise, her music tends to eschew clear melodic and harmonic material, instead sculpting, slicing, and morphing, audio into raw textural soundworlds. In her experiments with field recordings, synthesis, extended instrumental techniques, and complex audio processing, she pulls desperately at the edges of psychological realities and unrealities so that she can stare through the cracks.

“California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion” (originally written for viola, cello, and two processed melodicas) is an electronic piece comprised primarily of synthesizer-generated sounds and samples of recorded cello. The musical material is both melodically and rhythmically simple, a series of several loops (each of different length) slowly moving in and out of sync with each other. Each sound is shaped by long effects chains which simultaneously tear their sources apart and shape the pieces into unpredictable new forms. each chain is distinct despite being distantly related, each oscillating and writhing in its own systems of LFO modulation and dynamic effects. as is its subject, “California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion” is a living cycle of constant chaotic destruction and spontaneous creation.

Image: Joan Wulf, Smoke Series 1, Smoke Soot on Rag Paper, 2013, Courtesy the collection of Peter Larsen

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Noah Cohill is a junior pursuing music at the University of California, Riverside. He is aspiring to be a performer as well as a composer. The artwork for Smoke Series 1 by Joan Wulf is truly a chilling experience. With flames bursting billions of leaves to ash. After all that fire, the snowy cinders create a volcanic winter all around.

Image: Joan Wulf, Smoke Series 1, Smoke Soot on Rag Paper, 2013, Courtesy the collection of Peter Larsen

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

Image: Noah Berger, Ranch Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2018, Courtesy of the artist and Associated Press

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Christiaan Clark, a PhD Candidate in Digital Composition at the University of California, Riverside, is actively pursuing his passion for video game sound design and is currently researching new ways to implement procedural music into popular game engines. His love of video games inspires his dual artistic blend that is equal parts creative and technical. You can experience more of his work at http://christiaanclark.com

The Planet’s Crying explores the absurdity of how our climate change problems are paralleling the degradation of the planet in the video game Final Fantasy 7. To achieve this, musical motifs and voiceover from that game are combined with real world news reports that state both disturbing facts and fanciful delusions. Science fiction is frequently produced to warn of the potential of impending disaster, and yet, this fantasy seems just a little too much like reality now.

Image: Stuart Palley, Burned Joshua Trees, Erskine Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2016, Courtesy of the artist

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

The music for this photo was written by Jason Tse, a third year Music (Composition track) and Education (Community Leadership, Social Justice, and Policy track) double major. Prior to this piece, Jason has written pieces for various small ensembles including saxophone quartet, piano trio, string quartet, and piano-violin duo, as well as written a micro-opera, ukulele folk EP, and scored soundtracks for the Theatre, Film, and Digital Production Department. The music places the listener into the wilderness just before the start of the Kincade fire, with a quiet evening and the chirping of a cricket. The peace is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a transmission line failing, the reported cause of the Kincade fire. Over the sound of low strings are the sounds of the Kincade fire documented in Sonoma County. A fuse can be heard across the piece, panning between left and right to represent the impending fire dividing the burnt, ashen land and the threatened wilderness.

Image: Noah Berger, Kincade Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2019, Courtesy of the artist and Associated Press

Facing Fire is an exhibition that explores western wildfires as omen and elemental force, as metaphor and searing personal experience. Fire tends to spread. So, too, does the meaning of fire. Sixteen artists bring us photographs, paintings, drawings, ceramic, and video as they face fire, sift its aftermath, and struggle with the implications. UCR ARTS is collaborating UCR’s Department of Music to present original compositions created by students and faculty around artworks found in the exhibition.

The faculty and student composers in the UCR Music Department work in a variety of media drawn from influences that range from hip-hop to experimental electronic music. The approaches for each piece within the Facing Fire project are highly individualized. Some works are fully scored compositions for classical instruments, others use external source material and text taken from other mediums, such as video game soundtracks and news reports. Their compositions are a testament to the importance of expressing one’s creative impulses during times of uncertainty and isolation.

About the composer/composition:

Sean Leach, Highland, CA. Undergraduate Composer at UCR.

Composed using Analog equipment, most of the sound design is from scratch drawing from the emotions portrayed in frame. Being a native Californian I have lived through fires and witnessed their destruction. I tried to capture what it feels to be there; the warm desert ground, the cool wind, the fire leaving a wake of disruption under an eerie night sky. Both beautiful and tragic.

Image: Stuart Palley, Burned Joshua Trees, Erskine Fire, Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 2016, Courtesy of the artist