Inspired by Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas and Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms, I began writing Talkback, a series of compositions for solo instruments and real-time digital signal processing, in 2008.
With Talkback, I explore extended techniques, enhanced timbre, and other sonic features that are characteristic of the instrument by magnifying and amplifying otherwise subtle nuances and bringing them to the foreground.
In my mind Talkback is a series of etudes that enable the performer to speak “Barash” fluently when coming to perform my larger works.
Talkback, just like in online media, is a response to something more substantial: western tradition, the canon. It is smaller but often as significant as it is a sincere manifestation of the zeitgeist. Real-time interaction between the instrument and the computer is a form of dialog. Very similar to forms of communicating on the Internet—posting, tweeting, blogging, etc.—it is filtered, yet very real.
Talkback was hailed by the Queens Chronicle as being “at once divine, serene and haunting.”
So far they are:
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